The Zone: An Alternative History of Paris

By: Justinien Tribillon

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Synopsis: AN OUTSIDER&’S GUIDE TO MODERN PARISIn The Zone, Justinien Tribillon takes the reader on a tour of an eponymous Parisian hinterland. The site of dreams and nightmares, from Van Gogh&’s paintings to the cinematic violence of La Haine, the Zone, so often misun- derstood, is the key to understanding today&’s Paris, and even France itself.Originally the site of defensive walls, alongside which mushroomed makeshift housing, allotments, and dancehalls in the nineteenth century, the Zone has performed many functions and been a place of contention for two centuries. Dismantled in the 1920s, the fortifications were first replaced with gardens, stadia and homes. After the war came the Boulevard Périphérique, a ring road promising seamless travel in a futuristic car-centric Paris. With the ring road came new dreams of modernity in reinvented suburbs: new towns, high-rise architecture and social housing built at record speed. Yesterday&’s Paris made way for tomorrow&’s banlieue.But the metropolitan dream was never realised. The Zone became a symbol of division: between inner and outer cities; between the bourgeois centre and the working-class immigrant outskirts; between &‘us&’ and &‘them&’. The Zone, both a physical space and a powerful myth, came to crystallise the social, spatial and ethno-racial differences between Paris and the banlieue.The Zone is a brilliant anatomy of the true heart of Paris. An essential book for urbanists and historians.