Urban Inequalities in the international city of Paris

Paris is inevitably known to be one of the top international cities in the world. While it is the wealthiest city
in France that offers ample opportunities and quality of life to the people, it is also the highest generator of
social and economic issues in its country. One can witness extreme social differences in Paris, as it consists
of both the urban rich and the urban poor. The city is divided into 20 arrondissements (or sectors), and the
following statement holds good that the true representation of what the city of Paris portrays to the world is
limited only to its eastern arrondissements.

City of Paris_ ©pilotplans.com

The arrondissements of Paris_ ©commons.wikimedia.org

There is a clear distinction between the eastern and western arrondissements of the city, segregated by the
wealth of people. For instance, the eastern side belongs to the urban poor and the western part is owned by
the affluent. This social divide became prominent with the start of industrialization in the 19th century, when
the native and working-class immigrant population arrived and settled in the outskirts of the city as many of
the factories were being established there. A recent study revealed that the eastern side of the city was
usually more polluted due to the westerly winds blowing off the emissions from the industries towards the
eastern direction, which gave reasons to the wealthier people to abandon the east, freeing it for the poor.
This article brings forward some of the marginalized and deprived areas in Paris and highlights the reasons
behind their stigmatization responsible for widening the inequalities of the city.

Median Income map of Paris and its suburbs, 2014_ ©due-parsons.github.io

The Land of Immigrants: The 17th, 18th and 19th arrondissements of Paris | City of Paris

The western parts of Paris, particularly the ones closer to the Paris Ring road (peripherique), are regarded as
the districts with a high concentration of social and economic issues in the city. The 17th arrondissement of
Paris acts as a divider between the east and west, consisting of strong urban segregation within itself among
the urban rich and the poor. On the other hand, the 18th and 19th arrondissements are home to the city’s
poorest people. It is classified as one of the poorest arrondissements in Paris, with a history of immigrants
and an abundant presence of drug dealers and addicts. It was traditionally a point of entry to the capital for
the migrant working-class population during the industrial era of the 18th & 19th centuries, welcoming
people from Eastern Europe, Africa, Maghreb and some south Asian countries, forming small communities
within the neighbourhood.

With the end of this era, a large number of people lost their livelihoods; some were tagged as unemployed,
and others relied on underground activities for income, categorizing them as neither white nor blue-collar
workers. This practice continues until today, which makes these sectors the sectors with the highest crime
rate in Paris. The recent developments in Paris are channelized in a way that would gradually result in the
death of the working-class population or make them crawl to the suburbs. A recent statistical record
estimated a decline in the working-class population and that around 11,000 people left Paris between the
years 2010 and 2017. The current scenario can be summarized as the capital city being taken away by the
affluent, making no space for the poor.

Informal settlements in the 18th arrondissement of Paris in 2015_ ©Leopold Lambert

Saint-Denis: The poorest suburb of Paris

The north-eastern suburban areas of Paris, now known as the Grand Paris region, were subjected to large
scale development of housing estates after World War II, with the start of industrialization, and are now seen
as stigmatized neighbourhoods with poverty concentration. Among all the departments of the Ile-de-France
region (A region of France of which Paris is the capital), Seine-Saint-Denis accounts for the highest share of
housing estates with a contribution of about 34.5%. These housing estates were initially mass-produced to
address the housing demand with the influx of the working-class immigrant population into the city. This
necessitated a huge vacancy of land, which could be spent from the pockets of the suburbs, relocating all the
dispersed working-class population living in unfavourable conditions in the city to the suburbs by providing
decent conditions of living.

However, after a while, the production of these estates stopped, as they were beginning to be perceived as
areas of poverty concentration. Several reasons existed for this new emerging image of the estates; the
physical degradation of the buildings due to poor quality material usage, the spatial mono-functionality with
no major commercial activities making it a monotonous and an isolated neighbourhood; and many neglected
and uncontrolled spaces whose ownership was not clearly defined. Eventually, these areas were labelled as
deprived neighbourhoods, which were excluded from the rest of the society. This so formed picture of Saint-
Denis prevails even today, with recent immigrants and descendants of working-class immigrants facing
issues like discrimination and unemployment. This led to either hunting for alternative sources of income,
resulting in petty crime and drug trafficking activities or people leaving behind the social housing when
better opportunities approached them. Subsequently, these buildings are occupied by recent migrants or
poorer people facing issues such as unemployment.
 Living in the suburbs of Paris- An image from a
public housing in Saint-Denis_ ©medianewyorker.com

The entire process can be understood as a continuous cycle that repeats itself, hindering the upliftment of the
image of these localities and therefore spatially segregating the city between the rich and the poor,
producing issues of urban inequalities in Paris. The following image summarizes the level of disparities in
the city.

Urban Inequalities in Paris_ ©(Left) en.wikipedia.org_©(Right) reddit.com

References:

1. Benedictus, L., 2017. Blowing in the wind: why do so many cities have poor east ends? [online] the Guardian.
Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/may/12/blowing-wind-cities-poor-east-ends.
2. Chabrol, M. and Waine, O., 2013. Château Rouge: a “Little Africa” in Paris? [online] Metropolitics.org.
Available at: https://metropolitics.org/Chateau-Rouge-a-Little-Africa-in-Paris.html.
3. Stanglar, C., 2020. The Death of Working-Class Paris. [online] The Nation. Available at:
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/paris-gentrification/.
4. Lelévrier C., Melic T. (2018) Impoverishment and Social Fragmentation in Housing Estates of the Paris Region,
France. In: Hess D., Tammaru T., van Ham M. (eds) Housing Estates in Europe. The Urban BookSeries.
Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92813-5_14

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