Gentrification

Gentrification – Paris

The notion of gentrification has the advantage of focusing both on the dynamics of the social divisions of space and on the complexity of their arrangement, between social change and urban change. It refers to a particular form of gentrification of the working-class neighborhoods through the transformation of the housing, or even of the public space and shops. The process of conquering the working-class neighborhoods by the middle and upper classes, gentrification can be seen as the adaptation of the old urban space to the current state of social relations.(Breznik, p.45)  This process, derived from structural factors, is nonetheless conflictual and supposes the voluntary action of various actors (Clerval, 2008).

 In Paris, gentrification appears as a late process compared to London or New York.

Only the Marais district has been disinvested and reinvested by the wealthy in its history, which was the first to be described as gentrification in many Victorian neighborhoods in London.  Nevertheless, the spatial extent of old buildings and popular Paris represents a strong potential for gentrification. As early as the 1960s, the central districts of the left bank gradually changed, such as the Daguerre Street neighborhood, which prolonged the erasure of popular neighborhoods begun under Haussmann. On the right side, the buildings of high quality Marais is also the subject of rehabilitation policies that encourage the return of wealthy classes in this district. This movement continued in the 1970s-1980s to the east of Paris, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine for example (Bidou, 1984), then to the North following the Canal Saint-Martin in the years 1990-2000.

The French capital is distinguished by the importance of the old buildings and the historical heritage that it represents. However, this building was largely spared by the destruction of the Second World War and the post-war period was not marked by important urban changes. In addition, rents have long been tightly controlled, curbing real estate speculation or limiting it to certain sectors of the market. Thus, the investment of the old popular housing by the well-off classes was done gradually in Paris. It was only in the 1990s that gentrification became visible and the demolition of old habitat was officially abandoned in favor of rehabilitation.

Paris gentrification is therefore mainly led by private actors through the rehabilitation of popular housing (Clerval, 2008b). Artists and architects in search of professional premises who are investing in the old artisanal and industrial spaces of eastern Paris since the late 1970s, sometimes in the wake of the movement of squats of this decade (Vivant and Charmes, 2008). But more broadly, at the same time, middle-class households - among which the cultural professions are over-represented - acquire housing in a popular neighborhood and rehabilitate them. as elsewhere, the gentrification of the Parisian working-class neighborhoods is explained by several structural factors in the field of employment or housing. The most obvious is the steady decline in the number of blue-collar jobs in Île-de-France and Paris since the 1960s. It is accompanied by a decline in the number of low-skilled jobs in the tertiary sector in Paris. since the 1980s, while senior management and professional occupations  have increased considerably in the same period (Rhein, 2007, Clerval, 2008b).

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