This term I’m taking a class in cultural geography, which has been interesting so far to say the least. I didn’t take the Cultural Geography module last year at UCL, which many of my friends did and enjoyed, so in some way it’s been interesting to study cultural geography à la française.
The class is taught by the same professor who was in charge of my Epistemology class last term (Professor Borghi), and focuses exclusively on representations of the environment around us, specifically the built environment. The approach taken by the course is refreshing – there is a heavy reliance on audio-visual sources as methods of representation. Every week we watch films, some student-made, some professionally produced, all of which depict French cities in certain ways and invoke similar geographical themes – the dichotomies between place and space, the local and the global. Some three weeks ago we watched La fête est finie (“The Party is over”), a documentary by Nicolas Burlaud that depicts Marseille’s residents and urban planners locked in a struggle over the right to the city. As the 2013 European Capital of Culture, Marseille hosted a year-long series of cultural events aimed at revitalising and rejuvenating the city. On the surface, these cultural festivities and the construction of brand-new shopping malls and urban developments are promising and appear to bring prosperity to the city, but this gentrification inevitably results in the eviction of residents within the less-affluent areas of the city. As a result, Marseille becomes a hotbed of simmering tension between the (foreign) developers and (local) inhabitants, the latter fighting to preserve Marseille’s longstanding history as a multi-ethnic port city.
La fête est finie resonated with me because it references some of the key Urban Geography themes we covered in Year 2 – specifically Henri Lefebvre’s (1968, 1973, 1991, 1996) celebrated notion of the right to the city, which has been developed by David Harvey (2008) in his article of the same name, and I feel that this is a concept relevant to most large cities around the world today, including Paris – but I will elaborate on that later. The opening sequence of the film depicts Burlaud drawing out a map of Marseille and labelling less-affluent neighbourhoods near Marseille’s port as “zones of warfare”, as these are areas where gentrification is displacing Marseille’s poorer residents, many of whom may be doubly disadvantaged by their immigrant background and who feel forced into an even more precarious position without secure living arrangements for the future. This comparison of gentrification to battle evokes powerful feelings: viewers start to see that this redevelopment of the city, wanted only by a minority elite, is indeed a severe problem that threatens the direct welfare of Marseille’s residents. The film is testament to the recent resurgence of the right to the city in academic and popular circles as people across the globe feel increasingly that they are losing control of their city, amid drastic changes to government and what they see as their declining enfranchisement (Purcell 2002). The same phenomenon can be said to be evident in London, where super-rich foreigners are seen with suspicion and distrust for causing rising house prices). The gentrification of “hip” places, especially in East London, such as Brick Lane and Shoreditch, has evidently caused some tension between the original residents who are now being displaced, and the so-called “creative class” (Florida 2002, 2004) of young professionals who are doing the displacing.
It therefore feels apt that my assignment for Cultural Geography, which involves creating a portfolio of photos depicting Paris based on a certain theme, should focus on the Canal St. Martin that cuts through the 10th and 19th arrondissements of Paris (see map below).
The neighbourhood along the Canal St. Martin has traditionally been designated a “quartier populaire” (working-class neighbourhood), but in recent years, owing to depictions of the Canal in popular culture such as in films like Amelie Poulain, has attracted lots of tourists and been transformed into a trendy, hipster destination from all the bars and cafes that have sprung up in the area. The Canal St. Martin area is now known for being “bobo” (a portmanteau of “bourgeois” and “bohemian”), which is a common term to describe someone who embodies “both a bourgeois character and a bohemian attitude” and who “enjoy[s] the nicer things in life yet [has] adopted a tolerant and counterculture view of the world”, according to this fun article by Chelsea Boorman. This makes me think immediately of Richard Florida’s creative class, who are defined by their “tolerance” – openness to talent and creation, and who come from all walks of life, including both genders and all ages, ethnicities and sexual orientations.
Paris, indelibly shaped by Baron Haussmann’s radical restructuring of the city in the 19th century, has traditionally been divided east-west, with the neighbourhoods in the west being seen as “quartiers riches” (rich neighbourhoods), while those in the east are known as “quartiers populaires”. The geographer Anne Clerval has tracked gentrification trends in Paris since the 1960s and produced maps of the way gentrification has spread from the neighbourhoods of the Left Bank, in the “quartiers riches”, to those on the Right Bank, with gentrification being concentrated in the 10th, 11th, 12th and 18th arrondissements (see map below). In Clerval’s (2011) words, loosely translated from the French (see original text below), “gentrification originally started on the Left Bank, within the ‘affluent neighbourhoods’, but has now spread towards the Right Bank and is concentrated in the three arrondissements next to the periphery (the 18th, 19th and 20th), as well as in the neighbourhoods of Sentier, Porte Saint-Denis and Saint Martin. This gentrification of less-affluent neighbourhoods can be seen as a strategy of social distinction by a small intellectual bourgeois class that has grown significantly since the 1970s, many of whom are employed in the cultural production sector and who command salaries of a similar, heterogeneous level.”
“Ainsi, la gentrification qui apparaît d’abord rive gauche, dans le prolongement des « beaux quartiers », s’étend rive droite pour désormais se concentrer dans les trois arrondissements périphériques (18è, 19è, 20è), ainsi que dans le quartier du Sentier et des Portes Saint-Denis et Saint-Martin. La gentrification des quartiers populaires sert alors les stratégies de distinction sociale d’une petite bourgeoisie intellectuelle en plein essor depuis les années 1970, caractérisée à la fois par des emplois qualifiés dans le secteur de la production culturelle et des niveaux de revenus plus limités et hétérogènes. ” (Clerval 2011)
My groupmate Tristan and I went for a walk along the Canal, trying to capture the changes in land use as we walked along its length, from its source at Metro Goncourt in the south to Jaurès metro station in the north, as shown in the map below:
Below is a selection of the pictures we took:
The first row of pictures above shows a residential area along Quai de Valmy, near the Jaurès metro station, after we passed by the park – Jardin Villemin – which marked an abrupt rupture between the residential buildings which appeared to be rather dilapidated, with graffiti sprayed on the walls, as seen in the middle picture of the first row, and the chic, brand-new buildings that had popped up along the canal earlier on. Meanwhile, the bottom row of pictures above, from left to right, shows a pop-up store, trendy cafes, and pastel-coloured shops selling really expensive clothes.
Initially we hypothesised that there might be a notable difference between the roads on either side of the canal: we thought maybe that Quai de Valmy might be more run-down than Quai de Jemappes, but soon realised that this was not always the case. The most marked differences were perhaps in the types of buildings we came across as we walked along the canal. Up till Jardin Villemin, a large public park, we came across cafes and pop-up stores frequented by tourists, but the buildings we saw subsequently were mostly residential, and some rather dilapidated, bearing the traces of graffiti. Jardin Villemin can indeed be seen as a significant marker between the gentrified and less-developed parts of the St. Martin neighbourhood. Indeed, Clerval states that what is common to the areas in Paris currently experiencing gentrification is the presence of green spaces – the canal “[stands] out clearly from the urban density that is characteristic of Paris, and offer[s] access to greenery, water, or distant views”, highlighting “the importance of the role of green spaces in gentrification” (Clerval 2011).
Bibliography:
Barrère, C. and Fijalkow, Y. (2013) ‘Le polar de Paris : une mise en scène des changements urbains de l’est parisien’, Lieux communs, 2013, pp.75-95.
Boorman, C. (2014) Being bobo near Canal Saint Martin [Online]. The Culture-ist. Available at: http://www.thecultureist.com/2014/08/01/bobo-near-canal-saint-martin-paris/ [Accessed: 3 April 2016].
Clerval, A. « Les dynamiques spatiales de la gentrification à Paris », Cybergeo : European Journal of Geography [Online], Space, Society,Territory, document 505, Online since 20 July 2010, connection on 20 April 2016. URL : http://cybergeo.revues.org/23231 ; DOI : 10.4000/cybergeo.23231
Florida, R. (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books.
Harvey, D. (2008) ‘The Right to the City’ in New Left Review, September – October 2008.
Hill, D. (2013) London housing crisis: how far are super-rich foreigners to blame? [Online]. London: The Guardian. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/davehillblog/2013/oct/22/london-house-prices-foreign-investors [Accessed: 3 April 2016].
La Fête Est Finie. France: Nicolas Burlaud, 2014. Online.
Lambert, A. (2014) Paris : embourgeoisement ou gentrification ? [Online]. Paris: La vie des idées. Available at: http://www.laviedesidees.fr/Paris-embourgeoisement-ou.html [Accessed: 3 April 2016].
Lefebvre, H. (1968) Le droit à la ville. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
Purcell, M. (2002) ‘Excavating Lefebvre: The right to the city and its urban politics of the inhabitant’ in GeoJournal, 58, pp. 99 – 108.
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