Residents of super-Instagrammable Paris street are fed up

Instagram has provided design lovers with a seemingly endless scroll of eye candy, but there’s a downside to the one-click democratization of striking architecture. Namely, it’s a huge pain for the people who actually live in the houses.

By this point, it’s a classic 21st-century story—give people a colorful house, a geotag, and a camera, and they’ll make a pilgrimage for the perfect shot. In Paris, that happens to be Rue Crémieux, a stretch of Easter-candy-colored rowhouses that line a cobblestone street.

The street really is as photogenic as it sounds, and it’s presented residents with something of a conundrum: They can’t seem to get rid of backdrop-hungry visitors who view their street as the perfect setting to compose a ’gram.

It’s gotten so bad that this week, the residents asked the city to close the street to visitors during the evenings and on weekends, the times when Insta-tourism is at its most unbearable. According to CityLab, their desired policy harkens back to a time, decades ago, when Rue Crémieux was a private gated community.

If granted, the rule will undoubtedly slow the number of #ruecremieux-tagged posts popping up on Instagram, but the public street, for now, remains open to anyone who wants to wants to take a stroll (and a pic).

Via: CityLab