AN OUTSIDER'S GUIDE TO MODERN PARIS In
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 P?riph?rique, 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.
About the AuthorJustinien Tribillon is an urbanist, writer and editor. He co-founded, edited and published
Migrant Journal (2016-2019), and
Visible upon breakdown: Exploring the cultural, political and spatial nature of infrastructure (2024, Spector Books). He has also contributed to
Flaneur,
The Architectural Review,
The Guardian,
MONU, and
Magnum among others. He gained his PhD in urban studies at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. In 2023-2024, he is a fellow at Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome.
