SEARCHING A HOME: FROM VERSAILLES TO BANLIEUES

Terra & Víctor Jones

Today, The Jones have had an intensive day. After receiving last news from Elena Jones and her decision to stay in Paris to prepare her ATP tournaments, the family has continued the English classes with some Social English and more theory about Countable & Uncountable nouns.

The family has practised doing lots of exercises and they will do more of them tomorrow because this is one of the most difficult themes that they must learn. Lots of new events are affecting the family and they have decided to talk a little about these kind of things that affects the major part of the population around the world: the right to have a place to live in good conditions.

More information: Many/Much

Societies have changed more in ten years than in the last one hundred years. Technology and digital age are changing our lives forever and our future seems to be full of new changes, but every change is a chance. 

The Jones have discussed about some decisions of the City Halls which affect directly to the lives of their citizens and about the lack of empathy and the lack of interest in solving things. Some unpopular decisions have been taken by some City Halls which presumed to offer guarantees of social protection and improve the lives of their citizens who have seen how these popular promises have never been done.

More information: Some/Any

The Grandma in a recent neighborhood protest

Society expects great things from their City Halls, and the most part of them, especially in big cities, don't work enough to solve problems but create new ones. 

Having a house or renting one is a terrible problem in these big cities which are victims of the ambition and power of the real states with the permission of their mayors.

The Grandma has talked about Queens in New York, a suburb which has lots of things in common with El Raval or Poble Nou in Barcelona where the neighbourhoods are being victims of speculation and their citizens obligated to leave their home places and emigrate to other cities or towns.

This afternoon, The Jones have visited some banlieues in Versailles and have discovered thousands of personal stories, hidden behind windows, doors and people.

More information: City Lab (I)

Paris was also a victim of this phenomenon some decades ago. The city became a fashion place only available to people with a high economic level, French and foreigner, and many people had to move to the outskirts of the city, but in this case, these outskirts were inhabited by lots of people arrived from French African colonies.

In France, a banlieue is a suburb of a large city. Banlieues are divided into autonomous administrative entities and do not constitute part of the city proper. For instance, 80% of the inhabitants of the Paris area live outside the city of Paris. Like the city centre, suburbs may be rich, middle-class or poor, Versailles, Le Vésinet, Maisons-Laffitte and Neuilly-sur-Seine are affluent banlieues of Paris, while Clichy-sous-Bois, Bondy and Corbeil-Essonnes are less so. 

More information: City Lab (II)

Marta Jones is visiting a banlieue

However, since the 1970s, banlieues increasingly means low-income housing projects in which mainly foreign immigrants and French of foreign descent reside, in what are often called poverty traps.

The word banlieue, which is French for suburb, does not necessarily refer to an environment of social disenfranchisement. Indeed, there exist many wealthy suburbs, such as Neuilly-sur-Seine, the wealthiest commune of France, and Versailles outside Paris. 

Nevertheless, the term banlieues has often been used to describe troubled suburban communities, those with high unemployment, high crime rates, and frequently, a high proportion of residents of foreign origin mainly from former French African colonies and therefore Berbers, Blacks, and Arabs.

More information: The Berlage

In France, since the establishment of the Third Republic at the beginning of the 1870s, communities beyond the city centre essentially stopped spreading their own boundaries, as a result of the extension of the larger Paris urban agglomeration. The city, which in France corresponds to the concept of the urban unit, does not necessarily have a correspondence with a single administrative location, and instead includes other communities that link themselves to the city centre and form the banlieues.

Since annexing the banlieues of major French cities during the Second Empire period, the French communities have in effect extended their boundaries very little beyond their delimitations, and have not followed the development of the urban unit existing prior to 1870 as well as almost all large and mid-sized cities in France having a banlieue develop a couronne pėriurbaine, in English, near-urban ring.

More information: BBC (I)

Joaquín Jones is studying Le Corbusier's plan

Communities in the countryside beyond the near-urban ring are regarded as being outside the city's strongest social and economic sphere of influence, and are termed communes périurbaines. In either case, they are divided into numerous autonomous administrative entities.

The vast new apartment blocks, or flats, were at first chiefly inhabited by members of the middle class. As the housing situation improved, most middle-class residents moved to better houses and immigrants left the shantytowns for the blocks. The blocks are termed HLM, Habitation à Loyer Modéré, moderated rent flats, and districts of blocks are termed cités, housing estates.

More information: BBC (II)

A popular urban planning concept at this time, popularized by Le Corbusier, a Swiss architect, was to separate areas of towns or cities according to several functions: living center (blocks), commercial center and working center, with the centers being connected by buses. This led to the isolation of the living centers, with two consequences.

For one hand, there was little activity at night and on Sunday, aggravated by the fact that bus transit to the central cities was limited.

For another hand, when unemployment started to rise in the late 1970s, the children did not see anybody working, as the working center was far away; in the 1990s, a lot of school-age children never saw their parents going to work, and never saw anyone working.

More information: The Economist

New social movement to defend citizen's rights

This model became increasingly contested; in the 1990s there were a number of demolitions of housing facilities in inhumane areas. 

The children of immigrants often feel torn between the culture of their parents and the culture they have grown up in. Many may feel themselves fully belonging to neither one.

A typical illustration of this is the use by some members of the French media of the words second-generation from immigration. If a child is born in France, they are not an immigrant, so the expression second-generation immigrants is a misnomer. According to anti-racist associations such as SOS Racisme, this reflects the ambiguity of the administration, who consider these people to be both French and foreign at the same time. Children of immigrants also complain about the use of the term integration: the integration in the society is a necessity for a foreigner; but for someone that has been born and raised in the country, it is improper to ask them to integrate into it.

More information: The New Yorker

The Grandma thinks that the story of banlieues in Paris must be an example for other cities around the world to offer real social housing policies helping newcomers to feel like home, and improving the quality of people's lives offering real possibilities of good jobs and access to free education and health. People need chances to improve their lives and feel a total member of her/his society without distinction of procedence, religion, race, ideology or sex, a society where money isn't the centre of live but human is. Respect, tolerance and work. That's enough. 

More information: The Guardian

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services. 

Henry Ford