Banlieue

The banlieue refers to the area surrounding a French city, commonly used in reference to Paris. The word faubourg also means “lying outside the city,”
but now it commonly refers to areas in central Paris that were incorporated early into the city. There is an implicit tendency to compare the banlieues
with the American suburbs, but there are important differences. In the United States the word suburb carries a positive connotation associated with
private property, middle-class ease, lowdensity population, and an overall high quality of life. In contrast, the immediate connotation of the French
banlieue and its inhabitants, the banlieuesards, is one of overcrowded public housing, people of color, new immigrants, and crime. It is something
closer to the stereotype of the ghetto in the United States; what is common to the French banlieue and the American ghetto are the aspects of
categorical inequality, exclusion from the labor market, and social boundaries resulting in residential segregation. Today, the word banlieue carries a
negative connotation; yet this hardly approximates the complex history and social reality of these spaces.
History of the Banlieue The importance of the banlieue can be fully understood only in a historical perspective and in relation to the city to which it is a
periphery. Like many medieval cities, Paris was a walled city for defensive purposes. As the city grew, new walls were constructed, totaling six. In the
years preceding the French Revolution a new wall was built, but this time it was built mainly for taxation purposes. The wall demarcated Paris proper.
Its doors included custom posts, and everyone entering or leaving with commercial goods had to pay a tax or right of passage called the octroi. This
physical barrier to free trade and mobility—mur d’octroi— created a real boundary between those living inside (intra-muros) and those living outside
(extramuros), which had economic consequences for trade and production. Consequently the cost of living was lower outside Paris than inside,
resulting in an early division between a large fraction of the labor force settling in the banlieue and consumers,
visitors, financiers, and administrators living inside the city walls. In the ancient regime, the Parisian banlieue contained vast open areas where the
nobility of Paris and Versailles went to spend time surrounded by nature. This taste was acquired by many arrivistes of the French bourgeoisie and the
petite bourgeoisie, who would go to the green banlieue during the weekends as a sign of distinction, as told in short stories by Guy de Maupassant and
depicted by Jean Renoir in his celebrated film Une Partie de Campagne (1936). But as more people built houses in these idyllic lands, the banlieues
were quickly transformed from forests into suburban and then urban areas. The remaining forests of Vincennes and the Bois de Boulogne are
protected and have been annexed by the city. After the French Revolution of 1789, the Constitutional Assembly decreed the limits of Paris to be a circle
with a circumference determined by a radius of three leagues (lieues) around the center, which was set at Notre Dame Cathedral. In 1841, the politician
Adolphe Thiers ordered the construction of a new set of walls and custom tower to be surrounded by a zone where it was forbidden to build. In 1860
the city was expanded by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, and taxes continued to be levied. In this expansion Paris officially engulfed l’ancienne
banlieue, which included the communes of Batignolle, Belleville, Bercy, Passy, la Villette, and other neighboring areas. The Paris octroi was instituted
in these communes. This forced many industries to move out of the new city borders for fiscal reasons; many workers followed. The most developed
and industrialized external communes also charged octroi to raise funds for local infrastructure and spending, whereas poorer banlieues did not in
order to give tax incentives to attract industry and population. The octroi of Paris and its surrounding metropolitan area was not abolished until 1943,
during the German occupation, when it was substituted with a sales tax. As the density of Paris increased, the city looked to the banlieue to locate its
new cemeteries and public parks. In 1887 a large building was constructed—a dépôt de mendicité—to house Parisian mental patients, homeless,
vagabonds, and aged people and to imprison women in the exterior commune of Nanterre. In 1897 this building was turned into a hospital. Today this
building offers shelter to the very poor of the region and to newly arrived immigrants.