Paris Is Not Dead

July 3, 2023
Journalist Stangler laments the shrinking of Paris’s vibrant, multiethnic, and working-class neighborhoods in his impassioned debut. For decades, the residents of these communities have been displaced by property developers and well-off, professional households. Beginning around 2000, gentrification accelerated as wealthy individuals from other countries bought second homes and short-term rental outfits overtook historic neighborhoods such as Marais, which by 2014 had more Airbnb guests than residents. Stangler profiles ordinary people, such as Soumia Chohra and her partner Amin, who are unable to afford adequate housing in their neighborhood. (Amin’s 10-year-old daughter has to sleep on a mattress on the floor when she visits their sweltering one-bedroom apartment, where the windows must stay shut at all times to keep out rats.) The author also explains how the city’s history has been shaped by housing policy: for instance, the massive mid-19th urban redevelopment program known as Haussmannization (named for its chief planner, Georges-Eugène Haussmann) was intended, among other goals, to stop popular uprisings (the widened boulevards made it harder for residents to build barricades); and the cheap rents of the early 20th century enabled Paris to become a city famous for its artistic and literary culture, from the Surrealists of WWI to the new wave cinema of the 1950s. An astute and accessible mix of history and policy, this will persuade readers of the positive impact affordable housing has on the character of a city.