Paris is not the only place where this holds true. All the cosmopolitan centres that are also sites of splendour are becoming more and more alike. Their differences are disappearing.
Wide streets lead from the faubourgs into the splendour of the centre. But this is not the intended centre. The good fortune in store for the poverty further out is reached by radii other than the extant ones. Nevertheless, the streets that lead to the centre must be travelled, for its emptiness today is real.'
Siegfried Kracauer, 'Analysis of a City Map' (1926), in The Mass Ornament (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 43-45.