Metropolitics

Good neighbours? Homeless people as seen by those who live alongside them

Marine Maurin & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-06-05T04:50:00Z

Prejudices regarding the poorest in society die hard. Does living in proximity to some of these populations help change perceptions? And what role does discomfort and disturbance – whether real or merely anticipated – play in this? A study presented in Habiter à côté des SDF (“Living alongside homeless people”) seeks to analyse the reactions provoked by the presence of homeless populations among those who live nearby.
Marie Loison-Leruste's work, adapted from her PhD thesis in sociology,

- Reviews / Île-de-France, public space, Paris region, Nanterre, housing, Paris, cohabitation, nuisance, emotions, poverty, homelessness, precarity, assistance, coexistence, NIMBY, hospitality, emergency accommodation, neighbors, disturbance

Quotas of foreigners in social housing: a legacy of the Algerian War? Les Canibouts, Nanterre (1959–1968)

Marie-Claude Blanc-Chaléard & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-04-11T07:29:45Z

Was it better to concentrate or disperse Algerians during the Algerian War? In the course of the conflict, both strategies were defended in terms of police action and integration. For Algerians accommodated in standard social housing, dispersal was the preferred solution, justifying the implementation of a quota system limiting the number of foreign residents in each housing complex.
---- Series: How the Algerian War shaped French cities Sonacotral, the National Construction Company for

- Essays / ghetto, immigration, Nanterre, housing, social housing, Algerian War

“Bidonvilles”: from colonial policy to the Algerian War

Françoise de Barros & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-03-21T07:07:58Z

The term bidonville (literally a town built of oil drums) originated in North Africa in the 1930s and came into use in mainland France in the 1950s to designate neighbourhoods composed of temporary, makeshift housing, particularly housing that accommodated Algerians. Here, Françoise de Barros shows that the management of these bidonvilles by the public authorities was situated at the crossroads between a colonial legacy and constraints associated with the Algerian War.
---- Series: How the

- Essays / bidonville, Nanterre, colonisation, local councillors, Algerian War, shanty town

The Wealth of Local Currencies

Sophie Donzel & translated by Eric Rosencrantz — 2011-04-27T05:30:00Z

Following up on Smaïn Laacher's essay on Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS), Sophie Donzel, deputy mayor of Nanterre, extols the value of local currencies and calls for a new monetary ecology.
Are you rich if you've got twice as many jobs as jobholders living in your district? If you've got ten million square feet of office space, including the headquarters of national and multinational corporations? If the companies located in your district turn over all told €29 billion? Well, no!

- Debates / Nanterre, LETS, local currencies