MAPPING DIVIDES: EXPLORING THE NEGATIVE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF PARIS’S URBAN LAYOUT Leila Branfoot (OHS) Some would argue that wherever imaginary lines are drawn on a map, the consequent divides between individuals and communities are very real indeed. It is true that maps usually intend to reflect our common reality for practical and informative purposes, however, they also have a hand in creating it. Here, I refer to the role mapping and urban planning can play in reinforcing stigma, stereotypes and ghettoisation, where particular groups of people, often from minority groups, find themselves living confined to a specific area of a city in poor social and economic conditions.
Maps are inextricably linked with governance - how the authorities aim to run the city determines how said city is mapped, and how a city is mapped influences how the authorities go about governing it. In Paris, each arrondissement has its own town hall, directly-elected council and mayor - there is of course an additional overarching Conseil de Paris, but many Parisians feel still that this municipal system has left the city lacking cohesion and unable to deal with the city’s problems as a whole. It is important to consider, when looking at any map, what is not included on it; what lies at the edges and beyond. In Paris, the suburbs are not part of the arrondissement system, instead they are mapped as belonging to the ring of three départements (Hautsde-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne) surrounding inner Paris. They are physically set apart from central Paris by the périphérique (ringroad) and are governed separately. London has large suburbs, yet considers them a vital part of the city. Clearly, Paris sees things differently - despite the two cities being roughly the same size, the mayor of Paris represents just the 2.2 million people living within the boundaries of the arrondissements only, whilst the mayor of London governs all of the city’s 8.8 million inhabitants .
A widespread method of managing sprawling cities is to map them in subsections of the whole, and what better example of this than France’s capital city, Paris, whose core is separated into arrondissements. This division originated in 1790, during the reforms of the French revolution, but at this time there were just twelve districts. Major restructuring came about in 1860, when, commissioned by Emperor Napoleon III, Baron Haussman had Paris’s toll walls pulled down and incorporated the surrounding villages into the city. The resulting map of twenty divisions, spiralling clockwise outwards from the central 1st arrondissement, is a part of Paris’s unique character. However, the system, devised now over 200 years ago, is also a source of tension. With the separation of a city into constituent parts, it emphasizes the idea of fundamental difference between neighbourhoods. Stereotypes and suspicion build around particular districts, often with a class or racial aspect, depending on the populations that live there - for example, anti-semitic abuse against established Jewish communities in Parisian arrondissements such as the 4th is unfortunately a regular occurence. People make assumptions about places on the map without ever having visited them, which is fueled by online content and even Microsoft’s GPS navigation app, dubbed “Avoid the ghetto” by critics, which allows the user to adapt their walking routes to avoid areas which are “economically challenged” or have high crime rates, patented in 2012 amidst much controversy . The spread of negative place image by the internet and the media means that tourism and therefore investment remain low in traditionally poor districts of cities, who find it difficult to shake off these perceptions and reinvent themselves.
The origins of this gulf between the inner city and the suburbs can be traced back, of course, to the 1860 remapping of Paris, when the city’s immediate surroundings were welcomed into the arrondissement system of the city core, and new peripheries emerged in previously open space due to urban sprawl. Poorer communities found themselves ousted to the outskirts - an area which became referred to as the banlieues (“place of the banned”), illustrating how inhabitants were, and remain, both physically (in terms of distance) and culturally excluded. Baron Haussman employed the power of the straight line to transform inner Paris, building the grand boulevards, which became the basis of the city’s carefully considered spacial zoning originally designed to separate the rich from the poor. This tactic was maintained by Paris urban planners during the post-war years of 1945-75, but this time out in the suburbs, as they commandeered projects to build vast 5
