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The Zone: An Alternative History of Paris
Verso Books
£18.99
£15.19
AN OUTSIDER'S GUIDE TO MODERN PARIS
In <i>The Zone</i>, 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 <i>La Haine</i>, the Zone, so often misun- derstood, is the key to understanding today’s Paris, and even France itself.<br><br>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 Périphérique, 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.<br><br>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.<br><br><i>The Zone</i> is a brilliant anatomy of the true heart of Paris. An essential book for urbanists and historians.
- | Author: Justinien Tribillon
- | Publisher: Verso Books
- | Publication Date: Jul 09, 2024
- | Number of Pages:
- | Language:
- | Binding: Hardback
- | ISBN-13: 9781804294048
- | ISBN-10: 1804294047
- Author:
- Justinien Tribillon
- Publisher:
- Verso Books
- Publication Date:
- Jul 09, 2024
- Binding:
- Hardback
- ISBN-13:
- 9781804294048
- ISBN10:
- 1804294047