Season 2 Episode 6 - FRONTIÈRES (BORDERS)
This episode will focus not just on the identities of people but of places. We’ll be talking about the way that Paris is divided through years of history, politics and design. Cities have significant physical and psychic borders that create local bias and affinities. Paris is no different.
Script
[MUSIC]
Jess 0:00
This is Here There Be Dragons. I’m your host Jess Myers.
[MUSIC]
Last episode we talked abut the way Parisians play with social codes through cloths or attitudes to signal how they would like to be treated in public space. This episode will focus not just on the identities of people but of places. Okay, so I’m going to lay some cards on the table. I’m in grad school for city planning and my background is in architecture. I've studied architecture in the US and in Paris. And you could say that I think about space a lot. You may have noticed, I'm a little space obsessed. These next two episodes are going to be even more space focused.
This episode, we’ll be talking about the way that the city is divided through years of history, politics and design. Just like for New Yorkers the divide between uptown and downtown Manhattan or for North and South of the river for London, cities have significant physical and psychic borders that create local bias and affinities.
Paris is no different. If you know the city through visits or movies or books you may know that river Seine flows through the city, dividing it into the left bank to the south and the right bank to the north. You may also know the socio-economic divide that separates the east and west not physically but politically. Or perhaps you know the deepest cut which separates Paris proper or Paris intramuros from its banlieue: the highway called the periphérique.
These divisions create identities not just for the neighborhoods but for the people who live there. For the residents that I spoke to these borders can be hard to dismiss and difficult to cross.
[MUSIC]
The divide between the East and the West of Paris began many centuries ago, with the aristocracy pulling more to the West, closer to the enormous palaces Versailles and the Louvres, while the working class spread towards the east.[1] Today west is still more wealthy but it’s also much more residential while the east has more bars more shops and more young people. For Anthony and Nava the west is cold, the east buzzing with life.
{[1] Alain Rustenholz, De la banlieue rouge au Grand Paris: d’Ivry à Clichy et de Saint-Ouen à Charenton, 2015.}
ANTHONY 2:20
“Je m’appelle Antoine italien j’ai 26 ans je travaille chez Amazone comme manager et j’ai vécu et grandi à Vitry-sur-Seine en région Parisienne.”
I feel more at ease in the east, there’s more to do, it’s much more dynamic.
(My name is Italian Antoine, I am 26 years old, I work at Amazone as a manager and I lived and grew up in Vitry-sur-Seine in the Paris region.)
I feel more at ease in the east, there’s more to do, it’s much more dynamic.
“…, toute la mouvance bobo ce genre de choses bah mine de rien, ça me plaît plus que…”
I like it more than the beautiful districts where everything costs an arm and a leg.
NAVA 2:49
“Je me balade beaucoup en vélo et à pied aussi…”
[Translation]
I mostly bike or walk around the city, and I recently went on the belt surrounding Paris and all the western side, in the 16th. That wasn't very pleasant. I told myself I wouldn’t go back there. It's very cold. The streets are empty, and I don't like emptiness. I prefer busy streets with a lot of people. In the 8th as well, I like the architecture, but I'm not at all attracted to the atmosphere. I don’t like it.
Jess 3:16
Alison told me about the political divide of the East and West. The western part of Paris has historically supported more conservative views while the east is more progressive.[2]
{[2] Alexandre Léchenet, “Carte : Paris vote pour François Hollande,” Le Monde.fr, May 7, 2012, http://www.lemonde.fr/election-presidentielle-2012/article/2012/05/07/carte-paris-vote-pour-francois-hollande_1696832_1471069.html.}
ALISON 3:26
People tend to be more left wing in the east and right wing in the right it's almost like a straight split of red and blue on the map.
I actually do have a regular journey that I do to the 16th. In the popular imagination this is a place where all the far-right voters in Paris live. But they hypocritically don't admit to it. There's meant to be actually a brasserie there where the Le Penistes meet but I don't know whether that's true.
Jess 3:57
For most people I spoke with the East/West divide was pretty stark, there are bourgeois on one side and prolo or working class on the other. But for ShuckOne, a graffiti artist who moved to Paris from the French Caribbean department, Guadeloupe when he was a teenager in the 80s, the East/West border was crucial to cross.
SHUCK ONE 4:17
“…dans cette découverte, dans cette, je vais même dire dans cette émancipation sociale et urbaine…”
[Translation]
During that discovery of urban and social emancipation, I discovered graffiti. I would go out at night to paint, to tag metros, to vandalize stations and to develop my art.
I was lucky. I lived on line 2. It was strategic because it crosses Paris from East to West. It goes through all the most dynamic areas, multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan, melting-pot. That line is a reference. That's where the most famous vacant lot in Paris, if not in Europe, and maybe in the world was, the wasteland of Stalingrad la Chapelle.
One day, my cousin started counting and on line 2, there were more than 30 trains passing by that had been tagged or vandalized with my name. I was the king of that metro line.
“…Je lui ai dit bah c’est bien comme ça au moins je suis le king de la ligne.”
Jess 5:23
Just like the East/West border divides socio-economic status, the left bank and the right bank border works similarly.
The river Seine separates two different histories one ancient and the other modern. All of Paris used to the islands that float in the river Seine, Ile de St. Louis and Ile de la Cité.[3] The left bank of the river was one of the first parts of expanded Pars. It has the last remains of Roman architecture from when France or then Gaul was a part of the empire. The left bank is where the universities started, where poets and satirists first died penniless in dark rooms with bad wallpaper.
{[3] Shlomo Angel, “Atlas of Urban Expansion” (Cambridge, Mass.: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2012).}
But the right bank is where modernity unfolded on the city and stayed. Aristocrats became businessmen, farms became factories, and the shops became department stores. The famous boutiques, Printemps and the Galeries Lafayette, the worlds of Colette and Emile Zola, are the center of right bank.[4]
{[4] David Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (New York: Routledge, 2003).}
But the interesting thing about all of Paris’s borders is that they intersect like a Venn diagram. The left and right bank cross east and west yielding neighborhoods of the modern working class and the ancient conservatives. These lines intersect. Cut in quarters by politics and the river.
FRANCOISE 6:42
“…chez moi à ici par exemple, je franchis la Seine…”
[Translation]
When I go from here to there, I cross the Seine. The river is really a separation, but it’s a separation that doesn’t separate. I think it’s a particular event in the continuity that is Paris.
LÉOPOLD 6:58
The differentiation between rive gauche rive droite for me is- is something that only native Parisians are very much looking at. Although I do notice, and I very much take notice when I cross a bridge because I mean quite frankly it's beautiful and it’s a little bit like when you cross an avenue in New York City. You look at this great canyon. So, it does feel like a threshold to a certain degree but to me that was never linked to two distinct identities.
ESTHER 7:29
“En général je dirais globalement…”
[Translation]
In schematic terms I’m more comfortable on the left bank because that’s where I grew up and still live. But in the eyes of my friends, I’m really a has been because everyone is [on the] right bank, in République, around Belleville. I’m aware that it makes me kind of a stick in the mud.
Jess 7:44
The depth of history and culture that run along the dividing lines of any city carry enormous weight. When she moved from London to Paris, Alison brought with her the strong memories of its river divide, it made her determined to call north of the river, the right bank, her home.
ALISON 8:01
I lived for 12 years in London before, and the North or South of the river thing there is really really strong. So, maybe that was something that was already in my mind when I came here, but I find myself really identifying strongly as a north Parisian.
And I think there was a kind of snobishness about living on the right bank. I was being a pioneer because the left bank it never changes you know and it’s comfortable and rather smug.
So, I definitely found living in the 20th, it was actually around Jourdain, which has become a rather sought-after area but at the time it was still kind of populaire very kind of working class, but very friendly and villagey. And lots of music going on, lots of artistic activities. So, I was really proud to say that I chose to live there when some of the French friends I met first of all lived in the Latin quarter cause they'd been to university there. They were all going, don't go to the 20th, it's really dangerous, what are you thinking of?
Areas like the 7th - are massively more policed than the areas where there is actually more crime. Cause I actually called the police on a couple of occasions here and they told me- I can’t remember the exact numbers but- there are very very few police actually available to deal with all the things that were happening in this area. You know, I'm talking about petty crime like stealing a telephone or stealing your bag there's an enormous amount of theft. And yet all around the 7th where the ministers live, you'll see police all the time. So, it does feel rather as if the police are kind of mobilized to protect the rich in this city.
Jess 10:12
After a life spent on the right bank and in the north of Paris, Steffi found it tough to adjust to college life on the left bank. It made her realize how deeply influenced she was by the stereotypes of the neighborhood.
STEFFI 10:23
“Et quand j’allais à la Sorbonne même…”
[Translation]
When I went to the Sorbonne, in the 5th, I didn't feel like I belonged. Now it's changing because the person I'm sharing my life with comes from the left bank while I spent my entire life on the right bank. Well, whenever I'd go to Paris, I'd go to the right bank, and everywhere I'd go on the left bank, I never felt comfortable. Probably because there are less populaires areas on the left bank and because I grew up in a populaire area, so I never felt like I could feel comfortable on the left bank.
Now I've discovered some little spots on the left bank that are really nice, but it’s a limit that exists. Because there's the Seine and clearly it's not just a river. I really do feel like there's a major difference between the right and the left bank. At least, from the people I met when I was younger, and from the way I used to see things, I always felt that they were two different worlds. On the one hand, you've got kind of lefty bourgeois intellectuals who still pretend like they're in ‘68 and who spend their lives at university because they can afford it. They don't need to work, they can stay [in university] for 15 years. They live with their parents and never have a problem in life.
That was what I imagined and so to me, the right bank was more working-class or at least people who had to roll up their sleeves and work. I've grown up since then and of course I've realized that it's not that simple.
“…je me rends compte que c’est pas aussi simple que ça.”
Jess 11:46
For many Parisians, the widest border, wider even the river, is the périphérique, the ring road that loops around Paris, making a deep cut between Paris and the banlieue.[5]
{[5] Justinien Tribillon, “Dirty Boulevard: Why Paris’s Ring Road Is a Major Block on the City’s Grand Plans,” The Guardian, June 26, 2015, sec. Cities, https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jun/26/ring-road-paris-peripherique-suburbs-banlieue.}
As you’ll hear from residents this border is more than a physical separation. It’s an emotional one too.[6] In many ways the périphérique, which was meant to make the city more accessible by car, ended up cutting off people in the banlieue from many basic services and opened them to stigma.[7]
{[6] Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies : Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c1995., 1995).
[7] Sylvie Tissot and Franck Poupeau, “La spatialisation des problèmes sociaux,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales no 159, no. 4 (December 1, 2006): 4–9.}
But the banlieues have had a particular relationship with Paris for centuries. Since many factories and barracks were on the edges of Paris. The banlieue has many historically working-class towns. These towns have famous histories of communism and labor organizing. And the efforts of these workers ended up forging the foundation for many of France's labor protection laws.
[Music]
At the same time the banlieue is also quite diverse, with town that are also historically wealthy and aristocratic. Like Neuilly-sur-Seine, which at one point at the same GDP as the entire country of Greece. Or the banlieue Versailles, the site of Louis the 14th notoriously opulent chateau.
However, even with this incredible variance, stereotypes about the banlieue are common amongst Parisians and the media, who often use the word “banlieue” as a euphemism for poverty and crime. Even though there are neighborhoods in Paris that have similar crime rates to towns in the banlieue, crime reporting in the banlieue typically defines a town. The way that Parisians say Paris proper, to distinguish the city from the banlieue, is Paris intramuros, which translates to Paris inside the walls. This refers to the old fortress walls that protected the city from invasion centuries ago. The walls have been since replaced with a road and in some ways that road is even more impassible.
[Car horning]
BERNARD 14:08
“Paris autrefois était entouré par des fortifications…”
[Translation]
Paris was formerly surrounded by fortifications to defend against invasions. They were called les fortifs. And then at some point the fortifications were destroyed. But for decades these destroyed fortifications gave way to what was called "the zone". And this zone was impoverished places where there were faulty barracks, whole marginal population of workers without money, people who came from the provinces, immigrants from various countries, and then also thieves, prostitutes. It was often a dangerous neighborhood but quaint. The cinema [and] literature were really taken with it.
And one day the périphérique was built around Paris. It doubled the Maréchaux boulevards and it was on the site of the Zone. And so there was a very clear separation between the 20 arrondissements of Paris and the banlieue.
“Et du coup y a eu un séparation très nette entre les 20 arrondissements de Paris et la banlieue.”
Jess 15:07
Like the left bank and right bank divide, the stereotypes of both sides of the périphérique are very strong. As a young student moving to Paris from Bretagne region, Leopold remembers being curious to find out if the rumors were true.
LEOPOLD 15:23
It's true that there's an entire mythology in Paris about the banlieue as being spaces where you might be at risk as a young little white bourgeoise kid. And um and I think- I think coming from a small town it probably was a part of my imaginary but also that was something that I- I wanted to- if not challenge at least, verify so to speak. When you know Fox News did their “no-go-zones” uh places I think Parisians were very very prompt to either make fun of it or to be very angry at it. But I think the French media have been doing the very same thing about the banlieue for years. And in that case, Parisians are not quite as prompt to debunk this sort of mythology.
Jess 16:12
Some of you might remember the Fox News report that Léopold is talking about, the one that called out areas in Europe that were supposedly so dangerous and so populated by Muslim extremists that the police wouldn’t go there.
[News clip: “chief Washington correspondent James Rosen tells us tonight the no go zones are providing extremist with easy access to new recruits.”]
Léopold pointed out how, although many disagreed with the report, few people questioned how in many ways French media also crafts similar narratives. One thing these stereotypes fail to capture is the permeability of these boundaries. Both Nava and Françoise point out that many Parisians have lives that exist on both sides of the périphérique.
NAVA 16:57
“Le périphérique c’est si c’est vraiment un truc vivant…”
[Translation]
The périphérique is like a living thing. This barrier is here, we work with it, around, beyond it, it's not impassable. And if It's something you can pass, then you have to respect what goes on on each side.
“…il faut respecter ce qui se passe des deux côtés.”
FRANCOISE 17:15
“Franchement, bah le périphérique fait partie de toute une séries de grands chantiers qui ont été prévus sous de Gaulle.”
[Translation]
The périphérique was part of a whole series of large projects that were planned under de Gaulle and Pompidou. [They] destroyed a whole part of the neighborhood I lived next to and [some projects] were never realized. Throughout my childhood we were afraid because our house wasn’t far from the area under eminent domain. I remember one evening when my father came to dinner and said, "if we are under eminent domain what do we do.” Because obviously it meant losing our house, having it bought by the government at a very low price. We would have to move. There was a moment of temporary crisis, but we didn’t end up under eminent domain.
When I go to see my mother in Chatillon crossing the périphérique feels [like] passing from one universe to another. I’ve done it so many times that I think [of it as] continuity rather than separation even if I’m aware of crossing a border.
“…séparation même si je suis consciente qu’on franchit une frontière…”
SAMIA 18:22
“Alors j’habitais la région parisienne, j’habitais à Levallois.”
[Translation]
So, I lived in the Parisian area, in Levallois back in the day it was called Paris because the area hadn't been dissected in departments with numbers, 92, 93. Levallois is really at a junction with the 17th arrondissement, so we just used to say we lived in Paris. The périphérique didn't exist back then. I'm 60, I was born in 55, and the périphérique was built in 66-68.
Now there's Paris and there's the banlieue. You know what they say: "on the other side of the périph.” There are people who are horribly Parisian, who don't dare go to the banlieue, who are afraid. Being afraid of the banlieue is a real thing. There really are two societies: Paris is surrounded by a highway and that's the périphérique. And on the other side of the périph', there are more populaire areas have been pushed to those towns. So Levallois has become the periphery of Paris, because it's on the other side of the périph.
“Parce que Levallois est devenue la périphérie de Paris maintenant…”
Jess 19:15
As Samia and Françoise just said, the périphérique puts very hard clear edges on what’s Paris and what’s not. For many young people from the banlieue, there is pressure to leave and begin life in Paris. For Anthony who grew up in Vitry-sur-Siene, a southern banlieue, this always the dream.
ANTHONY 19:36
“OK. Alors, bah du coup la première frontière dont je vais parler c’est celle qui me touche le plus c’est effectivement…”
[Translation]
The first border I’m going to talk about is the one that affects me the most. It’s actually the périphérique. That’s the strongest border, in the Parisian region. It’s a border that’s just real. I feel it every day. When you’re in Paris proper there are little shops, more people, there’s life and when you leave there’re fewer people, fewer shops, less life in general.
In the cities that are right next to Paris, for example, Kremlin Bicêtre my home, Montreuil, there’s still a neighborhood life that’s very strong, but the more we move away the less it exists. Since I was 15, I knew I wanted to live in Paris. That was the horizon, not staying in the banlieue.
“…de pas rester en banlieue…”
Jess 20:21
Hervé grew up in the Northern banlieue Aubervillier, for him living in the banlieue was just a part of life. He never fully understood what Parisians felt about his banlieue until he started working in Paris and living there with his girlfriend Silvia, a Brazilian woman who moved to Paris from Miami.
HERVE 20:38
“Bah assez tardivement finalement je l’ai eue cette perception. Quand j’ai commencé à…”
[Translation]
When I started to really work and live in Paris, and have more and more friends in Paris, some of whom were Parisian, [it] made me feel this difference. The city where I was born, Aubervilliers, is just on the border of the 19th. I understood that it wasn’t Paris, it’s the Parisian region. But if I go to the rest of France, they’ll tell me: You’re from Paris. But on the other hand, Parisians make sure I understand that [Aubervilliers] isn’t Paris. And that's how you understand that there’s a difference/ It’s pretty funny.
People will say: watch out in the Paris banlieue, it’s more dangerous, there’s more theft, more trafficking, more run-down neighborhoods. So lots of stereotypes. Obviously it’s not true. There are equally run-down neighborhoods in Paris.
It’s these people you hear on TV. They’re afraid of everything: of the banlieue. But they don’t know their own city. They have a negative opinion because they have the same opinion as the people who live in the rest of France. The banlieue is scary. There’s a beating every two minutes. They’re completely disconnected from their own reality.
“C’est vrai hein?”
SILVIA 21:31
[Translation]
I know 100% that I’m one of those people who says "the banlieue isn’t Paris.” This is from my snobby side. I told Hervé "I’ll never live in Aubervilliers, I’m too snobby to live in Aubervilliers.” It's dirty, it's dangerous at night. You would always insist on picking me up at the metro stop when I came alone. You might not be afraid for you, but you were afraid for me.
“T’avais peut-être pas peur pour toi, mais t’avais peur pour moi.”
Jess 21:59
The stigma of violence and crime that exists in the banlieue can at times be true. Although Hervé has always been comfortable in the banlieue, he has had experiences of violence there.
HERVE 22:12
“En revenant d’une d’une soirée chez une amie qui habite Ile Saint-Denis…”
[Translation]
I was coming back after having spent the evening at a friend's house, she lives in Ile-Saint-Denis. So it's the same, it's in the 93 in the Parisian region. It must have been about 2 in the morning or something. I had an old car back then, and it stalled, it broke at a streetlight.
That's when four people arrived with guns, knives and they made me get out of the car. Then they took me hostage in the back of the car. And they made me go from one ATM to another until my card got blocked. Then they took me went around the periphérique several times, I suppose, because I had my head between my knees. And they abandoned me in a forest attached to a tree, threatening me that they'd come back to "finish the job". You know what "finish the job" means. Then I escaped.
“En me menaçant et revenir etc. après je fais le travail.”
Jess 22:56
For Dannii it was not just her northern banlieue that could be violent it was also the act of crossing borders that existed between neighborhoods. She was a boy from Epiney-sur-Siene and she had to deal with that stigma when encountering boys from Porte de Clignancourt, a northern neighborhood in Paris.
DANNII 23:15
“Je crois que la première sortie, c’est-à-dire en dehors de mon quartier, en dehors donc de ma zone de confort, là où je connais tout le monde…”
[Translation]
I think that the first time I went outside my neighborhood, outside of my comfort zone, where I knew everyone, was when we went to go to a flea market at Porte de Clignancourt. it was an outing with all my friends. This was the first time I went outside my neighborhood and I was immediately confronted with a gang fight, a clash [between] neighborhoods.
I grew up in Epinay-sur-Seine and Porte de Clignancourt it’s another atmosphere, some people in my neighborhood had a history with other members of the neighborhood around Clignancourt. That had an influence on our relationship with all these guys from these neighborhoods. I remember we fought, I wasn’t really strong. We got hurt. That’s when I realized that even though I wasn’t attached to all the boys in my neighborhood, I has the label of a guy from another banlieue and suddenly I became a threat when I went to another neighborhood. I had a label, and that's it.
“…demandait tout de suite, j’avais une étiquette en fait, je portais une étiquette, voilà. ”
Jess 24:15
The périphérique becomes this violent space not just because of experiences like Hervé’s and Dannii’s, but it’s also physically impossible to cross on foot. It’s made up of two concentric rings which can range between two and five lanes of traffic. The idea behind it is that it creates accessibility for drivers but because the transit in Paris is so good with lots of subways and lots of buses, few Parisians actually own cars, making them less likely to go out to the banlieue.
Mehdi is a councilman for his northern banlieue, la Courneuve, where he grew up. In our interview he mentioned that the problem with the periphérique is that is focuses on Paris and not the banlieue. Meaning if your banlieue is close to Paris, it’s likely that there won’t be many local activities like theaters and cafés, because the assumption is that you will go to Paris for them.[8]
{[8] Mustafa Dikeç, “Immigrants, Banlieues, and Dangerous Things: Ideology as an Aesthetic Affair,” Antipode 45, no. 1 (January 2013): 23–42, doi:10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.00999.x.}
However, the farther a banlieue is from Paris proper, the farther it is from cultural activities and other amenities that bring a city to life.[9] In addition, the banlieues are poorly connected to each other. For many of the residents I spoke to the périphérique made accessibility worse.[10]
{[9] Patrick Zachmann, Ma proche banlieue (Paris: Barral, 2009).
[10] Azouz Begag, L’intégration (Paris: Cavalier bleu, 2003).}
MEHDI 28:29
“Le problème c’est que c’est…”
[Translation]
But the problem is that because Paris is nearby, there aren't as many things here. Like cultural or economic activities.
The library burned down, there's no longer a building manager making sure it’s livable. Building managers aren't only there to make things safe. He was creating a space to live well, because he knew everybody. Now there's nobody left making the connection between people. There's no longer a connection between public officials and the population. Now it's a desert.
The whole neighborhood is less accessible for kids. It's not as easy for the kids to do stuff as it was before. Everything is damaged. There's a lot of alcohol everywhere. Before there wasn't any of this.
Urbanisticly there’s no life, there are no streets, there's a weird mall. In a "cité" there’re alleyways, there's a No Man's Land that you can't do anything with, that you can't use, where there's no way to create connections. The first solution would be to have municipal facilities. [That’s] what we're trying to do here, we're trying to create some kind of energy, some kind of presence.
Jess 26:31
In Paris the transit you live near sets the bar for your access to the city. For example, often the gentrification of a neighborhood hinges both on its connections both to finance and to the train.
When the subway and the trains are all closed by 1 am living between the banlieue and Paris can be a challenge. The banlieues themselves are also poorly connected meaning a trip to the town next door could take up to an hour if you don’t have a car. In response to these challenges, the city of Paris is investing in an enormous expansion of its transit infrastructure.[11]
{[11] Azouz Begag, L’intégration (Paris: Cavalier bleu, 2003).}
For Anne, who works between multiple banlieues this expansion is a welcome change.
ANNE 27:14
[Translation]
I travel a lot by motorcycle because today in the Paris banlieue it’s easy to go from any point to Paris more or less, but it’s extremely difficult to go from one banlieue to another. And I have to go from one banlieue to another for my work, so the motorcycle is a practical choice to go quickly from one banlieue to another [or] to go to the architecture school. I discovered that it was absolute freedom. I’m not constrained to bus, RER or subway schedules.
The big difference is that my children. When they want to leave the house to hang out with friends, they have access to the metro. It’s very simple. When they want to go to university, everything is accessible to them. When children live in Clichy or when young women or young men have to go to work, access to employment is very complicated. It takes more than 50 minutes to reach the center of Paris. Access to higher education is becoming very difficult due to the transit issue. There’s already a big gap.
“…des transports. Donc ça c’est déjà une grosse grosse coupure.”
ERIC 28:26
“Alors Paris c’est…”
[Translation]
Paris is a small city and on top of that, transportation stops. From east to west, from north to south, the metro stopped at the ring road. The metro didn’t go into the nearby banlieues. I don’t know if you [can] imagine but it's like if the subway was only made for Manhattan and didn’t go into Brooklyn or Queens. When I was very young, it was a little harder to go to Paris. I would take the bus to the metro. And then it expanded. The metro is right next door.
For people who have a car going from banlieue to banlieue isn’t difficult, since the ring road revolves around Paris at any given moment you [could] to go to Clichy or Malakoff or Pantin. You take the right on-ramp and you’re there. The problem is public transportation. [But] now they’ve built the tram. There’s a small one that goes around the périphérique, then [they’ll build] a big one that makes another circuit and another that makes a huge circuit. The work isn’t finished, [but] it’s going to be good to get from banlieue to banlieue, it’s progressed a lot. Before it was such a struggle. So sometimes it took an hour or two to get to a banlieue right next door.
“…pour aller à côté parce que y avait pas vraiment de transports…”
JEAN CLAUDE 29:28
“Une partie de la politique, y compris de la ville de Paris…”
[Translation]
Part of the municipality’s policy has been to prevent cars from entering Paris. They’ve closed down a lot of lanes and made them for pedestrians only. Right now, there’s a debate about, well it’s not even a debate anymore, it’s a decision now, to close down the road along the river Seine. They’ll close down this summer and won’t reopen.
And obviously it’s very important for Parisians because the majority of them don’t own cars anymore. But it’s a problem for those who live in the banlieues: people from the banlieue use their cars to get to and out of the city and they might feel excluded from the city center.
“…sentir un peu exclus du centre de l’agglomération.”
Jess 30:11
These expansions of infrastructure that Jean Claude and Eric just talked are called Grand Paris. Grand Paris is the decades old idea that Paris is more than just Paris intramuros and that the city will soon come to fully include the banlieues.[12] But Jean-Claude sees how an old idea of Paris isn’t so easy to shake.
{[12] Billet Jean, “Bastie J. — Géographie du Grand Paris.,” Revue de géographie alpine 74, no. 4 (1986): 424–424.}
JEAN-CLAUDE 30:35
“L’idée du Grand Paris…”
[Translation]
The idea of the Grand Paris, which is starting to work within institutions but in people's minds, it's not there yet. There’s still a very strong dividing line between the city of Paris and what goes on on the other side of the periphérique.
Of course, a lot of people cross that line every day for work, for entertainment, to shop. We spend all of our time going back and forth over this dividing line so in the end, we all live in the Grand Paris. But there's still, nevertheless, the desire to preserve Paris and its "villages."
“…Fais de preservation.”
[Music]
Jess 31:17
Which are the borders that divide, and which are the borders that define, making clear where certain identities reside, protecting them by defining them?
The city of Paris does have a plan to make the périphérique more of a porous border. This is the idea of Grand Paris is to break down the divide between Paris and its surrounding banlieues, making the region more like one big city.[13]
{[13] Theresa Enright, The Making of Grand Paris: Metropolitan Urbanism in the Twenty-First Century, 2016.}
But some think that these plans will increase more malicious forms of gentrification and will push low-income residents even further out, creating a new périphérique elsewhere.[14] But others believe that it could open up opportunities for people living in the banlieues to have greater access to the city and push Parisians to finally explore the banlieue. However you look at it the Grand Paris plan is another in a historic series of plans for the city, that hope to create a kind of utopia, which we’ll explore further in the next episode.
{[14] Sylvie Tissot, “Les métamorphoses de la domination sociale,” Savoir/Agir, no. 19 (January ): 61–68.}
Thanks for listening this has been Here There Be Dragons, I’m your host Jess Myers. Many thanks to my sponsors at MIT Council for the Arts, to Adélie Pojzman-Pontay for producing the show, and to Cory Lee Jacobs for original music. Our first newsletter has dropped and if you’re sad you missed it sign up on our website htbdpodcast.com, right at the bottom of the page. If you like the show subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, and Stitcher. Reviews really help us out. Also we want to include your voices on the last episode of the show. If you have a recorder on your phone, send us a little recorded message so we can include it in the last episode. En français or in English whatever you’re more comfortable with. Send those to us at htbdpodcast@gmail.com. Thanks! Join us next time for more stories of fear, identity, and urban life.
[1] Alain Rustenholz, De la banlieue rouge au Grand Paris: d’Ivry à Clichy et de Saint-Ouen à Charenton, 2015.
[2] Alexandre Léchenet, “Carte : Paris vote pour François Hollande,” Le Monde.fr, May 7, 2012, http://www.lemonde.fr/election-presidentielle-2012/article/2012/05/07/carte-paris-vote-pour-francois-hollande_1696832_1471069.html.
[3] Shlomo Angel, “Atlas of Urban Expansion” (Cambridge, Mass.: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2012).
[4] David Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (New York: Routledge, 2003).
[5] Justinien Tribillon, “Dirty Boulevard: Why Paris’s Ring Road Is a Major Block on the City’s Grand Plans,” The Guardian, June 26, 2015, sec. Cities, https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jun/26/ring-road-paris-peripherique-suburbs-banlieue.
[6] Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies : Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c1995., 1995).
[7] Sylvie Tissot and Franck Poupeau, “La spatialisation des problèmes sociaux,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales no 159, no. 4 (December 1, 2006): 4–9.
[8] Mustafa Dikeç, “Immigrants, Banlieues, and Dangerous Things: Ideology as an Aesthetic Affair,” Antipode 45, no. 1 (January 2013): 23–42, doi:10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.00999.x.
[9] Patrick Zachmann, Ma proche banlieue (Paris: Barral, 2009).
[10] Azouz Begag, L’intégration (Paris: Cavalier bleu, 2003).
[11] Ibid.
[12] Billet Jean, “Bastie J. — Géographie du Grand Paris.,” Revue de géographie alpine 74, no. 4 (1986): 424–424.
[13] Theresa Enright, The Making of Grand Paris: Metropolitan Urbanism in the Twenty-First Century, 2016.
[14] Sylvie Tissot, “Les métamorphoses de la domination sociale,” Savoir/Agir, no. 19 (January ): 61–68.