Banlieue

History of the Banlieue

The importance of the banlieue can be fully understood only in a historical perspective and in relation to the city to which it is a periphery. Like many medieval cities, Paris was a walled city for defensive purposes. As the city grew, new walls were constructed, totaling six. In the years preceding the French Revolution a new wall was built, but this time it was built mainly for taxation purposes. The wall demarcated Paris proper. Its doors included custom posts, and everyone entering or leaving with commercial goods had to pay a tax or right of passage called the octroi. This physical barrier to free trade and mobility—mur d'octroi— created a real boundary between those living inside (intra-muros) and those living outside (extra-muros), which had economic consequences for trade and production. Consequently the cost of living was lower outside Paris than inside, resulting in an early division between a large fraction of the labor force settling in the banlieue and consumers, visitors, financiers, and administrators living inside the city walls.

In the ancient regime, the Parisian banlieue contained vast open areas where the nobility of Paris and Versailles went to spend time surrounded by nature. This taste was acquired by many arrivistes of the French bourgeoisie and the petite bourgeoisie, who would go to the green banlieue during the weekends as a sign of distinction, as told in short stories by Guy de Maupassant and depicted by Jean Renoir in his celebrated film Une Partie de Campagne (1936). But as more people built houses in these idyllic lands, the banlieues were quickly transformed from forests into suburban and then urban areas. The remaining forests of Vincennes and the Bois de Boulogne are protected and have been annexed by the city.

After the French Revolution of 1789, the Constitutional Assembly decreed the limits of Paris to be a circle with a circumference determined by a radius of three leagues (lieues) around the center, which was set at Notre Dame Cathedral. In 1841, the politician Adolphe Thiers ordered the construction of a new set of walls and custom tower to be surrounded by a zone where it was forbidden to build. In 1860 the city was expanded by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, and taxes continued to be levied. In this expansion Paris officially engulfed l'ancienne banlieue, which included the communes of Batignolle, Belleville, Bercy, Passy, la Villette, and other neighboring areas. The Paris octroi was instituted in these communes. This forced many industries to move out of the new city borders for fiscal reasons; many workers followed. The most developed and industrialized external communes also charged octroi to raise funds for local infrastructure and spending, whereas poorer banlieues did not in order to give tax incentives to attract industry and population. The octroi of Paris and its surrounding metropolitan area was not abolished until 1943, during the German occupation, when it was substituted with a sales tax.

...