WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, Monde Libertaire - The suburbs: Territories of inequalities and societal utopia (fr, ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Everything remains to be done ---- The suburbs. This word is sometimes

pronounced with disdain by city dwellers from wealthy neighborhoods but
also claimed as a space for social and urban innovation. Can it really
have a history? Thibault Tellier answers in the affirmative in his book
Histoire de la banlieue, published by Perrin in 2024. "This territorial
mass with uncertain contours"[...]"not only has a history, but that it
belongs to it in its own right. We can even say that it embodied the
promise of a new world, with its failures but also its successes." It
must be recognized that the social sciences have different visions of
this social space depending on their specific angles of study. This
suburb was born under the sign of dependence on the city center. We
speak of the Parisian suburbs, the Lyon suburbs initially for
etymological reasons. It refers to "a feudal term designating the space
of about a league, around a city, on which the urban authority had the
bans proclaimed and had the force of jurisdiction." Bans, laws specific
to a territory with supporting sanctions.

Composite territories

The suburbs are anything but uniform. Some territories are working class
like the future Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne, departments created in
1964. However, within them there are wealthy, bourgeois spaces, such as
Le Raincy or Saint-Mandé and Vincennes. From the end of the 19th
century, the distribution between residential and industrial
municipalities was established for many decades and often rubbed
shoulders like Neuilly and Nanterre. One of the interests of the work is
not to limit itself to the Parisian suburbs, even if it is the largest
in terms of number of inhabitants. It is necessary to emphasize the
stagnation of Bordeaux and the vitality of its suburbs, the same for
Lyon with Villeurbanne in particular. The establishment of industries is
to the detriment of agricultural land. Rural landscapes reveal factory
chimneys, polluted waterways, railways that contribute to the urban
expansion of these territories as demonstrated by the paintings of the
Impressionists. The appeal of the suburbs is due to the quality of life,
a relative tranquility, the lower cost of building land. From 1931,
Paris loses inhabitants to what will be called the first ring. Cities
open up according to economic needs, unbuilt spaces for polluting
factories, housing for low-income populations, immigrants despite a
formidable, even hateful, xenophobia towards Italians, Spaniards, Chinese.

How to build housing?

Let us recall that the question of housing has always been sensitive
over the past two centuries and the cause of the expansion of buildings
in favor of people. It is the development of municipalism, low-cost
housing construction (HBM) ancestor of HLM, of the subdivisions of the
Loucheur law. Some like the socialists Albert Thomas and Henri Sellier
are interested in intercommunality and Greater Paris. Already!!

But the suburbs are not only ugliness. Stop the caricatures. Henri
Sellier, president of the general council of the Seine, develops garden
cities by integrating socio-cultural facilities, a form of urban
avant-garde still current and cultural policy. Real territories of
social utopia like in the Lyon region, Villeurbanne and its skyscrapers.
The Parisian red belt is developing. The SFIO and the PCF intend to make
their municipalities models of left-wing management with socio-cultural
supervision thanks to associations.

Towards a societal utopia?

At the end of the Second World War, some urban areas were destroyed by
bombings, it was necessary to rebuild but the public authorities, on the
initiative of Jean Monnet, mobilized efforts and resources towards
industrial production. The lack of housing provoked waves of protest.
Private initiatives appeared such as Les Castors (self-builders'
association), other employers' initiatives such as CIL and 1%. And then
the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations got involved for the State. This
was the development of large complexes, crane paths. For example, Haut
du Lièvre on the heights of Nancy, Sarcelles. We built en masse, ex
nihilo, without taking into account the natural and historical
environment. Even new towns created areas of malaise. Sarcellitis gained
the population of these buildings, unsuitable connection
infrastructures, poor consideration of social space in a technocratic
approach. You know them, these self-confident, condescending technocrats
who "store" residents without thinking about their lives. They are still
rampant today and have shown their "skills" during the redevelopment of
the space in Ile-de-France during the Olympic Games. Attempts at urban
renewal and other city policies leave residents and activists dreaming.
Destroying towers and blocks does not solve the housing issue for the
poor. Shanty towns are reborn, almost in the same places. Just like
ghettos. This is clearly a major political issue. This book is an
excellent historical, social, economic and urban planning journey to
understand the reality of the suburbs, useful for students, activists,
local elected officials and residents. May it restore the taste for
action in these territories of suffering, inequality but potentially
societal utopia.

* Thibault Tellier
Histoire de la banlieue
Ed. Perrin, 2024

https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8134
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