The housing market is a bit broken: either expensive private housing or affordable publicly managed one, but very hard to get. People often cannot relocate. Big debt. Security, with addicted errands in some districts.

Well put. Lots of people in the comments have a nostalgic vision of Paris it seems.

Have you been to St Etienne or Limoges ? If we talk >80k sized French cities, Paris is in the middle of the pack. Maybe on the tail end (if you don't have a lake or fast access to a sea I can windsurf on, you loose a lot of points by default), but clearly not the worse.