(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #236 - Read Anne Clerval, "Paris without the people" (en, fr)

Anne Clerval is a geographer. Four years of sociological research have allowed him to take 
stock of the gentrification of Paris. Through field surveys, interviews and a tour in the 
capital, it shows how this occurs slow but inevitable phenomenon. The former industrial 
premises first colonization by artists launched a fashion which then attracts middle and 
senior management to make a trendy. The analysis of the case of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine 
and Rue Oberkampf are emblematic. ---- In addition to a physical appropriation of places 
leading to a cozy self-between is also shown how the cynicism that emerges from interviews 
with gentrifiers is also expressed through symbolic violence without restraint. It tends 
to the appropriation of symbols of the past of a neighborhood: tools serve as decorations 
in bars or mark out the names (Modern Laundry, Leather Goods, etc..).

At the same time, rather than hinder this development, it is clear that the City of Paris 
has only accompany: this population is its electoral fund trade.

Passages reserved northeast quarter (eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth districts) and 
the thirteenth, all the more interesting they occur before our eyes, blows selling 
cutting, rehabilitation or [ re] construction, come with striking examples such as 
Ch?teau-Rouge.

This raises fears the worst, with a Grand Paris project that would take note of the de 
facto expulsion of the working class. What remedy can then be made when we see the 
fragmentation resistance or resignation of Paris still worker? This book is an invitation 
- explicit - to get back into the writings of Henri Lefebvre and Daniel Gu?rin.

Jean-Claude (AL Paris Sud)

o Anne Clerval, Paris without the people , La D?couverte, 2013, 254 pages, 24 euros.