Metropolitics

Using heritage status to combat segregation: the case of French housing estates

2014-10-22T04:50:00Z

Challenging the idea that demolishing housing estates is all it takes to eradicate the social problems with which they are associated, the authors here instead argue for collective housing schemes to be recognised as heritage assets so that they can be renovated and returned to their original function as places of good-quality housing.
Today, it is acknowledged that for the last 30 years or more – ever since the first riots in the Lyon suburbs and what the media at the time referred to as

- Debates / France, banlieue, segregation, housing, housing projects, Marseille, social housing, housing estates, Lyon, suburbs, heritage

The New French Ghettos

Hervé Marchal & Jean-Marc Stébé & translated by Eric Rosencrantz — 2010-12-16T10:53:18Z

Are housing projects in France – particularly the French slums euphemistically termed Zones Urbaines Sensibles (ZUS for short) – comparable to American ghettos: i.e. enclaves of poverty resulting from geographic and ethnic segregation? While some insist there is no comparison between the two, the authors of the present article argue that current ethnic segregation processes in France are increasingly producing fully-fledged ghettos.
The question posed here is whether the term “ghetto” applies

- Debates / ghetto, ethnicity, segregation, housing projects, social housing, housing estates, race