The Two Faces of Paris

THE TWO FACES OF PARIS

H.V. Savitch, University of Louisville

City of the Centuries

            Americans have always perceived Paris as a city apart from any other in the world.  New York and London suffered a kind of sameness because they were immensely busy places whose commercial obsession dominated urban life and whose slum neighborhoods detracted from the city’s glamour.  Indeed, the term “dual city” came to characterize New York and London, where brazen opulence took possession of one side of the city while deep seated poverty weighed on other parts.  New York has its Wall Street and posh Upper East Side, but it also has its Harlem and decrepit South Bronx.  London has its Westminster and lively West End, but it is also saddled with a ragged East End and working class neighborhoods on the South Bank.  

            Certainly, one could always have pointed to a similar “dual city” in Paris.  Americans could have seen the other face of Paris in Belleville or consulted any number of French studies about topics related to “la ségrégation de l’espace sociale”.   But perhaps in despair about their own polarized cities they chose not to look in unseamly directions.   For many Americans, and especially New Yorkers, Paris was a very special place.  Its image was that of near perfection––a big, cosmopolitan city offset by livable neighborhoods with familiar small shops. 

            To American eyes Paris seemed to have it all. Its assets could be found in highly specialized neighborhoods where the sum of these individual communities amounted to something much grander.   And here the texture and morphology of the city coincided with American thinking.  Paris exemplified “cluster theories” of urban vitality which had become popular among planners, academics and policy makers.  The art of discovering urban clusters was honed by Jane Jacobs and later converted into a rigid strategy of economic development by Michael Porter.  Jacobs found that when a variety of complementary activities were concentrated in adjoining spaces they would form a critical mass and trigger endless synergies of human interaction.   The analogy could be likened to a peaceful nuclear reaction where a mass of potential energy is converted into continuous chains of innovation.  

More than most cities Parisian gave expression to how clustering made cities work.  To take some examples, the Xth arrondissement was a source of light manufacture, clothing and furs; not far away the Vth and VIth are the city’s intellectual headquarters that teemed with institutions of higher learning, bookshops and intellectuals; in between these neighborhoods the IVth serves up a fabricated quaintness for boutique consumers and casual entertainment; and of course the golden triangle based on the VIIIth, the XVIth and XVIIth furnishes an array of amenities for the corporate elite.  Once the weather turned warm neighborhoods were flooded with music festivals, open air concerts and other public celebrations.  All of this and more was contained within just 105 square kilometers, and connected by a strong epicenter at Chatelet, made prominent by landmarks around it.                 

            So successful was the image, that in an age of soulless commercialism, Paris could be held out as a globalized city with a human face.  Unlike other international cities, Paris left the impression that it chose consumption over production and collective enjoyment over corporate competition.  Whether this was a complete picture of the city was another matter, but what remained in the American mind was a humane, global city. Paris has been able to adapt to the post industrial revolution of the 20^th century, while holding out the promise of a more satisfying 21^st century; at the same time it retained the culture of a city of the 19^th century.   Read, for instance, the following words written for a New York Times Magazine article entitled “Why Paris Works”.

The people of Paris… have sought to superimpose a smoothly running modern metropolis on the city bequeathed them by medieval kings and 18^th century revolutionaries.  And they have succeeded royally.  Garbage is picked up seven days a week, mail is delivered three times a day and all of Paris’ 800 miles of streets are swept by hand each day.  At rush hour the subways come once every 80 seconds, and many metro shops are decorated with mosaics and murals.  Affluent families are rushing not to flee to the suburbs but to buy apartments in Paris’ choice neighborhoods and to send their children to public schools

            The article goes on to laud Luxembourg Garden saying “at a time when cities from Lagos to Los Angles are afflicted by homelessness and crime Paris’ famed garden is an oasis from urban turmoil”; it heaps praise on everything Parisian from the city’s social solidarity and “republican traditions” to the public schools and the Louvre.  While the description and tone are exaggerated, the truth of the matter is that Paris has been the counter-point to the soulless quality of America’s sun-belt cities.  Even some of the smaller municipalities outside the périphérique stand forth as the negation of sprawled, homogenous suburbs that have extended through the American countryside.     

            The election in 2001 of a gay, socialist mayor for Paris reinforced this image. Nor has Delanoë disappointed these ideals.  Paris plage has attracted enormous attention, but so too have his efforts to convert streets for pedestrians, cyclists and roller skaters.   Never mind the pollution that still hangs over the air, the traffic jams and the difficulty in finding a taxi and the rising crime rate.  Compared to anything Americans had known Paris was one big joyous festival. 

Normalizing Paris

            And then came the riots of 2005.  For two weeks youths rampaged the suburbs around Paris, cars were set ablaze and some rioters fired shotguns into the streets.  As the image of police fearing to enter neighborhoods flashed across television screens, the violence appeared to have enveloped whole communities.  American audiences were shown burnt buildings, smoke filled streets, thousands of police massing to quell the violence and helicopters hovering overhead. While many French found this to be an aberration, American were apt see the riots in more familiar terms.  Quite naturally they interpreted these traumatic events within the context of their own experience which brought to mind scenes of mayhem in Los Angeles during 1992 or the destruction of Detroit decades earlier.  . 

            More importantly Americans wondered what the riots signified.  For Americans the word “suburb” conveyed middle class families, private houses and manicured lawns.  Rather suddenly the other face of Paris came to the fore. Now they saw another kind of suburb with rows of high rise housing, made of concrete slabs and occupied by immigrants or children of immigrants from the Maghreb.  Americans heard about unemployed youth, poverty, segregated housing, charges of racial discrimination and a tinderbox of anger that threatened to explode again.  

            There was also something to the sight of massive blocks of public housing in which these people lived.   In American cities public housing was stigmatized as substandard, crime ridden, inhospitable places.  As they came to be called, “the projects” were considered to have been architectural blunders.   Studies showed that confining impoverished, minorities in large scale housing project, deprived them of a sense of familiarity or control over the spaces they inhabited.  These environments alienated people from one another and weighed against the creation of viable communities.  So unpopular had “the projects” become, that American cities were known to have evacuated them and subsequently blown up the empty buildings, to the cheers of onlookers. That riots broke out in the communes of Seine St. Denis was hardly astonishing; what did surprise was how the French could have followed America’s well recognized mistakes. 

Photo 1: Public Housing

           

            Whether the mistakes could be corrected was uncertain, but even the solutions sounded familiar––“positive discrimination” translated into “affirmative action”, “governmental assistance” reminded them of their own “wars against poverty” and “immigrant assimilation” conjured up the analogy to civil rights legislation.  Rightly or wrongly they concluded that France was experiencing the same problem as America––only in France the problem surrounded the central cities while in the United State the crisis lay within their cores. 

            After a time, the sight of the other face of Paris has been put into perspective. Certainly Americans have not confused central Paris with its suburbs, but the linkage is present and this may be for the better.   Paris is still held in esteem, though it is now more of a “normal city”––filled with both splendor and ugliness. 

            In some ways Paris has begun to look more like New York with both an attractive and a repellant face.  One face shows both cities with prosperous citizens living and working within a flourishing society  Another face shows impoverished neighborhoods with large numbers of unemployed, ethnic minorities. The figure below shows New York (grey) and Paris (white) on a number of key indicators.    

                                 

                          

                                                          

Both cities have a substantial proportion of professionals and managers within their workforce.  Parisians and New Yorkers are also well educated.   Also, both cities pursue left of center politics and have intervened in their respective housing markets to provide housing for those who cannot afford high rents.  While New York has always been a city of foreign immigrants that today makeup more than a third of its population, Paris too has large immigrant communities that now account for more than a quarter of its population. Poverty, never a stranger to American cities, touches 20 percent of New Yorkers, but it also reaches nearly 14 percent of Parisians.   Rates of unemployment do differ with Paris doubling that of New York, though many Parisians prefer to take advantage of their country’s higher social benefits than work at lower wage jobs. 

            Not shown in the figure are crime rates.  New York had a reputation of widespread crime, but in recent years that has declined.  In an altogether different direction, Paris always had a reputation as safe city, but in recent years crime has gone up.  Statistics for crime within Parisian city bounds are difficult to obtain, but the larger metropolitan patterns are revealing.  In 2005 the Paris region incurred 754 violent crimes per 100,000 of the population, compared to only 448 crimes per 100,000 of the population within a roughly comparable New York region.  Murder rates are still lower in the Paris region, but not by much.  In that same year the Paris region saw 510 homicides, while its New York counterpart experienced 688 homicides.

            What might we conclude from these indicators?  The built environments of New Paris and New York are vastly different and evidently so too are the cultures.  But in some ways Paris and New York are show some convergence in basic characteristics related to social profiles and life styles.  This is particularly true if we compare the urban cores of each city to each other. 

            Does this level of familiarity detract from Paris?  Not in the least.  Rather it normalizes Paris and in many ways it makes it more realistic.  Flaws and all, Paris retains its special place.  Hemmingway’s sentiment are still with Americans as he wrote, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then whatever you do for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”