Fantasies of State Power? French Banlieues and the Boundaries of Modernity, 1955-1973
A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2014
Ravi Hensman School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations 3
List of Abbreviations and Special Terms 5
Abstract 9
Declaration 10
Copyright Statement 11
Acknowledgements 12
Introduction 13
Chapter One: Imagining the Banlieue 39 1. The grand ensemble as an imagined future, 1956-1960 45 2. The grand ensemble as a new present, 1961-1967 55 3. The grand ensemble as a failed past 1967-1971 72
Chapter Two: Constructing the Banlieue 87 1. Planning for aspiration or destitution? Les Courtillières 1957-1961 92 2. Dormitory estate or new urban core? La Courneuve, 1959-1963 106 3. Social engineering or urban engineering? Domestic space, 1961-1965 118 4. Destroying the grand ensemble , 1965-1971 128
Chapter Three: Claiming the Banlieue 142 1. Governing Pantin and Les Courtillières 1957-1961 148 2. Governing La Courneuve and the 4000 logements, 1960-1964 162 3. Assessing the grand ensemble community, 1969-1974 172
Chapter Four: Confrontation in the Banlieue 186 1. Cooperation and public cordiality, 1955-1963 193 2. An atmosphere of growing mistrust, 1964-1967 203 3. Banlieue protest and the ‘fortified state’, 1968-1973 221
Conclusion 235
Bibliography 245
Word count: 77, 366
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List of Illustrations
Figure 0.1 Photograph of Porte de Choisy, p. 23. Source: Eugene Atget’s Zoniers collection (1913), available online at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b3100004z/f42.item.hl.langFR.
Figure 1.1: Photograph of ‘Dilapidated housing in the inner-banlieue ’, p. 50. Source: Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe, La Vie Quotidienne des Familles Ouvrières , (Gentilly, 1956), p. 176a.
Figure 1.2: Graph of consumption patterns in Paris and the banlieues , p. 70. Source: Claude Cornuau, Maurice Imbert, Bernard Lamy, Paul Rendu, Jacques Retel, L’Attraction de Paris sur sa banlieue (Paris, 1965), p. 33.
Figure 2.1: Photograph of Fonds d’Eaubonne towers, Les Courtillières, p. 96. Source: author’s own.
Figure 2.2: Concept drawing from Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse, p. 98. Source: available online at http://www.archdaily.com/411878.
Figure 2.3: Site map of Les Courtillières with main facilities, p. 99. Source: Geneviève Michel, Pierre-Jacques Derainne, Aux Courtillières: Histoires Singulières et Exemplaires (Paris, 2005), p. 91.
Figure 2.4: ‘View of 4000 logements, La Courneuve’, p. 108. Source: available online at http://cites9-3.skyrock.com/77613602-Les-4000.html.
Figure 2.5: Publicity image of the 4000 logements, p. 112. Source: poster produced by Office Public de la Ville de Paris, AMLC/C390.
Figure 2.6: Floor plan for ground floor of Les Courtillières, p. 120. Source: Michel, Derraine, Aux Courtillières , p. 91.
Figure 2.7. Floor plan of 6 room and 2 room apartments, La Courneuve, p. 124. Source: AMLC/C390.
Figure 3.1: Publicity for Grand Bal de la Paix, La Courneuve, 1964, p. 171. Source: AMLC/4R9.
Figure 3.2: Page from La Courneuve Summer Festival programme, 1973, p. 182. Source: AMLC/4R32.
Figure 4.1: Pantin and La Courneuve within pre-1967 policing districts, p. 215. Source: zeemaps.com, author’s rendering.
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Figure 4.2: Pantin and La Courneuve within their post-1967 policing districts, p. 216. Source: zeemaps.com, author’s rendering.
Figure 4.3: Police dispersal in Pantin, La Courneuve and two Parisian arrondissements, p. 217. Source: Préfecture de Police, Rapport d’Activité 1968 (Paris, 1968), ADSSD/ 7W15.
Figure C.1: Fenêtres urbaines at the barre Balzac, 4000 logements, p. 236. Source: available online at http://revue.prefigurations.com/31beton/31_godinCourneuve.htm. 5
List of Abbreviations and Special Terms
ADSSD Archives Départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis
AMP Archives Municipales de Pantin
AMLC Archives Municipales de La Courneuve
AP Archives de Paris
AUA Atelier d’Urbanisme et d’Architecture
BAC Brigades Anti-Criminalité
CAF Caisse d’Allocations Familiales
CDI Compagnie Départementale d’Intervention
CDIC Caisse des Dépots et Consignations
CERM Centre d’Études et de Récherches Marxistes
CFDT Conféderation Française Démocratique de Travail
CGC Confédération Générale des Cadres
CGT Confédération Générale du Travail
CNAL Comité Nationale d’Action Laïque
CNRS Centre Nationale de la Récherche Scientifique
CSU Centre de la Sociologie Urbaine
DGEN Délégation Générale à l'Équipement National
DIV Délégation Interministerielle de la Ville
EPHE École Pratique des Hautes Études
FLN Front de Libération Nationale
FO Force Ouvrière
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GdP Gardien de la Paix
GP Gauche Prolétarienne
GPRA Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne
HBM Habitation à Bon Marché
HLM Habitation à Loyer Modéré
INED Institut National d'Études Démographiques
LAA Laboratoire Architecture Anthropologie
MRP Mouvement Républicaine Populaire
OAS Organisation de l'Armée Secrète
OP Officier de la Paix
OPP Officier de la Paix Principale
OPHLM Offices Publics d'Habitations à Loyer Modéré
OREAM Organisation d’Études d’Aménagement d’Aires Métropotaines
ORGECO Organisation d’Études Coopératives
PADOG Plan d'Aménagement et d'Organisation Générale
PCF Parti Communiste Français
PIDE Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado
PSU 1 Parti Socialiste Unitaire
RER Réseau Express Régional
RPF Rassemblement du Peuple Français
1 PSU can also refer to the Parti Socialiste Unifié, a PCF splinter party formed in 1960. In this thesis, PSU is only used in the above context. 7
SDAURP Schéma Directeur d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région de Paris
SEMIDEP Société d'Économie Mixte Propriété de la Ville de Paris
SFIO Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière
SONACOTRA Société Nationale de Construction de Logements pour les Travailleurs
UNFP Union Nationale des Forces Populaires
ZUP Zones à Urbaniser en Priorité
French terms
Arrondissement Small administrative division
Banlieue Suburb
Barre Tower block
Bidonville Shantytown
Blouson Noir 1950s youth subculture influenced by American rock and roll
Ceinture Rouge PCF-controlled inner-suburb of Paris
Chef-lieu Administrative capital of a département
Circonscription Subdivision of police district
Cité Estate or urban collectivity
Cité d’Urgence Emergency settlement
Conseil Général Elected body that administers a département
Conseil Municipale Council
Département Administrative division between region and commune
Gardien [Estate] concierge
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Gardien de la Paix Police rank equivalent to British constable
Gauchiste Leftist
Gradé Supervisory police rank equivalent to British sergeant
Grand Ensemble Mass-housing complex
Harkis Muslim Algerian loyalists who served in the French Army during the Algerian War
Mairie Town hall
Officier de la Paix Senior police rank equivalent to British inspector
Officier de la Paix Senior police rank equivalent to British chief inspector Principale
Pavillon Private low-rise home
Pied-noir Person of French or other European origin living in North Africa, particularly Algeria
Trente Glorieuses ‘Thirty glorious years’ (referring to post-war economic growth)
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Abstract
The banlieues (suburbs) of Paris are key case study for the social and political evolution of post-war France. Drawing on the overarching narrative of the trente glorieuses , existing scholarship has viewed the construction of grands ensembles d’habitation (mass housing estates) as part of a harmonious modernisation project through which France moved away from governing its colonies and towards the governance of everyday life. Yet, this view of banlieue housing as an expression of generic, totalising state power overlooks the conflicts and uncertainties that underpinned the modernisation process. This thesis analyses the construction and governance of two grands ensembles : the 4000 logements in La Courneuve and Les Courtillières in Pantin during the period 1955-1973. By analysing how state actors constructed and debated notions of urban modernity, this thesis will use the grands ensembles to explore France’s post-war modernisation as an uneven, localised and limited process. In discussing the limits to state power in these areas, this thesis develops scholarship on the banlieues and post-war France in three key ways. Firstly, this thesis will interrogate the relationship between the grand ensemble and notions of modernity, and will challenge the notion of mass housing as part of a forward-thinking modernisation process. Close analysis of sociological studies of mass housing and planning discourse will be used to demonstrate that the key objective was not to modernise, but to create a benign governable space that glossed over the more complex reality. By looking at localised discourses of municipal council and housing associations, this thesis will also question the harmonious nature of modernisation in discussing the ongoing debates between different state actors regarding the role of mass housing and of the banlieues more generally. Secondly, this thesis will develop academic understandings of the relationship between the citizen and the state. While the banlieues have been situated within the orbit of a totalising, technocratic Gaullist national state and the local communist-governed municipality, this thesis will question whether the state ‘existed’ in the banlieues . Records of municipal campaigning and existing resident testimonies will be used to challenge the historical narrative of the ceinture rouge by demonstrating that at a local level, the state maintained only loose control in the governance of everyday life and focused on a narrow range of issues. Developing this notion of a flexible, arterial state, this thesis will also analyse estate plans closely in order to highlight that interior space rather than enacting new forms of social conditioning was uneven in nature and made considerable concessions to existing modes of living. Thirdly, this thesis will develop existing notions of power and authority by arguing that while French post-war modernisation has generally been viewed as a technocratic process, it relied on direct coercion to compensate for its inherent limitations. While scholars have viewed the grands ensembles as a short-lived triumph of ‘the liberal art of government’, this thesis will argue that technocratic governance of the banlieues was ‘propped up’ by a dramatic expansion of policing and surveillance of these areas. This thesis will analyse police records of racial and geographical profiling and the suppression of protest in order to argue that policing produced a more systematic form of banlieue governance compared to uneven, limited technocratic power. Overall this thesis will use the grand ensemble to present an alternative view of the trente glorieuses in which the French state projecting authority into areas where the state lacked knowledge or influence, and sought to protect itself from modernity rather than to enact it.
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Author’s Declaration
No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. 11
Copyright Statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trade marks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=487), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.manchester.ac.uk/library/aboutus/regulations) and in The University’s policy on Presentation of Theses.
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Acknowledgements
I would firstly like to thank my thesis supervisors for their generous support and guidance over the course my studies. Dr Leif Jerram helped me to develop the initial idea for this project and provided me with insightful advice, as well as sharing his irrepressible enthusiasm for urban history. Professor Bertrand Taithe gave a welcome sense of clarity to my ideas has been an invaluable source of encouragement and academic inspiration. My thanks also go to my third supervisor Dr Barbara Lebrun in the French department for giving me the benefit of her substantial knowledge of the banlieues and contemporary France. I am also very grateful to Dr Darren Waldron in the department of French for supporting my application and to the ESRC for funding my research. I also thank my examiners, Professor Stuart Jones and Professor Julian Jackson, who kindly agreed to assess my thesis.
I have been fortunate to be part of such a vibrant and sociable PhD community in the University of Manchester History Department. So many people have contributed to this positive culture, whether by providing suggestions on my work, sharing a drink in the Ducie Arms or organising the illustrious PhD 5-a-side football games. Special mention should go to Mark Crosher and Luke Kelly for amongst other things, agreeing to read my work. It was also a privilege to work with people who share my interest in French and urban history such as James Greenhalgh, Alistair Kefford, Paula Chorlton, Nathan Booth and Sarah Wood. Thanks also go to friends and colleagues in other institutions, particularly Daniel Gordon, Mason Norton and John Strachan who provided me with fresh perspectives on my work and helped in other numerous ways. I am also indebted to the Society for the Study of French History for providing me with a generous travel grant and for giving me the opportunity to share my work with distinguished scholars in French history.
The primary research for this thesis was conducted in Seine-Saint-Denis between 2010 and 2012. I am immensely grateful for the help I received from the archivists at La Courneuve and Pantin municipal archives, as well as the larger archives at Bobigny and Paris. It is important also to thank Chantal Florentin, who was my landlady in Pantin in 2007 and taught me that beyond the bright lights of Paris, there was a more interesting story to be told.
Finally, I would like to thank my family. My parents, Jim and Bethan Hensman have always supported me in everything I’ve done, and I hope they realise how truly grateful I am. Last but by no means least, special thanks go to Emma for keeping me grounded, but above all for her endless love, patience and devotion.
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Introduction
The banlieue is not a special case. The banlieue is France, which toils and suffers at work, which idles, which the law of money would lock in poverty, discrimination, poor housing, and underprovision. Without a social plan for the banlieue , the whole country cannot develop, equal rights based on republican principles are merely a scrap of paper. The banlieue is where the future of us all plays out, the future of the French social model. 2 L’Humanité , 5 th November 2005.
In the above editorial in the communist newspaper L’Humanité , the politician Pierre
Laurent gave an impassioned response to the rioting which erupted in several French cities during the autumn of 2005. 3 Beginning in Clichy-sous-Bois, a deprived banlieue (suburb)
9 miles to the east of Paris, violence spread to the fringes of other French cities, with several grands ensembles d’habitation (mass housing complexes) serving as the epicentre for the burning of cars and public buildings. Laurent’s argument that the social situation in the banlieues serves as a test case for French norms and values (in this case, the idéal républicain ) is relevant not just to the 2005 riots but to how historians understand post-war
France more generally. 4 Indeed, Laurent invites us to consider how else the banlieue might serve as a test case for other meta-narratives associated with French culture and society.
2 Pierre Laurent, ‘La Banlieue , c'est la France’, L’Humanité , 5th November 2005. 3 On the 2005 riots see Didier Lapeyronnie, ‘Primitive Rebellion in the French Banlieues : On the Fall 2005 Riots’, in Charles Tshimanga (ed.), Frenchness and the African Diaspora: Identity and Uprising in Contemporary France (Bloomington, 2009). 4 For a brief definition of the idéal républicain see Georges Roche, Quelle école pour quelle citoyenneté ?: les chemins de l'école (Paris, 1998), p. 76. 14
Scholars have often viewed post-war France in terms of the trente glorieuses , a period of rapid economic expansion and urbanisation roughly spanning the years 1945-
1973 .5 Banlieue mass housing has frequently been subsumed into this narrative and viewed as an image of generic, ordering modernity enacted by an omniscient, all-encompassing state. 6 However, modernisation can be measured not just through GNP, purchasing power or the rate of housing construction but also through local interactions and experiences: a facet that is lacking in existing scholarship for this period. By 1969, one in six residents of the Paris region lived in a grand ensemble , which makes suburban housing a particularly significant case study for the governance and lived experience of French post-war modernity .7 Observing the riots of autumn 2005 or rows of dilapidated tower blocks awaiting demolition reveals another significant narrative of post-war France, of a state that struggled to exert its will and to enact its social vision for modern life.
This thesis uses the grand ensemble as a lens through which to examine how
French post-war modernity was planned, governed and inhabited during the period 1955-
1973. Analysing the nature of state power within the localised space of the banlieue estate will enable a clearer understanding of several key elements and mechanisms of the
‘modernisation process’. 8 For example, the initial design and construction of the grands
5 The term was coined by the author and economist Jean Fourastié in what remains a classic study of French post-war modernisation. See Jean Fourastié, Les Trente glorieuses: ou la révolution invisible de 1946 à 1975 (Paris, 1979). For a more critical assessment, see chapter two of Jean-Pierre Dormois, The French Economy in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 2004). 6 This thesis defines the state not as a fixed entity but as a more elusive concept that has uncertain boundaries with society. In particular, this thesis is receptive to the idea that the state is not an actual structure but rather a structural effect: a set of (mainly bureaucratic) practices that make such structures appear to exist. See Timothy Mitchell, ‘The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics’, The American Political Science Review 85: 1 (1991), pp. 77-96 (p. 94). 7 W. Brian Newsome, French Urban Planning, 1940-1968: The Construction and Deconstruction of an Authoritarian System (New York, 2009), p. 109. 8 This thesis defines power according to post-Foucauldian scholars such as Frederick Cooper, who argues that in particular contexts, power was not all-encompassing but followed an arterial structure. While Cooper 15
ensemble s offers a means of assessing whether those producing what they saw as French modernity had a clear ideological vision for social housing and whether this vision was enacted universally. In turn, the subsequent observation, policing and everyday governance of estates is central to understanding how various elements of the French state were able to
‘know’ their citizens. By looking at two such estates of the Paris region, this thesis will examine how lived experiences and relationships with the state (and thus experiences of
French modernity) developed during this period. Social housing also offers an important case study for exploring the role of other institutions in contesting or consolidating the norms and values promoted by social housing, notably residents associations, the Parti
Communiste Français or trade unions. Overall, this thesis will argue that the everyday issues and conflicts associated with the construction and management of mass housing offer a means to reassess existing narratives of post-war France and banlieue life more specifically.
The banlieue as ordering modernity
Historical studies of the post-war banlieues have tended to view these areas as the product of a technocratic, ordering modernity that sought to reshape modern life through the domestic sphere. 9 Scholars such as Kristin Ross and Paul Silverstein understand the grand ensemble as the product of a technocratic state that was monolithic and totalising in
used his model in a colonial African context, this thesis will argue that the notion of state power as concentrated around specific issues and diffuse elsewhere is highly relevant to the banlieues . See Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (London, 2005), p. 48. 9 The urban historian Leif Jerram differentiates between the ‘ordering guise’ of modernity as explored by scholars such as Zygmunt Bauman and Bruno Latour and the ‘disordering guise’ that interested social critics such as Walter Benjamin and Guy Debord. Jerram also notes a geographical dimension to how modernity is discussed, in arguing that its ‘ordering’ form is most often used in histories of German speaking Europe. See Leif Jerram, Germany's Other Modernity: Munich and the Building of Metropolis, 1895-1930 (Manchester, 2007), p. 3. 16
nature.10 While Parisian modernity has been unpicked thoroughly in terms of its inner contradictions and disorder, such approaches are rarely applied to the neighbouring banlieues .11 Instead, academic studies have tended to view suburban housing as part of an uncontested process through which technocrats ‘colonised’ the domestic sphere. Ross describes the grands ensembles as part of a process whereby France ‘turned to a form of interior colonialism, whereby administrative techniques developed in the colonies were employed to reorder metropolitan domestic society’.12 Ross’s comparison between urbanism and colonialism is a particularly relevant for the late 1950s onwards, as France was gradually relinquishing control of its colonies in Indochina, West Africa and North
Africa. 13 Ross suggests that in the wake of this decolonisation process, the ‘grand project’ of suburban housing was the flagship for a wider ‘national re-orientation’ towards the governance of everyday life. The historian Paul Silverstein shares the notion of the grand ensemble as the ‘new imperialism’ in describing estates as ‘ultra-modern vanguard spaces in the postcolonial mission to integrate (read civilise) working-class and immigrant residents into productive and commensurable national subjects’. 14 While Silverstein recognises that modernisation impacted differently on particular areas of the banlieue
10 This thesis will understand ‘technocracy’ according to Richard F. Kuisel’s definition of it as the assumption that ‘human problems, like technical ones, have a solution that experts, given sufficient data and authority, can discover and execute’. See Richard F. Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France: Renovation and Economic Management in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 1981), p. 76. For a general discussion of the meaning of technocracy and a thematic discussion of the use of technocratic knowledge in political decision-making see Frank Fischer, Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise (London, 1990). 11 In particular, writers and historians have sought to deconstruct Baron Haussmann’s redevelopment of Paris during the Third Empire, arguing that it brought disorder as well as order. See for example W. Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Café: Sociability Among the French Working Class, 1789-1914 (Baltimore, 1998); Peter Buse, Ken Hirschkop, Scott McCracken, Bertrand Taithe, Benjamin's Arcades: An Unguided Tour (Manchester, 1999); Christopher Curtis Mead, Making Modern Paris: Victor Baltard's Central Markets and the Urban Practice of Architecture (University Park PA, 2012). 12 Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (London, 1996), p. 7. The idea of the grand ensemble as ‘new colonialism’ is particularly significant given the fact that frequently, estates became the home to immigrants from Algeria and other former colonies. 13 On France’s wars in Algeria and Indochina see Anthony Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization (London, 1994). For a more critical assessment of the ‘success’ of decolonisation, see Tony Chafer, The End of Empire in French West Africa: France's Successful Decolonization? (London, 2002). 14 Paul Silverstein, Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation (Bloomington, 2004), p. 106. 17
(highlighting inequalities between newer and older areas of Pantin, for example) this disparity is seen as a conscious decision rather than a conspicuous flaw in the French technocracy. Furthermore, in exploring the grand ensemble as a colonial space, scholars neglect to consider what ‘colonial’ might mean in terms of the nature of resistance and possible limits to hegemonic control. In considering the various ways in which notions of
French modernity were resisted and debated by local officials, residents and planners, this thesis will offer a corrective to notions of banlieue planning as a neo-imperial project.
Foucauldian historians such as Paul Rabinow view the grand ensemble as evidence of the rise of a post-war technocracy that united a vast array of urban experts. While
Rabinow does not envisage modernist planning as a generic transnational movement
(coining the term ‘middling modernism’ to describe the French case) he nonetheless views the grand ensemble as part of a harmonious union between planners, architects and sociologists who worked together ‘in the name of efficiency, science, progress, and social welfare’. 15 However, Rabinow’s study subsumes the French technocracy into a narrow range of actors and implies that the modernisation process was characterised by consensus and clear common objectives. Such studies make valuable contributions to our understandings of how modernisers sought to depict the project that they were engaged in, but there is a danger of collapsing the distinction between the discourse of technocracy and its practice. Crucially, this thesis will argue that the banlieues can also be understood as diverse, unstable and incoherent, and that there were limitations in what the ‘harmonious union of experts’ could actually achieve. This thesis will also avoid homogenising a
15 Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Boston, 1989), p. 322. Rabinow’s idealised view may stem from the shrinkage of the French welfare state during the early 1980s, which has led to a romanticisation of the ‘golden age’ of welfare provision, and he views modernist planning as part of this wider ‘scientific administration of modern life’. 18
‘technocratic class’, by exploring the differing concerns of sociologists and planners, who frequently acted according to local context and self-interest rather than a universal dogma, which poses a fundamental challenge to narratives of totalising modernity. Furthermore, by looking at what these ‘experts’ did not know or could not do , this thesis will explore significant areas where modernisation actually produced illusions of state power that obscured its limited influence.
Historians’ emphasis on the grand ensemble as part of a generic modernising process has created an impression of the banlieue estate as a homogenous entity, both in terms of the built environment and the type of lived experience that it produced. Planning histories have tended to emphasise the ordering process of banlieue modernisation rather than its limitations. In this sense, the grands ensembles have been subject to the similar debates that have emerged in relation to post-war mass housing more generally. Prominent critiques of post-war modernist planning tend to depict it as a movement that owed its efficiency to its autocratic nature. 16 Scholars such as Jacobs and Power raise a valuable point: that a complex politics of knowledge exists in housing estates whereby lived experiences are shaped by ideologies that claim to be ‘rational’ and disinterested. However, critiques of modernism based on its ‘dominant’ nature tend to neglect the stumbling blocks that modernisers encountered along the way. Studies of the banlieue have imported this idea of modernist planning as omniscient and have overlaid the major historical precedent for autocratic planning of the Paris region: Baron Haussmann’s redevelopment of the
16 A notable early example of the work of the sociologist and activist Jane Jacobs’ who saw the deprivation of housing estates in the US as resulting from a rift between ‘the lived experience of people in places’ and ‘abstract theoretical planning practices’study. See Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York, 1961), p. 14. Similarly, the housing consultant and historian Anne Power views suburban deprivation as principally the work of ‘designer, planners and politicians’. See Anne Power, John Houghton , Jigsaw Cities: Big Places, Small Spaces (Bristol, 2007), p. 79. 19
French capital under the Third Empire. 17 Scholars have frequently viewed the grand ensemble as a key component in what the geographer David Harvey called ‘creative destruction’ (a term originally popularised by the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter), referring to periodic episodes in Paris’s history where economic pressures have produced sudden and brutal restructurings of urban space. Yet, while Schumpeter viewed creative destruction as a positive, productive process, it has acquired more negative connotations when used in reference to Haussmannisation.
While Harvey’s idea has been developed and debated at length, histories of the banlieue have depicted suburban developments as a form of ‘neo-Haussmannisation’. 18
Edward Welch describes the banlieue planning policies of 1965 in suitably grandiose terms, as a vast process of restructuring that amounted to ‘a psychological drama as much as a geographical one, as the fracturing and remodelling of space brings with it a fracture and remodelling of those who find themselves caught up in that process’. 19 There is a notable parallel between the ‘psychological drama’ described by Welch and the ‘discourse of displacement’ and bewilderment that the sociologist Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson argues could be found in the work of writers such as Gustave Flaubert who experienced
17 Working under Napoleon III, Baron George-Eugène Haussmann rebuilt Paris between 1853 and 1870: a process that is perhaps best known for the creation of wide boulevards composed of unified street blocks. Historians have disagreed over the more implicit objectives of Haussmann’s plan. For example, David Harvey focusses on Haussmann’s suppression of ‘problem spaces’ and the reordering of spatial relations in such a way that ‘the circulation of capital became the real imperial power’. Paul Rabinow on the other hand, challenges the perceived eminence of Haussmannisation, and argued that some elements of spatial governance emerged later, notably through the work of Henri Sellier in the early twentieth century. For more details see David Harvey, Paris: Capital of Modernity (London, 2003) and Rabinow, French Modern. 18 Nicolas Papayanis for instance has questioned the primacy of the Haussmann era, pointing for example to the influence of earlier modernisers such as the Fourierists during the first half of the nineteenth century. See Nicolas Papayanis, Planning Paris Before Haussmann (Baltimore, 2004). Marshall Berman has pointed to unintended consequences of Haussmannisation, such as the increasing visibility of urban poverty. See Marshal Berman, All that is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (London, 1983), p. 153. 19 Edward Welch, ‘Coming to Terms with the Future The Experience of Modernity in Annie Ernaux's Journal du dehors’, French Cultural Studies 18:1 (2007), pp. 125-136 (p. 127). Welch was referring to the Schéma Directeur de la Région de Paris (SDAURP) legislation, which will be discussed in chapter two. 20
Haussmann’s redevelopments at close quarters. 20 While Silverstein sees the grand ensemble as the transmitter of neo-colonial policies, the architectural historian Marc
Angélil and Cary Siress draw heavily on Harvey’s work when they argue that post-war banlieue developments reinforced Haussmann’s ‘urban pecking order’. They claim that ‘it is questionable whether or not early urban planners consciously sought to enact a discriminatory spatial design’, but maintain that ‘the impact is clear’. 21 The linking of banlieue planning and Haussmannisation is not mere conjecture, as state modernisers of the 1960s explicitly sought to portray their project as the successor to Haussmann’s comprehensive plan. 22 However, to take banlieue planners at their word is to sidestep the most critical questions regarding how French modernisation was enacted. This thesis will challenge these approaches by exploring incidences where developments were the product of compromise rather than consensus in order to offer a powerful corrective to the homogenisation of the banlieue in state and academic discourse. 23
The grands ensembles have also formed part of a wider academic discussion of racial politics in France, particularly in the wake of the government’s harsher stance on immigration following the 1973 economic crisis. 24 The decline of suburban estates led to a
20 Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, Paris as Revolution: Writing the Nineteenth-century City (London, 1994), p. 121. 21 Marc Angélil, Cary Siress, ‘The Paris Banlieue : Peripheries of Inequity’, Journal of International Affairs 65:2 (2012), pp. 57-69 (p. 59). 22 For example, the 1965 planning legislation known as the Schéma Directeur featured a preamble in which Planning Minister claimed that the programme was the third great epoch in Parisian planning after the original settlement of the ancient Parisii tribe and Haussmann’s plan. See Paul Delouvrier, Schéma directeur d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la région de Paris (Paris, 1965), p. 35. 23 The notion of ‘compromise politics’ is frequently applied to the Fourth Republic which scholars have often contrasted with the more centralised and durable Fifth Republic. See for example Philip M. Williams, Crisis and Compromise: Politics in the Fourth Republic (London, 1964). However, this thesis will use social housing to argue that state power in the banlieue remained limited and uneven throughout the period concerned. 24 For example, under Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the French government called a temporary halt to immigration and even tried to orchestrate a policy of forced returns. For further discussion on the implementation of this policy see Catherine Wihtol De Wenden, ‘Une logique de fermeture, doublée de la 21
trend roughly analogous to the American phenomenon of ‘white flight’, which refers to the migration of more affluent (generally white) residents from areas of perceived insecurity. 25
This trend, coupled with the existence of large numbers of unemployed immigrants in such estates and well-publicised incidents of social unrest and delinquency, has led to a
‘racialisation’ of the grands ensembles in French culture.26 Subsequently, the influence of
Pierre Bourdieu on French sociology, which imported a deep mistrust of neo-liberal politics and a close critique of the nature of political power, has led to an increased interest in the way in which governance of the banlieue has involved the transmission of racial policies. 27 Alec Hargreaves argues that during the 1970s the occupants of banlieue estates
‘became increasingly scapegoated by those on the political right as the alleged cause of the nation’s ills’. 28 He argues that by the early 1980s the ceinture rouge had been supplanted by the perceived ‘green peril’ of Islam, the religion of most migrants from former colonies.
question de l’intégration’, in Yves Lequin (ed.), Histoire des étrangers et de l’immigration en France (Paris, 2006), pp. 461-518. 25 Thierry Paquot (ed.) Banlieues: une Anthologie (Lausanne, 2008), p. 79; Alice L. Conklin, Sarah Fishman, Robert Zaretsky, France and Its Empire Since 1870 (Oxford, 2011), p. 300; Alec G. Hargreaves, Immigration, 'Race' and Ethnicity in Contemporary France (London, 1995), p. 69. On the white flight phenomenon more generally see Rachael A. Woldoff, White Flight/Black Flight: The Dynamics of Racial Change in an American Neighbourhood (Ithaca, 2011). This mass migration was not seen everywhere, however. Manuel Castells cites the example of the (albeit highly segregated) Val d’Yerres grand ensemble in Essonne which maintained a sizeable bourgeois and worker contingent well into the 1970s. See chapter ten of Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements (Berkeley, 1983). 26 The grands ensembles were frequently populated by immigrants to the Paris region but estates remained racially heterogeneous during the 1960s. Between 1962 and 1968 just under 24,000 new residents moved to La Courneuve, with the vast majority moving in to the 4000 logements estate. Only around one fifth of the new arrivals came from overseas (a number that included former colonies). By 1984 on the other hand, 22% of the estate’s flats were occupied by families of foreign origin. See Loïc Wacquant, Urban outcasts: a comparative study of advanced marginality (Cambridge, 2008), p. 171. 27 See David L. Swartz, ‘Pierre Bourdieu’s political sociology and governance perspectives’ in Henrik Paul Bang (ed.), Governance as Social and Political Communication (Manchester, 2003). 28 Alec Hargreaves, ‘Banlieue Blues’ in Anna-Louise Milne (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Paris (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 212-227 (p . 216). For an example of Islamophobia in contemporary French journalism see Alexandre Devecchio, ‘De la banlieue rouge à la banlieue «verte» ?’, Figaro Vox 8th August 2014 [online source]. http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/politique/2014/08/08/31001- 20140808ARTFIG00324-de-la-banlieue-rouge-a-la-banlieue-verte.php?pagination=2, accessed 8 th September, 2014. 22
The sociologist and activist Sylvie Tissot argues that spatial categories such as quartiers sensibles and ghettos , used in political discourse from the early 1980s onwards, harbour a raft of ethnic connotations, and ‘lump’ populations together despite their heterogeneity in other ways. 29 In this sense, terms such as banlieue and grand ensemble have become synonymous with race and scholars have overlooked other forms of social or cultural difference. While this thesis does not specifically address the theme of racial politics in the banlieues , it will chart the fragementary emergence of concerns over race as seen through the design of estates, their everyday governance and their policing. However, this thesis will not exceptionalise race as an analytical category and will also consider other means through which the state negotiated issues of otherness and difference.
The banlieue as a cultural representation
Alongside the employment of the grand ensemble as a microcosm for wider trends in French culture, social histories of the post-war banlieue have tended to overemphasise representations of the banlieues and have neglected the material environment. This discursive shift towards analysing the banlieue solely through news discourse can be traced to a glut of scholarship in the 1980s which following the 1981 suburban riots, studied how media outlets deployed and perpetuated a specific banlieue lexicon of crime and disorder. 30
While such studies have made a meaningful contribution to understandings of the ‘othering’ of the banlieue in French culture they still view the banlieue as subject to generic, overarching structures. The historian Alain Faure acknowledges the problematic dialogue between the past and present banlieue , when he claims that ‘the historian must defy the
29 Sylvie Tissot, Franck Poupeau. ‘La Spatialisation des Problèmes Sociaux’, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 159 (2005), pp. 4-9, (p. 7). 30 For a detailed study of banlieue semantics in reference to the 1981 riots, see Christian Bachmann and Luc Basier’s Mise en images d’une banlieue ordinaire (Paris, 1994); Desmond Avery, Civilisations de La Courneuve : images brisées d’un cité (Paris, 1987). 23
terrible intrusion of “the news”…but he must also…combat false representations by offering his contemporaries a view of the recent past’. 31 Yet, to exceptionalise the mediatisation of 1980s banlieue rioting is to understate the longstanding cultural associations of the banlieues with poverty, destitution and danger. 32 Long before the disturbance of 1981 and later, 2005 the very term banlieue evoked the ‘urban residuum’ created by Haussmann’s restructuring of Paris; it stood for vagrancy, rootlessness and foreignness; and it stood for a threatening working class. Notions of banlieue vagrancy and rootlessness had been popularised by the cultural images of the zonier and the chiffonnier
(or rag picker) that emerged in the photography of Eugène Atget and the literature of
André Warnod. 33
31 Alain Faure, Les Premiers banlieusards : aux origines des banlieues de Paris, 1860-1940 (Paris, 1991), p. 8. 32 For a more comprehensive historical study of banlieue cultural representations see Richard Derderian, ‘The Banlieues as Lieux de Mémoire’, in Pierre Lagayette, Geopolitics of Globalization and South East Asia Europe relations (Paris, 2003). On film depictions of the banlieue during the period 1958-1968, see Ravi Hensman, ‘Oracles of Suburbia: French Cinema and Portrayals of the Paris Banlieues , 1958-1968’, Modern & Contemporary France 21:4 (2013), pp. 435-451. 33 On the literary portrayal of the banlieue during the 1920s, see Adrian Rifkin, Street Noises: Parisian Pleasure 1900-1940 (Manchester, 1995), p. 38. 24
Figure 0.1 A photograph from Atget’s Zoniers depicting settlers at Porte d’Italie to the south of Paris. ‘Zoniers, Porte de Choisy (1913) [online source] http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b3100004z/f42.item.hl.langFR , accessed 28 th July 2012. The idea of the banlieue as the home of a threatening working class found a new focus in the image of the ceinture rouge , which refers to a ring of pro-Communist suburban municipalities that rose to prominence in the 1920s. 34 Nevertheless, a number of studies tend to construct the post-war history of the banlieue almost entirely through media portrayals. Annie Fourcaut’s influential 1986 study of Bobigny, which charts the emergence of the ceinture rouge (which refers to a ring of pro-PCF banlieue communes) during the 1930s, argues that the pre-war banlieue was a thriving community, in spite of
Parisian fears of the suburbs as a place of racial ambiguity and political extremism. 35
Fourcaut argues that it was during the 1930s that the term banlieue became a metaphor that
‘allows one to conveniently circumscribe and territorialise social anxieties’ as opposed to a mere designation of suburban space. 36 In her 2007 study which seeks to contextualise contemporary media portrayals of the banlieue , she describes the pre-war activity of residents as: ‘The dense network of militant organisations, the frequency of local festivals, the politisation of everyday life…created, around the mayors, a local class-based patriotism, a culture of poverty capable of combatting the stigma attached to working-class banlieues ’. 37 However, her subsequent discussion of the post-war situation displays no
34 During the early twentieth century, heavy industries such as chemicals and metalworking moved out to the Paris suburbs, as they required more land than the city could provide. Semi-rural towns such as Saint Denis, Ivry and Boulogne grew considerably due to a simultaneous influx of workers from the provinces and low- income families from Paris. Suburbs such as Bobigny and Boulogne-Billancourt (which both voted for the socialist SFIO party in the municipal elections of 1919) acquired the reputation of being banlieue rouges , but the more far-reaching term ceinture rouge (referring to a ring of pro-PCF communes) emerged during the 1930s, culminating in the municipal elections of 1935. For a fuller discussion of the formation of the ceinture rouge see Tyler Stovall, The Rise of the Paris Red Belt (Oxford, 1990); Annie Fourcaut, Bobigny, banlieue rouge (Paris, 1986). 35 Fourcaut’s emphasis on external perceptions of the banlieue is a contrast to Tyler Stovall’s equally illuminating analysis which focuses more specifically on how the ceinture rouge was constructed by the governing PCF as a bastion of political consensus. See Tyler Stovall, The Rise of the Paris Red Belt (Oxford, 1990), 36 Annie Fourcaut, ‘Pour en finir avec la banlieue ’, Géocarrefour 75 (2000), pp. 101-105 (p. 105). 37 Annie Fourcaut, ‘Les Banlieues populaires ont aussi une histoire’, Projet 299 (2007), pp. 7-15 (p. 11). 25
such social analysis, focusing instead on state legislation of which residents were merely passive recipients. Thus, while the interwar French state is viewed as contradictory and uneven, Fourcaut is drawn in to the dominant narrative of post-war French state as technocratic and totalising.
While pre-war case studies have been used to question dominant narratives of spectacular development and decline, those of the post-war banlieues assume totalising modernity to be a given. Such views of ‘modernity in crisis’ are used to accentuate a dualism between the pre-war banlieue as a rich community and the post-war banlieue as an asocial wasteland. Gérard Mordillat’s Douce Banlieue , for example (perhaps the most comprehensive social history of the banlieues to date) equates the grands ensembles to a violent rupture in French culture when describing their cultural impact:
Perpendicular blocks, numbered buildings, slabs, towers, crane tracks, vanished roads, concrete, barres , walkways in all directions: the over-large ensemble [trop grand ensemble ] has broken the city…The people of the banlieues have sacrificed their image for the broken pots of an architectural folly turned sour. 38
Mordillat places the emphasis not on the lived experience of mass housing but rather on the cultural image of the banlieue and its perceived threat to notions of Frenchness. While
Mordillat does not nostalgise the pre-war banlieue (highlighting for example, the prevalence of shanty housing during the interwar period) there is a discussion of fêtes, café culture and Sunday leisure pursuits (undertaken not in Paris, but in the banlieues ) that is conspicuously absent from his discussion of the grand ensemble. In analysing the everyday experiences of mass housing, this thesis will develop academic understandings that have too frequently, taken the asociability of the grands ensembles as a given.
38 Gérard Mordillat, Douce banlieue (Paris, 2005), p. 55. The term barre has no direct equivalent in English but generally refers to a block that is much wider than it is tall. The 4000 logements in La Courneuve, one of the principal case studies of this thesis, provides a good example of this design. 26
A notable exception to this view of the grand ensemble as inherently asocial is
Rosemary Wakeman’s excellent 2009 study of urban life in Paris, which questions the narrative of modernist-led cultural decline by looking at popular reappropriation of urban spaces during the period 1945-1958. Yet, even Wakeman consciously excludes the ‘private consumer utopias of the grands ensembles ’ from her analysis, focusing solely on the streets of Paris, described as ‘fluid, polyvalent, pierced with political and social tensions’. 39 There is an evident nostalgist tendency in social history of the Paris region, which seeks to correlate modernist housing with the decline of the banlieues as a social nexus. However, this thesis will argue that to view the banlieue this way is to exceptionalise mass housing and to overstate the reach of the state into everyday suburban life. This thesis will pay closer attention to competing notions of banlieue and internal contradictions that counteract claims that suburban housing was a universal totalising expression of power.
The notion of the grand ensemble as an asocial environment may stem from a series of spatial concepts that have been applied by sociologists to an array of modern spaces. The concept of ‘supermodern non-places’, a term coined by the sociologist Marc
Augé in 1992 has been used in reference to the grands ensembles , to describe the near- pathological nature of such environments and their tendency to alienate their inhabitants.40
The urban geographer Susan Ireland for example, views the grands ensembles as archetypal non-places due to their transitory nature, a feature that they shared with
39 Rosemary Wakeman, The Heroic City: Paris, 1945-1958 (London, 2009), p. 8. 40 Augé’s concept of non-place refers to a peripheral environment that is incapable of giving rise to organic social life, and includes supermarkets, airports, highways and housing estates. Scholars have likely overstated Augé’s interest in mass housing as his study makes only passing reference to them and explores the airport environment for example, in far greater depth. See Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthology of Supermodernity (London, 1995), p. 74. 27
bidonvilles (shantytowns) and squatter settlements. 41 Elsewhere, non-state institutions and individuals are frequently portrayed as ‘dominated’ by the structures around them, which leaves little room for resistance or exceptions. The sociologist Robert Castel attributes the decline of banlieue communities from the 1970s onwards to a withering of the local
‘municipal culture’ brought about by ‘unplanned urbanisation…economic stagnation…and the collapse of trade unionist and political values’. 42 Scholars such as Bruno Latour have criticised Augé for focusing disproportionately on the more superficial aspects of modern life and in a similar vein, this thesis will challenge a convenient linkage between grand ensemble communities and a gradual shrinkage, or deterioration of social relations. 43
Figurative urban environments such as the ‘non-place’ (and the ‘hyperghetto’ a term used in reference to the USA by some sociologists to contrast the banlieue situation) would appear to facilitate comparison between the banlieues and deprived areas in other countries. 44 Indeed, the banlieue has been employed as an instrument of comparison with
US deprivation, notably in Sophie Body-Gendrot’s 2000 comparative study of urban violence which points to the shared issues of a shrinking welfare state and the changing role of civil society in both countries. 45 However, following the 2005 rioting (perhaps seen as a very French form of urban disorder) Body-Gendrot adopted a more banlieue -specific approach, in linking banlieue unrest to a universal rift between inhabitants and a nationwide ‘technocratic urbanism’ that planned for populations without their participation
41 Susan Ireland, ‘Les Banlieues de l’Identité: Urban Geography and Immigrant Identities’, in Buford Norman (ed.), French Literature In/and the City (Amsterdam, 1994), p. 186. On suburban bidonvilles and their historical origin see Mordillat, Douce Banlieue , pp. 202-203. 42 Robert Castel, ‘Les Pièges de l’exclusion’, Lien social et politiques 34 (1995), pp. 13-21 (p. 13). 43 Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin (eds.), Key Thinkers on Space and Place (London, 2011), p. 27. 44 On the notion of hyperghetto see Michel Agier, ‘The Ghetto, the Hyperghetto and the Fragmentation of the World’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33:3 (2009), pp. 854-857 (p. 855). 45 Sophie Body-Gendrot, The Social Control of Cities: A Comparative Perspective (London, 2008), p. 246. 28
or consent. 46 Loïc Wacquant has also developed a more specific banlieue model coined the term ‘advanced marginality’ to refer to areas such as the banlieue and the South Side of
Chicago and his 2008 study argues that the differing nature of these ‘disarticulating’ mutations renders any comparison between different national case studies difficult. 47 Yet, while these studies have begun to recognise the specificity of the banlieue context, they still use the 1980s rioting as a starting point and thus analyse the banlieue as a criminal category rather than a lived reality. This thesis does not seek to disprove these social models but rather to argue that they say relatively little about the banlieue experience, whether from a state or resident perspective. While this thesis does not aim to measure the
‘success’ or ‘failure’ of banlieue mass housing, it does seek to depart from a crisis-led narrative of banlieue life and to understand the grand ensemble as an ongoing debate rather than a site of periodic, spectacular conflict.
Towards a definition of French modernity
This thesis offers a critical evaluation of state power in the banlieues , and explores the grand ensemble as an important counterpoint to narratives of a universal modernising process. There are two principal reasons why the case study of the banlieue and social housing more specifically is a useful case study for analysing the nature of French state power. Firstly, the sheer scale of mass housing brought a vast array of what one could term
46 Sophie Body-Gendrot, ‘Deconstructing Youth Violence in French Cities’, European Journal of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice 4 (2005), pp. 4-26 (p.10). In the wake of the 2011 rioting in London however, scholars are beginning to explore the general revival of the city as a terrain of protest and confrontation. See David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (London, 2012) and chapter five of Myria Georgiou, Media and the City: Cosmopolitanism and Difference (Cambridge, 2013). 47 Wacquant, Urban Outcasts , p. 241. Wacquant’s study focuses on La Courneuve and the South Side of Chicago and argues that in each case urban marginality stems from a different set of racial, political and cultural factors. Subsequent sociological studies have built on Wacquant’s ideas by contesting narratives of decline although mainly in reference to contemporary case studies. See for example Agier, ‘The Ghetto’, and chapter three of Silverstein’s Algeria in France on ‘spatialising practices’. 29
‘state institutions’ together in the construction and management of these areas.48 The grands ensembles thus allow for an exploration of the interplay between (amongst others) the local municipality, the housing ministry, residents’ associations and police.
Understanding French modernity as the product of these various (often oppositional) organisms allows for a more detailed analysis of how processes of modernisation operated.
Secondly, the banlieue represents a facet of French modernity that has been frequently associated with decline and elements of failure within the French state apparatus. French postwar modernisation operated in a variety of different spheres but almost all of its economic and social ramifications were seen in the banlieues to some degree. 49 Yet, the grand ensemble is at the forefront of narratives of national decline and remains perhaps the most contentious feature of the nation’s postwar modernisation process. The ongoing challenges and debates evoked by the grand ensemble required the modernising French state to work at the limits of its organising and ordering capacity, making it the ideal gauge for the nature of state power during this period.
The case study of the grand ensemble will be used to argue that French post-war modernity was more concerned with the projection of power than actual control. Using mass housing as the principal case study, this thesis will question whether state action was designed to govern banlieue space or to merely produce the illusion of power: a kind of
48 On the initial political and administrative changes that made mass housing possible, see chapter three of Anne Power, Hovels to Highrise: State Housing in Europe Since 1850 (London, 1993). 49 For an analysis of key postwar changes to the French economy, see William James Adams, Restructuring the French Economy: Government and the Rise of Market Competition Since World War II (Washington, 1989). On other significant architectural developments within the Paris region, see Rosemary Wakeman, The Heroic City: Paris, 1945-1958 (London, 1999), pp. 341-344. For developments to public transport in the context of national modernisation, see Jacob Meunier, On the Fast Track: French Railway Modernization and the Origins of the TGV 1944-1983 (Westport CT, 2002). On possible connections between modernisation and American cultural influences on France, see Richard F. Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (London, 1993). On gender debates in relation to post-war modernisation, see Rebecca Pulju, Women and Mass Consumer Society in Postwar France (Cambridge, 2011). 30
‘fictitious governance’ that instead of engineering out elements that were problematic, merely rendered them invisible. In doing so, this thesis will question the narrative of dramatic, universal French post-war development and will suggest that beneath its veneer of progress, the French state remained rooted in existing hierarchies and modes of governing. This thesis will contest the primacy given to technocrats by arguing that conventional coercive structures such as the police had a dominant and growing role in governing these areas. 50 In considering the ongoing role of coercion, it will also question whether the modernising discourse served as a cloak to mask the state’s private desires to preserve the status quo and aspects of the ‘premodern’. While Foucauldian scholars have viewed modern governance as a gradual drift towards more indirect forms of governance, this thesis will argue that the banlieue represented a vision of modernity that could not have existed without a highly developed apparatus of surveillance and repression.
In acknowledging both the ideological and coercive elements of state power, this thesis will develop the neo-Foucauldian theory of liberal governmentality posited by scholars such as Nikolas Rose, Jean-Claude Barbier and Patrick Joyce. 51 Liberal governmentality refers to a practice of governance which attempts to create self-regulating individuals by imbuing them with notions of respectability and reflexivity, which has evident utility for analysing the propensity of urban space to shape human behaviour. 52 Yet the focus on ‘fantasies of power’ will develop the concept of liberal governmentality in
50 This thesis follows Friedrich Hayek’s understanding of coercion as the ‘control of the environment or circumstances of a person by another (so) that, in order to avoid greater evil, he is forced to act not according to a coherent plan of his own but to serve the ends of another’. Hayek also recognises that coercion could take non-violent forms, such as an economic monopoly. See Friedrich A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago, 1960), pp. 20-21, p. 203. 51 See Nikolas Rose, Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood (Cambridge, 1998); Jean- Claude Barbier, Les Solidarités à l’épreuve des crises (Paris, 2012); Patrick Joyce, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London, 2003). 52 Chris Otter, The Victorian Eye: A Political History of Light and Vision in Britain, 1800-1910 (London, 2008), pp. 18-19. 31
two key ways that address governance of the banlieue in more comprehensive and nuanced fashion. Firstly, this thesis will consider elements of governance that created the impression of reflexivity and self-regulation. Indeed, chapters one and two focus specifically on the French state’s use of sociological and planning knowledge in order to either enact change or portray a particular reality. Secondly, this thesis attempts to reintegrate the consideration of direct coercion into study of post-war France. 53 While the post-1980s banlieues are frequently viewed as intensely policed, there has been less consideration of policing in the initial decades of grand ensemble housing and how coercion helped to consolidate and at times ‘prop up’ the technocratic management of suburban populations.
In exploring the practice of French modernity, this thesis will draw on the approach applied by the sociologist Bruno Latour in his hugely influential 1993 work We Have
Never Been Modern , in which he describes modernity as a rigid constitution that defined not just political boundaries but also prevailing views on religion, science and nature.
Latour summarises the dominant thought process of ‘modernisers’, who attempt to enact a violent rupture with the past yet are privately aware of their own limitations:
Modernisers know perfectly well that even in their own midst islands of barbarism remain, in which technological efficacy and social arbitrariness are excessively intertwined. But long before they will have achieved modernisation, they will have liquidated those islands, and we shall inhabit the same planet; we shall all be equally modern, all equally capable of profiting from what, alone, forever escapes the tyranny of social interest: economic
53 The post-Foucauldian historian Patrick Joyce for example argues that the distinction between liberal governmentality and police as forms of governance is a useful one as it allows scholars to chart how specific hallmarks of the military-fiscal state such as mapping gradually shifted towards serving the social needs of the modern liberal state. Yet, this thesis considers latent elements of militarism that propped up the modern state. See Joyce, Rule of Freedom , pp. 39-40. 32
rationality, scientific truth, technological efficiency. Certain modernisers continue to speak as if such a fate were possible and desirable. 54
Latour conceptualises modernity as a series of universalising and homogenising discourses but deeply questions modernisers’ ability to enact their goals. This thesis will apply
Latour’s model to banlieue ‘modernisers’ such as planners, sociologists, police and politicians. A central theme of this thesis will be the idea of modernity as a largely illusory phenomenon that was adept at producing discourses that proclaimed its efficacy but that was frequently erratic in terms of its actual power and influence. Latour’s theory of a disparity between modernity as a theory and modernity as a practice will be used to question the notion of the French state as all-encompassing and universal, thereby challenging notions of the post-war period as a significant rupture in French society.
The central focus of this thesis will be upon two housing estates in the Paris region:
Les Courtillières in Pantin (completed in 1959) and the 4000 logements in La Courneuve
(completed in 1963). The choice of the 4000 logements as a case study stems from the fact that it is often discussed as one of the archetypal banlieue ‘sink estates’, yet there has been very little historical study of its construction and initial period of habitation. The 4000 logements is a prime example of an estate that has been misrepresented and misunderstood in terms of its planning rationale and the wider urban debates that it generated. While the
‘notorious’ 4000 logements will be confronted and explored in greater depth, the choice of
Les Courtillières reflects a desire to move away from stereotypical examples of mass housing. At present a relatively large amount of scholarship exists on a small number of estates, most notably Sarcelles in the outer suburbs of Paris and Les Minguettes near Lyon,
54 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Harvard, 1993), p. 131. For a more recent discussion of Latour’s theory of modernity in relation to his other ideas see chapter three of Anders Blok, Torben Elgaard Jensen, Bruno Latour: Hybrid Thoughts in a Hybrid World (Abingdon, 2011). 33
whereas smaller developments tend to be overlooked.55 Les Courtillières was a smaller complex of around 1600 housing units that is largely absent from academic and popular discourse on the banlieues , largely because it does not fit several key aspects of the banlieue metanarrative; its population growth was not as pronounced as it was not a major centre for immigration, and it has never played host to a significant ‘ banlieue riot’. 56
Nevertheless, both estates featured in this thesis share certain similarities: for instance both were built in industrial towns situated within the Seine-Saint-Denis département , around four to six miles from the centre of Paris. 57 Furthermore, from 1959 onwards both estates were part of municipalities governed by the PCF (Parti Communiste Français). 58 They thus shared a number of common features in terms of their micro-politics and their geographical relationship to Paris and the surrounding region.
55 Sarcelles was constructed between 1955 and 1975 and would eventually comprise over 12,000 housing units. On Sarcelles see chapter nine of Castells, City and Grassroots ; chapter five of Newsome, French Urban Planning ; Jean Duquesne, Vivre à Sarcelles? Le grand ensemble et ses problèmes (Paris, 1966). Hervé Vieillard-Baron, ‘Sarcelles Aujourd'hui : de la cité-dortoir aux communautés?’ Espace, populations, sociétés 2-3 (1996), pp. 325-333; Camille Canteux, ‘Sarcelles, ville rêvée, ville introuvable’, Sociétés & réprésentations 1: 17 (2004), pp. 343-359; Christine Charles, Sarcelles-Lochères, 1954-1974 : entre grand ensemble et ville nouvelle (Paris, 1995). Les Minguettes was constructed in the neighbourhood of Vénissieux in the southern suburbs of Lyon between 1965 and 1973 and would eventually comprise over 9000 housing units. On Les Minguettes see Yves Crozet, Les Minguettes ou les infortunes de la tutelle (Paris, 1987); Jacques Barou and Lucie Melas, ‘Les Minguettes d'hier à demain: La ville désintégrée?’, Hommes & migrations 1217 (1999), pp. 66-79; Christian Renaudo, L’Ethnicité dans la cite: jeux et enjeux de la categorisation ethnique (Paris, 1999). 56 Pantin’s population experienced a 30% increase between 1954 and 1968. In comparison, La Courneuve’s population rose by over 200% in the same period, while the population of Sarcelles rose by over 600%. 57 Until 1965, Pantin and La Courneuve were both situated in the larger département of Seine, which also included the city of Paris. In 1965 this département was abolished and divided into four smaller départements : Hauts-de-Seine, Val-de-Marne, Seine-Saint-Denis and Paris itself. There is an important debate to be had on the centrality of the Parisian suburbs to historical study of the banlieues but this thesis will not address this issue. 58 This meant that the PCF made up the decision making body (the conseil municipal ) and the executive (the mayor) of both towns. The function of a French municipal mayor is to propose and implement the budget, and to manage the town’s natural and built environment. Mayors are also responsible for matters of public health and security. See Andrew Knapp, Vincent Wright, The Government and Politics of France (London, 2001), p. 345. 34
The objective here is not to undertake a comparative study of the two estates, or to limit the enquiry to these housing developments. Alongside these principal case studies, the chapters that follow also consider relevant events and issues that occurred in other banlieues in the Paris region. Relating the overarching debates surrounding the grands ensembles to the localised issues occurring at Pantin and La Courneuve will allow for a more comprehensive understanding of the modernisation process. In reassessing the stereotypical banlieue and incorporating untold elements of banlieue life, these case studies will bring the organising and modernising elements of the French state into sharper focus than existing banlieue scholarship has allowed. In terms of chronology, this thesis will begin in 1955, when Les Courtillières entered the initial planning stage and will end in
1973 when state legislation brought a formal end to grand ensemble constructions.
This thesis will use a number of sources in order to interrogate the nature of state power in the banlieues . Planning archives will be considered in order to explore the motivations behind the construction and management of the grands ensembles .
Architectural plans of the 4000 logements and Les Courtillières will be used to look at the spatial particularities of these estates and the varying planning ideologies that they employed. Unrealised plans will also be considered in order to highlight the economic and political inertia that characterised the development process and incidences where the state’s vision outstripped the economic reality. 59 Council minutes regarding social housing will be analysed in order to explore the debates that emerged from the differing priorities
59 Research into the planning of estates was undertaken at the Archives Municipales de Pantin and the Archives Municipales de La Courneuve. Research into regional development strategies covering whole towns or départements was conducted at the Archives de Paris and the Archives Départementales de la Seine Saint Denis in Bobigny. 35
of the municipality, planners and the national ministry. 60 Planning discourse will thus allow this thesis to go beyond the image of a totalising rational housing project and to look more closely at the problems and antagonisms that the grands ensembles generated. Source material will also be drawn from sociological studies of the grands ensembles which will be read as primary sources in order to explore the delimitations of state knowledge of these areas. Banlieue sociology will shed light on significant changes in research models, methodologies and case studies, which reflected the prevailing view of the banlieue that the state wanted to portray.
While this thesis is not an oral history of life on the grand ensemble , it will draw on oral evidence gathered by the Laboratoire Architecture Anthropologie (LAA) and the
Mairie de Pantin.61 Resident experiences will also be analysed through records of correspondence between residents and the state (specifically the municipality, regional prefects and social housing offices) and journalistic accounts of estate life.62 These views will be used to compare and contrast state narratives of banlieue life with everyday experiences, and to explore elements of banlieue life that are absent from official sources.
Drawing on Gramsci’s theory of the state as a multi-faceted entity, this thesis will also consider state power as enacted by the conseil municipal . PCF records relating to social and cultural events, activism and law enforcement will be used to more closely understand
60 Conseil municipal minutes are held at the Archives Municipales de Pantin. 61 Resident testimonies are principally drawn from the LAA’s online history of the 4000 logements, which is located at http://www.laa-courneuve.net/ . Those for Pantin are drawn from a social history of Les Courtillières compiled by the municipal archive. See Geneviève Michel and Pierre-Jacques Derainne, Aux Courtillières: histoires singulières et exemplaires (Paris, 2005). 62 Resident correspondence was found at the Archives Municipales de Pantin. Journalistic sources include local newspapers such as Journal d’Aubervilliers , Journal de La Courneuve and Le Parisien Libéré , as well as national newspapers such as Humanité and Le Monde . 36
the everyday issues relating to governance of the grands ensembles .63 These sources will be used to explore the anxieties, strategies and compromises that governance of banlieue space often involved. Finally, police records relating to the banlieues will be analysed in order to explore the state construction of ‘suburban crime’ and the means through which repression was justified and enacted. These sources will be used to explore ways in which the state’s coercive powers expanded during this period, and to highlight a significant element of French modernisation that is often absent from scholarship on the immediate post-war decades.
Chapter outline
Chapter one will analyse sociological studies of the grands ensembles during the period concerned. While scholars tend to read sociology of the banlieues ahistorically, as evidence of the social issues arising from mass housing, this chapter will look more critically at how ‘rational’ banlieue knowledge was constructed by social scientists. This chapter will examine the boundaries of sociological knowledge of mass housing in order to demonstrate the limits of technocratic power within these environments. In particular, this chapter will consider the subtle stigmatisation that researchers began to apply to these spaces, as they shifted from assessing the success of estates to exploring their perceived failure and seeking to portray the grand ensemble as a pathological site of modernity. It will be argued that sociology of the grands ensembles reflected not totalising sociological knowledge of the banlieues , but a significant lack of knowledge of these areas. In this way, such studies presented the grand ensemble in a simplified form and thus acknowledged that certain elements of banlieue life were ‘unknowable’ and ‘ungovernable’.
63 PCF records of cultural events can be found in the municipal archives of Pantin and La Courneuve. Records from the PCF party administration and from the regional Préfecture de Police can be found at the Archives Départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis. 37
Chapter two focuses on planning records relating to the 4000 logements and Les
Courtillières in order to analyse how state views of the banlieues were expressed through the construction of social housing. While scholars have often viewed the grand ensemble as a generic planning project that was reproduced throughout the banlieues , this chapter will contest this idea by looking at the differing ideologies that planners employed on different estates. Contrary to dominant narratives of the grands ensembles as a ‘planning consensus’ this chapter will suggest that rather than a national housing project, postwar banlieue developments were highly contingent and reflected the whims of individual planners and local officials. Furthermore, this chapter will analyse the ongoing conflicts between planners, ministers and municipal officials that underpinned the construction and management of these areas. While in cases, estates were designed to dramatically reshape
‘traditional’ working-class modes of living, at other times estates were vague in terms of ideology and targeted an entirely different set of issues. 64 This chapter will argue that banlieue planners soon moved towards a more flexible conception of the grands ensembles and their purpose; a conception that could be re-imagined and re-branded to suit the dominant planning vogue.
Chapter three explores everyday experiences of inhabiting and governing the grands ensembles . As well as analysing resident experiences of social housing, this chapter will also look at the theme of local governance and the civic identities that municipalities sought to project onto these areas. While the banlieues have traditionally been viewed as sites of hegemonic technocratic or municipal power, local experiences of mass housing
64 This thesis understands ideology not just in terms of the dominant forms of social thought but as a phenomenon determined by social context. See chapter one of Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London, 1991). 38
will be used to suggest that on a local level, state power was diffuse and uneven. Moreover, existing oral testimonies and journalistic portrayals of estate life will be re-analysed in order to highlight significant counterarguments to the idea of banlieue governance as a top- down notion. It will be argued for instance that the power of the local mairie was largely symbolic and that the political agenda of the municipality was often shaped by residents themselves. The outward image that the local state projected it will be argued, shrouded its inner limitations in terms of its ability to actively intervene in the lives of grand ensemble residents.
Chapter four will elements of confrontation that took place within the Paris banlieues between 1955 and 1973. This chapter will challenge existing banlieue studies that view suburban policing as a relatively new phenomenon by looking at significant developments in law enforcement during the early decades of mass housing. Furthermore, this chapter will address an overemphasis on ‘technocratic’ forms of governance in many urban histories by considering the role of direct coercion in ‘propping up’ the French technocracy. This will involve a detailed discussion of the relationships that existed between residents and power structures such as the PCF, the Police Nationale and industrial trade unions. Specifically, this chapter will explore the PCF’s attempts to co-opt resident activism for its own ends and the increased police surveillance of banlieue residents. The PCF’s reliance on the police in particular will be used to explore a key limitation in ideological forms of governance and the ongoing utility of repression within the ‘modernised’ French state. 39
Chapter One: Imagining the banlieue
The banlieues cannot be abandoned because it is here that challenges concerning our common future play out. There is no inevitability to the decline of the banlieues . For twenty years, researchers and sociologists have conducted countless field studies and have repeatedly sounded the alarm. These are only diagnoses. Politicians have been slow to experiment with remedies. The current calm is deceptive. More than ever, the banlieues are the priority area.
Robert Castel, 2007. 1
In a 2007 interview, the sociologist Robert Castel emphasised the importance of the banlieues as a space to be ‘diagnosed’ by social scientists and managed by politicians.
Castel offered an assessment not just of the social situation in the banlieues but also of the sociologist’s position within the debate. For Castel, the problem for the sociologist arose not from issues of methodology but from being ignored by those in power. His words touch upon a more long-standing issue in the observation and study of suburban communities that was equally relevant in the early years of banlieue mass housing. Indeed,
Castel’s claims invite further questions about precisely what sociologists have said about the banlieues and the nature of the relationship between sociologists and the state.
This chapter focuses on sociological studies of the banlieues between 1956 and
1971: research that formed an important element to what one could term ‘state knowledge’ of these areas. Yet, the term ‘state knowledge’ is problematic as it both serves to homogenise the types of knowledge that the state produced and also reifies ‘the state’ as a
1 Robert Castel, ‘ Banlieues : état d'urgence’, Nouvel observateur , 11 th October 2007. 40
singular self-aware entity. 2 In the case of the grands ensembles for example, the state did not ‘think’ but rather paid sociologists to think on its behalf and the nature of ‘the state’ evolved considerably during the period in question.3 Thus, while this chapter does not seek to imply a homogeneous ‘sociologist-state’ view of mass housing, it will argue that sociologists offer a crucial means of deconstructing the notion of ‘ rational state knowledge’ with regards to the banlieue . French sociology was a complex field that incorporated a range of different intellectual traditions and this chapter will principally focus on the applied sociology funded by state institutions such as the Ministry of Construction. It will be argued that sociologists did not endow the French state with omniscient power but rather with a problematic corpus of knowledge that it had to shape into a narrative of order. 4 With regards to the theme of the fantasy of state power, this chapter will question whether sociological research was always an attempt to know the grand ensemble or whether it sought to conceal elements of the banlieue experience that were viewed as unexplainable or ‘inconvenient’ within prevailing state narratives.
2 As Timothy Mitchell argues, ‘the state’ is not a singular structure but rather the sum of a series of structural effects that give the impression of an overarching framework. See Mitchell, ‘Limits of the State’, p. 94. 3 Perhaps most significant here is the transition from the Fourth to the Fifth Republic during 1958. On the wider political implications of this transition see Jacques Chapsal, La Vie politique sous la Ve République, volume 1 (Paris, 1987); William G. Andrews, Stanley Hoffmann (eds.), The Impact of the Fifth Republic on France (Albany, 1981); Maurice Larkin, France Since the Popular Front: Government and People, 1936- 1996 (Oxford, 1997). On changes to the notion of ‘the state’ more specifically see Stanley Hoffmann, ‘Le Citoyen et l’état: de la IIIe à la Ve République’, in Georges Santoni (ed.), Contemporary French Culture and Society (Albany, 1981), pp. 228-263. As this chapter will discuss, the French state (often through the Ministry of Planning) commissioned a number of studies of suburban communities, working through institutions such as the Centre de Sociologie Urbaine and the Institut National d'Études Démographiques. The debate on sociology is part of a wider debate on the development of technocratic elites in the post-war period, which has frequently centred on the énarques; graduates of France’s prestigious École Nationale d’Administration. For a general history of the ENA see Marie-Christine Kessler, L’École nationale d’administration vol 1: la politique de la haute fonction publique (Paris, 1978). For a more critical analysis see J. Mandrin, L’Énarchie (Paris, 1967). For a wider discussion of post-war elites, see Pierre Bourdieu, La Noblesse d’état: grandes écoles et esprit de corps (Paris, 1989). 4 This chapter deals chiefly with sociologists of the banlieues . For a wider analysis of sociology as a discipline and the role of the French state within social research, see Philippe Masson, ‘French Sociology and the State’, Current Sociology 60:5 (2012), pp. 719-729. 41
By looking at how sociology ‘propped up’ areas of limited state power in the banlieues , this chapter will build on Paul Rabinow’s study of early 20 th century French planning. Rabinow’s Foucauldian interest in ‘urban experts’ leads him to overstate the harmonious and progressive nature of the post-1945 technocracy, by suggesting that it had the ability to foresee social problems before they occurred. For instance, Rabinow cites the view of the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs that ‘sociological insight and technical legal tools would make possible a rejuvenated, healthy and more just society’, yet he does not explore the deeper motivations for ‘knowing’ the city. 5 Rabinow views sociology as central to practices of governmentality, a term coined by Michel Foucault that in essence, refers to a complex form of power that mobilises a range of institutional and administrative procedures that seek to produce ‘governable’ citizens. 6 This chapter will develop
Rabinow’s approach and will engage with historical debates on governmentality by questioning sociologists’ claim to embody a technical, rational science. For example, it will look at incidences where social scientists were concerned with preserving the status quo or addressing their own inability to address emerging social problems.
Urban historians have begun to analyse post-war banlieue sociology, although existing studies tend to focus on specific individuals rather than a wider body of researchers. Andrew Merrifield’s 2002 study of Marxist urban thought for example, touches upon Henri Lefebvre’s experiences of mass housing and argues that Lefebvre’s growing disillusionment with post-war planning (and modern life more generally) can in
5 Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (London, 1989), pp. 260-261. Rabinow’s idealised view may stem from the shrinkage of the French welfare state ( état providence ) during the early 1980s, which has led to a romanticisation of the ‘golden age’ of welfare provision, and it is within this wider benevolent ‘scientific administration of modern life’ that he views modernist planning. 6 Michel Foucault, ‘On Governmentality’, Ideology and Consciousness 6 (1979), pp. 5-21 (p. 6). For a further exploration of the meaning of governmentality see Nikolas Rose, Peter Miller, ‘Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government’, The British Journal of Sociology 43:2 (1992), pp. 173-205 (p. 174). 42
part be attributed to the construction of the new town of Mourenx in southwest France, which ‘blighted’ his home region. 7 While Merrifield makes the valid point that the
‘objective’ research models of urban critics often shrouded personal anxieties and motivations, he does not consider how ‘official’ state sociology may have been similarly influenced. Although Merrifield applies this argument to Lefebvre, an external observer, he does not ask the deeper question of whether the construction and governance of these spaces was also shaped by individual whim. The planning historian W. Brian Newsome goes further in this regard when he analyses the work of the sociologist Paul-Henry
Chombart de Lauwe (who was particularly active between the mid-1950s and the late
1960s) and his affiliations with the progressive Catholic left. 8 In Newsome’s view,
Chombart’s theories were a hybrid of the sociologist’s own personal convictions and a desire to rephrase the question of banlieue planning in a way that fitted the state agenda. 9
Newsome and Merrifield’s studies show how the sociologist was a protagonist within the banlieues rather than an external ‘objective’ observer, but one can expand their analytical scope by considering how factors such as professional opportunism and the state’s desire for the ‘right’ kind of knowledge were used to construct power within problematic suburban areas. By focusing on sociologists, this chapter highlights an element of the
7 Andy Merrifield, Metromarxism: a Marxist Tale of the City (London, 2002), p. 80. Henri Lefebvre remains a highly influential sociologist and philosopher in French and Anglophone scholarship. As with Merrifield’s study, this chapter seeks to place Lefebvre within his context as an urban critic. On Lefebvre’s influences see Stuart Elden, ‘Between Marx and Heidegger: Politics, Philosophy and Lefebvre’s The Production of Space ’, Antipode 36:1 (2004), pp. 86-105. On Lefebvre’s intellectual evolution throughout his career see Lukasz Stanek, Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory (Minneapolis, 2011). 8 See chapter five of Newsome, French Urban Planning . Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe was an influential figure in French urban sociology, particularly between the mid-1950s and the late 1960s. He headed the Centre d’ethnologie sociale which was part of the CNRS, the largest governmental research agency in France and later taught at the prestigious École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE). Chombart de Lauwe’s influence within state planning circles declined during the late 1960s, as he became increasingly critical of the government’s urban policies. Hereafter, Chombart de Lauwe will be referred to as ‘Chombart’. On postwar developments within the Catholic left, see Gerd-Rainer Horn, Emmanuel Gerard (eds.), Left Catholicism 1943-1955: Catholics and Society in Western Europe at the Point of Liberation (Leuven, 2001). 9 Newsome, French Urban Planning , p. 122. 43
French technocracy that derived its power not from totalising knowledge but by delimiting the ways in which specific issues could be discussed and critiqued.
In analysing and contextualising banlieue sociology, this chapter builds on Bruno
Latour’s notion of science as a socially-constructed system of organisation. 10 Latour sought to de-exceptionalise the scientist as a figure within public discourse, and this chapter proposes to apply a similar approach to the banlieue sociologist in order to evaluate the
French state’s modernisation narrative more critically. This chapter will build on Latour’s critique of modernity by exploring the limitations of state knowledge and questioning the desirability of ‘scientific truth’ to the sociologist. Furthermore, this chapter will employ
Bourdieu’s concept of reflexive sociology, which is receptive to the idea that state sociology does not always seek to uncover truth.11 Bourdieu envisions a more self-critical approach that applies the methodology of analysis to researchers themselves as well as the object of their investigations, and recognises the power structures that sociologists themselves are a part of. In a published interview from 1983, Bourdieu explored the problems he perceived with existing sociological methods:
You first have to ask whether there really is such a thing as a demand for a scientific discourse in the social sciences. Who wants to know the truth about the social world? Are there people who want the truth, who have an interest in the truth, and, if there are, are they in any position to demand it? In other words, you would have to carry out a sociology of the demand for sociology. Most sociologists, being paid by the state as civil servants, can get by without asking themselves that question…An important part of orthodox sociological discourse owes its immediate social success to the fact that it answers the dominant demand, which often comes down to a demand for rational instruments for management and domination… 12
Bourdieu perceived sociologists as deeply unconcerned with notions of truth and in cases, incapable of demanding it. In other words, he saw social science as existing to preserve the
10 Bruno Latour, Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (Guildford, 1986), p. 13. 11 For more on reflexive sociology and its subsequent application in scholarship, see David Swartz, Vera L. Zolberg (eds.), After Bourdieu: Influence, Critique, Elaboration (Dordrecht, 2004). 12 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Interview with J. Heilbron and B. Maso’, Sociologisch Tijdschrift 10:2 (1983) republished in Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology (Oxford, 1990), p. 50. 44
status quo and in cases, to cover up its own limitations to know and to govern. The possible limitations to sociological knowledge will be explored within this chapter, in discussing the elements of banlieue life that researchers were unable to explain, and subsequent attempts to adjust research models so that these elements were less visible.
While not every study relating to mass housing can be included, attempts have been made to ensure a sample that reflects the broad evolution of sociological thinking on the banlieue . Chombart de Lauwe is included, as he played an ongoing role in grand ensemble sociology, as well as René Kaës who applied Chombart’s principles to a detailed study of an estate near Strasbourg. This chapter includes Claude Cornuau’s 1965 study, which used detailed resident questionnaires for the first time, as well as Paul Clerc’s 1967 investigation, which was a more explicit attempt to problematise the grands ensembles.
Finally, Michel Freyssenet’s 1971 analysis has been included as it marked a new period in banlieue sociology that looked for alternative analytical models in order to understand suburban life. This chapter also considers research that offered a critique of orthodox methods, such as a series of essays by Henri Lefebvre during the early 1960s and a study commissioned by the PCF during the late 1960s. 13 These sources offer more critical assessments of mass housing developments and ‘official’ sociological approaches.
Section one of this chapter looks at how the grands ensembles were debated by two prominent researchers during the late 1950s: the sociologist Chombart de Lauwe and the social critic Henri Lefebvre. Chombart’s writings on banlieue space will be used to argue that state sociologists sough to satisfy a state demand for the ‘right’ kind of knowledge and
13 The PCF is a complex element, as the party was ideologically opposed to the national government, yet was also part of the French state as it governed many of the banlieues concerned. Yet, this chapter will maintain that the sociological research that it commissioned lay outside of the central state’s objectives regarding the discussion of banlieue space. 45
to create a vision of a benign, governable banlieue that ignored the internal complexity of these areas. The work of Lefebvre will be used to highlight a view of mass housing that lay outside of the view of state-commissioned studies and presented more ‘inconvenient’ elements of suburban life. Section two will explore developments in banlieue sociology during the early 1960s, specifically the normalisation of certain social problems and the conscious exclusion of others. While Henri Lefebvre’s ongoing discussion of grands ensembles viewed estates as pathological sites of modernity, René Kaës’s study largely avoided the more complex issues such as social alienation and implied that they lay outside the responsibility of the sociologist. This process of ‘strategic ignoring’ fed into Claude
Cornuau’s 1965 study, which expressed reservations about the validity of resident viewpoints and the utility of the grand ensemble as an analytical category. Section three will analyse studies of the late 1960s and early 1970s by Paul Clerc and Michel Freyssenet.
Clerc’s study will be used to chart a level of disillusionment with suburban mass housing due to a perceived irrationality in resident opinions. Finally, Freyssenet’s study will considered to illustrate the demise of the grand ensemble as a sociological category, as researchers moved towards case studies that were less politically-charged and more amenable to narratives of economic and cultural progress.
1. The grand ensemble as an imagined future , 1956-1960
The sociologist Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe (who would subsequently work for the
Ministry of Construction) and the social critic Henri Lefebvre disagreed over the role of banlieue space within the modern city. Both researchers acknowledged in their writing that the construction of mass housing placed an unprecedented set of demands on the post-war
French state. While collective housing was not a new phenomenon in France, housing 46
developments of the mid-1950s were enacted on a far larger scale, spearheaded by the Plan
Courant legislation of 1953 which aimed to construct 320,000 housing units per year for the next five years. 14 This legislation also required employers to contribute to housing construction (which made large-scale projects financially viable), and coincided with well- publicised campaigns by the priest Abbé Pierre, which helped to draw attention to the plight of Paris’s homeless population, and to render housing a matter of public urgency. 15
Therefore, although mass housing is often associated with the ‘moral panic’ propagated by
Abbé Pierre, there was equally a more logical, pragmatic dimension to the grands ensembles . The divergent views of banlieue life presented by Chombart and Lefebvre illustrated early sociological divisions surrounding the nation’s mass housing project.
The construction of grands ensembles was welcomed by Chombart de Lauwe, who recognised the professional opportunities that such developments could bring. Chombart was a close adherent to the Chicago School of sociology which had risen to prominence in the 1920s and had experienced a resurgence after the Second World War. The Chicago
School developed existing sociological paradigms in a multitude of ways but the most relevant elements in the context of this study were an interest in direct participant observation and to some degree, a belief in universal models of human urban behaviour, which was initially developed as a method of forecasting consumer habits. Although
14 Notable earlier examples include cité-jardins such as Suresnes (inspired by Ebenezer Howard’s garden cities) and a number of small-scale estates built under the Vichy government to replace war-damaged housing. On the cité-jardins see Hubert Lempereur, ‘L’Urbanisme des Habitations à Bon Marché au Pré- Saint-Gervais de 1920 à 1954 les Cité-jardins Henri Sellier’, in Valérie Perlès, Christine Misselyn (eds.), Le Pré entre Paris et banlieue : histoire(s) du Pré-Saint-Gervais (Paris, 2004). On mass housing under Vichy, see chapter two of Newsome, French Urban Planning . 15 Abbé Pierre was a former member of the French Resistance who formed the Emmaus charity in 1949, which aimed to combat poverty and homelessness. During the harsh winter of 1954 Abbé Pierre used a speech on Radio Luxembourg and a letter to Le Figaro to draw attention to the deaths of two homeless Parisians from cold and to call for government action on the housing issue. For a wider discussion of French post-war humanitarianism see Axelle Brodiez-Dolino, Emmaüs et l'abbé Pierre (Paris, 2008). 47
Chombart was critical of aspects of its methodology, he was nevertheless a closer adherent to the Chicago School, and used several of its key principles in his 1956 study of everyday life in the Paris region. 16 For Chombart, the Paris region offered the key to understanding the importance of housing within the daily life of working-class families as it presented a varied range of housing within a relatively small geographical area. He surveyed households from across the region that varied in location and socio-economic group and sought to explore the correlation between housing quality and resident satisfaction or one’s sense of belonging. More broadly, Chombart’s study was a reflection on the potential role of the sociologist in ameliorating urban space and represented an attempt to place himself in the ‘shop window’ of urban study.
Chombart used his findings to argue for increased development of the banlieue , by claiming that the region’s population largely supported the demographic movement from
Paris to the suburbs. Chombart recorded for instance that ‘no banlieue households want to return to Paris’ whereas ‘few Parisian households claim that they want to stay in the same neighbourhood’. 17 While both Paris and the banlieues had issues of poor housing quality, it was the banlieues that were seen as having the more settled and contented population. 18
Chombart’s notion of an unstable Paris served to underline early 1950s nostalgist cultural discourses that lamented the perceived loss of the city’s historical identity. 19 Overall,
Chombart saw banlieue dwellers as content within the Paris region, as their ultimate
16 On the Chicago school of sociology, see Martin Bulmer, The Chicago School of Sociology: Institutionalization, Diversity, and the Rise of Sociological Research (London, 1986); Gary Alan Fine (ed.), A Second Chicago School?: The Development of a Postwar American Sociology (London, 1995). 17 Chombart, La Vie quotidienne des familles ouvrières (Gentilly, 1956), p. 94. 18 The urban sociologists Michael Young and Peter Wilmott were uncovering a similar trend in Bethnal Green in East London, which was published in 1957 under the title Family and Kinship in East London . Young and Wilmott noted for example that it was frequently the extended family rather than the welfare state that was the most prominent source of aid and support. 19 For a detailed discussion of this nostalgist trend, see chapter two of Rosemary Wakeman, The Heroic City: Paris, 1945-1958 (London, 2009). 48
housing aspiration was not to be found elsewhere but in the acquisition of a suburban pavillon home. 20 The desire for a pavillon home (often referred to as the rève du pavillon , or pavillon dream) was seen as a purely banlieue phenomenon, whereas according to
Chombart, ‘in Paris we found almost no one who mentioned it’. 21 This notion of an unstable Paris and relatively harmonious banlieues was a useful trope for planners who sought to justify development of the suburbs and to argue that Paris-to-banlieue migration was beneficial to those concerned.
Although Chombart identified potential issues with building housing in the outer banlieues and urban Paris, notably that of geographical isolation and air quality, the inner banlieues , he claimed, offered an ideal compromise. 22 Chombart stated that ‘it is the inner banlieue (with fresh air, but not too far from the centre) that most people in Paris and even some in the outer banlieue want to come to’. 23 Chombart alluded to the inner banlieues as a mythical workers’ environment when he claimed that ‘despite the misery that exists here’ people were attracted by ‘being close to principal employment centres’ and ‘being in a typically working-class area [ zone typiquement ouvrière ].24 The inner banlieues were thus viewed as a prime location for development: a conclusion that would have been highly attractive to Chombart’s potential patrons who sought to rehouse Parisian residents in these areas. Chombart thus constructed the banlieue as an archetypal ‘technocrat’s problem’: one that could be solved through bricks and mortar and the rational ordering of existing communities. Rather than a critical discussion of possible planning solutions, Chombart’s
20 On pavillon construction techniques and design see Mordillat, Douce banlieue , pp. 202-210. 21 Chombart, Vie quotidienne, p. 94. 22 The inner banlieues referred to here are those in the petite couronne , the inner ring of banlieues surrounding Paris that would eventually form the départements of Seine-Saint-Denis, Hauts-de-Seine and Val de Marne. This area is smaller and more built up than the relatively extensive and semi-rural grande couronne , which would contain the départements of Seine-et-Marne, Yvelines, Essonne and Val d’Oise. 23 Chombart, Vie quotidienne, p. 94. 24 Chombart, Vie quotidienne, p. 96. 49
study was an attempt to create a coherent modernisation narrative that emphasised the inherent utility of the banlieue as a site for development.
As well as presenting banlieue issues in a way that justified state policy, Chombart also sought to gain favour with planning authorities more directly. In one section of his study for instance, Chombart spoke favourably of the architect Robert Auzelle (who incidentally, shared his progressive Catholic background), praising him for overseeing
‘positive surveys…into the state of housing’. 25 Subsequently, Chombart was later able to obtain funding from Auzelle to carry out a survey of Le Petit Clamart, a banlieue town in which Auzelle subsequently constructed a grand ensemble . Chombart’s desire for close cooperation between planner and sociologist was also inspired by examples from Great
Britain such as the work of Mass Observation and Ruth Glass’s study of Middlesbrough. 26
Glass had worked as a sociological consultant, on an equal footing with architects, for the planner Max Lock’s renovation strategy of Middlesbrough during the mid-1940s. 27 Her study employed both quantitative methods and interviews with residents, and while the experiment was not copied elsewhere, the appeal to an aspiring state sociologist such as
Chombart was evident. While Chombart had a long-standing interest in the condition of the working class stemming from his progressive Catholic background, it is equally clear that he sought to frame issues in a way that was appealing to state planners. 28 Yet, the planning historian W. Brian Newsome argues that Chombart’s desire to court state patronage was also necessitated by his problematic position within academic sociology, which was
25 Chombart, Vie quotidienne, p. 66. 26 Chombart, Vie quotidienne, p. 65. On the history of Mass Observation see Nick Hubble, Mass Observation and Everyday Life: Culture, History, Theory (Basingstoke, 2010). 27 David Alec Reeder, Richard Rodger, Robert Colls (eds.), Cities of Ideas: Civil Society and Urban Governance in Britain 1800-2000 (Aldershot, 2004), p. 255. 28 Chombart’s wartime experiences were also important, as he served as an instructor at the École des Cadres d’Uriage, a school founded by the Vichy government that aimed to create a new, acquiescent elite. Here he developed a keen interest in social observation, as opposed to purely quantitative methods. On the school’s research and guiding ideology see John Hellman, Knight-Monks of Vichy France: Uriage, 1940-1945 (Quebec City, 1993). 50
generally more theoretical in nature. Newsome notes for example that Chombart had clashed with the prominent French sociologist Georges Gurvitch (who Kristin Ross describes as ‘the leading sociologist of his day’), who criticised Chombart’s emphasis on empirical methodologies over philosophy. 29 Gurvitch argued that sociologists who practiced applied sociology were little more than ‘straw technocrats’, who over-privileged empirical methods at the expense of theory. 30 Thus, while Bourdieu views state sociology principally in terms of professional opportunism, it was a response to prevailing intellectual conditions as well as national discourses of modernisation.
Figure 1.1: ‘Dilapidated housing in the inner-banlieue ’. Chombart, La Vie Quotidienne , p. 176a.
While initial critical responses to grands ensembles were limited to fringe politics and artistic circles, the Chicago School’s views on urban space were increasingly criticised
29 Ross, Fast Cars , p. 189. 30 Newsome, French Urban Planning , p. 126. Gurvitch’s critique of Chombart formed part of a wider debate in post-war French sociology between ‘traditional’ theoretical and emerging empirical methods. For more on this debate see Cathérine Déchamp-Le Roux, ‘The Origins of Medical Sociology’, in Cherry Schrecker (ed.), Transatlantic Voyages and Sociology: The Migration and Development of Ideas (Farnham, 2012), pp. 97-113. 51
during the late 1950s. 31 Henri Lefebvre’s research into suburban mass housing for instance, offered an ongoing critical assessment of the grands ensembles that differed greatly from
Chombart’s view. Lefebvre was a social researcher who had been loosely affiliated with the state, having worked on a rural sociology project at the CNRS (Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique) between 1949 and 1961. 32 The CNRS had links with the
Resistance Left and thus had a more progressive reputation than the larger INED institution (Institut National d’Études Démographiques), which was founded by de
Gaulle’s post-war government to study demographic problems. 33 Lefebvre passed through a series of political phases during his career, from an initial interest in surrealist circles and
Frankfurt School social theory during the 1920s, to a later interest in more orthodox
Stalinist and Marxist humanist approaches.34 Merrifield links Lefebvre’s interest in suburban housing in the early 1960s to a general trend in Western Marxism that was moving away from the workplace to focus ‘as much on urbanism as industrialism, on streets as much as factories’. 35 This move away from the workplace reflects a growing interest in Marx’s earlier writings on social alienation which left-wing thinkers applied to
31 For example, a 1954 article in the Lettrist magazine Potlatch had outlined the movement’s opposition to the grands ensembles stating that architects had constructed ‘model slums…It is the “barrack” [ caserne ] style’. See 31 André-Frank Conord, ‘Construction des taudis’, Potlatch 3 (1954), pp. 25-26. On the history of the Lettrists see Tom McDonough (ed.), Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents (Boston, 2004), pp. 4-12. On the history of the French avant garde more widely, see Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (Durham NC, 1987), pp. 95-97. 32 Andrew Merrifield argues that Lefebvre’s research focused on the rural peasantry, drawing on the 1949 revolution in China as confirmation of their importance to the development of socialism. See Andrew Merrifield, Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction (Abingdon, 2006), p. 2. 33 Philip Nord, France's New Deal: From the Thirties to the Postwar Era (Princeton, 2012), p. 200. 34 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley, 1993), p. 419. The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist social theory that arose in the 1920s, and with which thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Jurgen Habermas became associated. The movement emerged out of a belief that conventional Marxism could not adequately explain the development of capitalist societies during the twentieth century. On Marxist humanism see Edward Novack, Humanism & Socialism (London, 1973) and chapter eight of Gary Gutting, French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 2001). 35 Merrifield, Metromarxism , p. 87. 52
the modern day in order to explain the ongoing survival of capitalism. 36 Lefebvre’s views of the grands ensembles situated mass housing within a discussion of the conditioning power of urban space in capitalist societies.
Lefebvre began writing on the subject of the grands ensembles in 1960 in the newly-founded Revue française de sociologie , which was established by Jean Stoetzel, a leading figure of INED which at the time supported mass housing developments as principal means of alleviating the national housing crisis. 37 Perhaps mindful of his likely audience, Lefebvre’s 1960 article praised elements of suburban mass housing. Clearly drawing a line under his past dalliances with Surrealism, Lefebvre praised the modernist planner Le Corbusier in claiming that his Cité Radieuse in Marseille represented one of the most ‘animated and stimulating’ projects of collective living. 38 Lefebvre broadly shared
Chombart’s view that some level of redevelopment of the banlieues was needed, but he introduced a number of caveats. 39 According to Lefebvre, ‘old’ and ‘new’ housing should
36 On the revival of Marxist thought in Europe during the 1950s and 1960s, see chapter 19 of Julius Lowenstein , Marx Against Marxism (Abingdon, 1980) and Tony Judt, ‘French Marxism 1945-1975’ in Tony Judt (ed.), Marxism and the French Left: Studies on Labour and Politics in France, 1830-1981 (London, 2011); Sunil Khilnani, Arguing Revolution: the Intellectual Left in Postwar France (London, 1993). 37 Jean Stoetzel (1910-1987) was a sociologist and Sorbonne professor known for his research into opinion polling. Michel Trebitsch cites Stoetzel’s importation of American influences to French sociology as a key factor behind Lefebvre’s decision to abandon rural sociology and concentrate his research on the ‘second French revolution’. See Michel Trebitsch, ‘Preface’ in Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, Foundations for a Sociology of the Everyday, Volume 2 (London, 2002) p. xx. 38 Henri Lefebvre, ‘Les nouveaux ensembles urbains’, Revue française de sociologie 1:2 (1960), pp. 186-201 (p. 188). Le Corbusier was the pseudonym of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, a Franco-Swiss planner and artist who is often seen as one of the pioneers of modern architecture. While Le Corbusier did not construct any mass housing in the Paris region, his Unité d’Habitation in Marseille (built between 1947 and 1952) inspired developments elsewhere in France and across the world. For a classic hagiography of Le Corbusier see Jean-Louis Cohen, Le Corbusier le grand (London, 2008). For a more critical biography of his life and work see Adolf Max Vogt, Le Corbusier, the Noble Savage: Toward an Archaeology of Modernism (Boston, 1998). For a detailed discussion and critique of Le Corbusier’s design theories, see Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York, 1961). On the Lettrist movement and its origins see Tom McDonough (ed.), Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents (Boston, 2004), pp. 4-12 39 Issues of unsanitary housing remained prominent in many French cities after the war, which may have tempered early criticism of the grands ensembles . See for example François Tomas, ‘Quartiers anciens et stratégies urbaines, d'une crise à l'autre, vus de Saint-Etienne’ Revue de géographie de Lyon 60:3 (1985), pp. 173-203. 53
not exist in close proximity to each other, as new housing would bring out the worst aspects of older housing so that ‘it returns to being a sort of ghetto’. 40 Lefebvre cited the town of Bagnols-sur-Cèze (in Languedoc-Roussillon, southern France) which saw its population quadruple following the opening of a nuclear plant, as an example of how ‘the new area [ unité ] can literally capture and condense what is most wrong with the old area’. 41
Lefebvre’s belief that the new could accentuate the problems of the old distinguished him from Chombart’s conviction that modern constructions always enhanced existing areas. Lefebvre warned that new housing added to existing neighbourhoods could become ‘artificial and mechanical appendages to an organic collectivity’. 42 Yet, this was not as pointed a critique of modern housing as it may seem. Lefebvre stated that his use of the term ‘organic’ was a direct evocation of Émile Durkheim’s notion of organic solidarity, defined by the interdependence and the division of labour of the modern, industrial city. 43
In this sense, Lefebvre did not mean ‘organic’ as in ‘natural’ or ‘vibrant’ but instead as denoting a highly organised and interdependent society that characterised modern capitalism. He therefore associated the construction of new housing in old neighbourhoods with the ‘mechanical solidarity’ of pre-industrial societies defined by personal ties and the homogeneity of individuals. Such a notion reserved the possibility that modernist housing could constitute a positive addition to French cities, but Lefebvre’s hypothetical assessment of mass housing displayed a far greater sense of caution than Chombart.
40 Lefebvre, ‘Nouveaux ensembles’, p. 188. 41 Lefebvre, ‘Nouveaux ensembles’, p. 188. 42 Lefebvre, ‘Nouveaux ensembles’, p. 188. 43 On organic solidarity see chapters three to seven of Émile Durkheim, Lewis A. Coser, The Division of Labor in Society (New York, 2014). Lefebvre’s affiliation with Durkheim was important as it meant that he was interested in the relationship between modern life and traditional communities but still maintained a limited adherence to sociology as a discipline. 54
There are several possible explanations for Lefebvre’s slightly uneven view of mass housing. The historian Simon Sadler argues that Lefebvre was vehemently opposed to new towns as one such development at Mourenx made a ‘sudden appearance in his rural homeland of southwest France’ and ‘shocked Lefebvre into a deeper examination of the production of space’.44 The grands ensembles on the other hand, were a more distant concern. Sadler thus implies that Lefebvre’s view was not one of spatial objectivity but was governed by a particularist notion of ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ spaces for social housing. It is thus clear that individual desires, ambitions and anxieties infused a range of interpretations of the grands ensembles , whether critical or otherwise. Yet, the way in which Lefebvre expressed his ‘faith’ in mass housing made his personal reservations clear:
Unquestionably, one should not be afraid of the possibility of grands ensembles . To this end, specialists carefully study (beginning in existing cities) all the functions assumed and carried out by an urban collectivity. Proceeding analytically, they distinguish these functions by determining their links and structures…Finally, these projects allocate the required public, commercial and cultural services required by modern life. Town planning technicians believe themselves to be valid and complete organisers. 45
While it is tempting to see Lefebvre as sharing Chombart’s optimism, Lefebvre argued that the success or failure of the grands ensembles would be entirely determined by the effectiveness of ‘urban specialists’ who ‘believed’ that they were capable of organising modern life. Lefebvre was almost certainly referring to the Chicago School, particularly through his reference to the study of the ‘functions’ of a city. 46 While Chombart had camouflaged sociologists within the planning process, Lefebvre treated them more conspicuously, and conceptualised French modernisation as the product of flawed, human
44 Simon Sadler, The Situationist City (Boston, 1998), p. 52. At this stage, Lefebvre made an explicit differentiation in his writing between villes nouvelles that were built with their own urban centres and grands ensembles that were reliant on an existing city. 45 Lefebvre, ‘Nouveaux ensembles’, p. 190. 46 For example, the 1920s Chicago School sociologist Ernst Burgess proposed that urban areas could be understood by concentric rings surrounding the centre, with each ring providing a different function to the organism that was the city. See Dennis R. Judd, Dick W. Simpson (eds.), The City, Revisited: Urban Theory from Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York (Minneapolis, 2011), p. 5. 55
agents. In presenting the more problematic aspects of the mass housing project, Lefebvre presented a view of the banlieues that state sociologists would attempt to play down in their studies.
The form of banlieue sociology advanced by Chombart constructed a ‘convenient’ binary of the inner banlieues as ‘desirable’ and Paris as comparatively unstable.
Chombart’s research represented a desire to justify state intervention in the banlieue by portraying the issues in a way that appealed to the state agenda. One could thus argue that some level of opportunism and ‘strategic ignoring’ of particular issues was endemic to the
‘scientific governance’ with which mass housing has often been associated. While
Lefebvre’s critical assessment of mass housing was also infused with personal motivations and uncertainties, he highlighted issues that were conspicuously absent from ‘official’ sociological discussion of the banlieues . As the next section will argue, sociological discussion of the grand ensemble would take the form of a problematic dialogue between the simplified, commercially-viable vision of banlieue highlighted by Chombart and the complexities highlighted by critics such as Lefebvre.
2. The grand ensemble as a new present, 1961-1967
During the early 1960s, sociologists became increasingly aware that they were unable to totalise the entirety of the grand ensemble experience and that the projection of figurative order represented a more achievable goal. While Chombart had explored the grand ensemble as a theoretical space, the studies featured in this section resulted from direct observation of living conditions on suburban estates. The work of René Kaës and Claude 56
Cournuau would demonstrate that when these sociologists actually entered the grand ensemble , they discovered a set of social phenomena that they struggled to address. Faced with this challenge, these sociologists gradually began to deemphasise certain forms of social problem and to express reservations about the ‘rationality’ of estate residents.
State sociology of the early 1960s was a response to prominent critiques of mass housing. Lefebvre developed his critical stance further in a 1961 article in the Revue française de la sociologie . By this time, Lefebvre was poised to take up a professorship in sociology at the University of Strasbourg, which may have made him less concerned about alienating colleagues within the discipline. 47 Lefebvre argued that a key problem with new mass housing developments was the decline of traditional centres of sociability such as cafes and bars, which were often absent from new towns and grands ensembles .
‘According to the scheme constructed around the family as the social nexus’, he argued,
‘the members of the community have little if any fun’. 48 The cultural historian Nicole
Rudolph has since argued that part of the planning rationale behind the grands ensembles was to address perceived threats to the family such as middle-class women seeking paid employment and working-class men, who according to, ‘spent more time at cafes or race- tracks than with their families’. 49 According to Lefebvre, ‘Due to their disdain for times past and their desire to organise social life in a “superior” way, the technicians forget that
47 On critics of Lefebvre from within academic sociology and Marxist circles see Stuart Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre (London, 2004), pp. 113-114. 48 Henri Lefebvre, ‘Utopie expérimentale: pour un nouvel urbanisme’, Revue française de sociologie 2:3 (1961), pp. 191-198 (p. 198). 49 Nicole Rudolph, ‘“Who Should Be the Author of a Dwelling?” Architects versus Housewives in 1950s France’, Gender and History 21:3 (2009), pp. 541-559 (pp. 543-544). In this sense, the grands ensembles have been viewed by historians as one of several strategies to address France’s perceived underpopulation. On pro-natalist policies under the Vichy government see chapter eight of Deborah Lackerstein, National Regeneration in Vichy France: Ideas and Policies, 1930–1944 (Farnham, 2012). On post-war policies see chapter three of Pulju, Women and Mass Consumer Society . 57
cafes are less about getting drunk and more about friendly meetings and games’. 50
Lefebvre may have viewed the café as the key to the development of a proletarian public sphere in a similar way to W. Scott Haine’s 1998 study that saw the nineteenth-century
Paris café as the precursor to ‘the labour unrest of the early twentieth [century]…the
Popular Front of the 1930s, right up to the “Events” of May 1968’. 51 While subsequent
‘official’ sociological studies did not specifically address the café as an undesirable presence, they would emphasise more passive, ‘bourgeois’ forms of leisure time.
Lefebvre developed his theory of the asocial grand ensemble further in his 1962
Introduction à la modernité , in which he accused planners of creating ‘human sand, in which individuals…are stuck together in implacable, abstract blocks and dumped on the edge of moors’. 52 Elsewhere, Lefebvre used the grand ensemble to better understand the modern condition itself. In particular, he differentiated between ‘modernity’ and
‘modernism’. The former represented a consciousness that was characterised by uncertainty, open to the future and concerned with critiquing existing social relations, while the latter was understood as a more dogmatic and arrogant ‘fetishisation of the new’ that shrouded reactionary ideas at its core. 53 The notion that modern life possessed reactionary elements is particularly important in the context of this thesis as it echoes
Pierre Bourdieu’s later critique of sociology as the pursuit of ‘rational instruments for management and domination’ rather than any notion of ‘progress’. 54 ‘Modernity’ as
Lefebvre viewed it, was a more reflexive and analytical concept and involved the work of
50 Lefebvre, ‘Utopie expérimentale’, p. 198. 51 W. Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Café: Sociability Among the French Working Class, 1789-1914 (Baltimore, 1998), p. 227. 52 Henri Lefebvre, Introduction à la modernité (Paris, 1962), p. 124 53 Chris Butler, Henri Lefebvre: Spatial Politics, Everyday Life and the Right to the City (Abingdon, 2012), pp. 111-112. 54 Bourdieu, In Other Words , p. 50. 58
sociologists themselves, and methodologies he saw as deeply questionable. Lefebvre accused sociologists in the following terms:
You have seen the people who live in the new town, you have spoken to them. You call yourself a sociologist, but you haven’t even come up with any useful concepts for understanding them. Of what relevance are theories of adaptation and non- adaptation? For them, to adapt means being forced into a pre-existing context which has been built without them in mind…When they arrived they were hoping for a radiant life. They thought the estate would be like a holiday camp. That was what they had been promised. Then came the shock. The initial disappointment may lose its edge, but it is as tenacious as the scar left by a deep wound. 55
Lefebvre suggested that existing sociological theory understood banlieue lived experiences through restrictive notions of ‘adaptation’ that were of little practical use to residents. It is likely that Lefebvre had Chombart’s interest in ‘adaptation’ in mind, whereby ‘housing adapts to family structures, to social roles and relations within the household and outside, while also conditioning them’. 56 Lefebvre implied that social scientists had normalised social problems in a way that failed to address the destabilising effects of inhabiting a grand ensemble . In contrast to Chombart, Lefebvre viewed ‘adaptation’ as more of a one- way process where inhabitants were simply ‘forced’ to live a particular way. It was no coincidence that the 1961 volume of Lefebvre’s Critique de la vie quotidienne was warmly reviewed in the Revue française de sociologie yet his subsequent Introduction à la modernité received only the courtesy of a curt summary. 57 Lefebvre’s analysis of the grands ensembles as a site of incomprehensible social problems and his denunciation of sociologists brought him into conflict with state and academic sociologists alike. State sociological studies would go to considerable lengths to avoid these debates when discussing mass housing and preserve the bastion of sociology from critique.
55 Lefebvre, Introduction à la modernité , pp. 122-123. 56 Chombart, Vie quotidienne , p. 98. 57 N. Tricot, ‘Lefebvre Henri, Introduction à la Modernité. Préludes’, Revue Française de Sociologie 4 :3 (1963), pp. 342-343. 59
Despite the political nature of Lefebvre’s sociology, his work did have a limited influence on ‘mainstream’ studies of mass housing. As a junior colleague of Lefebvre and a student of Chombart’s favoured Chicago School, the sociologist René Kaës borrowed from the methodological approaches of both when he published a detailed study of a grand ensemble near Strasbourg in 1963. 58 Kaës, who was a tenant on this particular estate, shared Lefebvre’s cynicism about inhabitants’ ability to adapt to life on the grands ensembles , yet he also tried to move the debate away from sociologists themselves. Kaës’s study sought to return the emphasis to empirical data and to rescue the ‘urban experts’ so mistrusted by Lefebvre. Kaës viewed the grand ensemble as three ‘intellectual spheres’: outward representations, lived experience and the ‘factual’ knowledge of the sociologist.
He characterised the outward perception of mass housing as ‘the weight of urban and architectural structures imposing a debilitating way of life’ and the belief that ‘daily life is boredom, it is hell…it is loneliness in the crowd’.59 While Kaës did not say where this
‘imagined’ grand ensemble originated from, he contrasted it with a second intellectual sphere: the ‘lived grand ensemble ’ as viewed by residents. In claiming that ‘these prejudices…are reduced by experience’, Kaës argued for a more nuanced understanding of estate life that used this ‘lived knowledge’ as a means to deconstruct the negative stereotypes frequently attached to these areas. 60
Kaës highlighted a divergence in perceptions of mass housing, between ‘new arrivals [who] say they are happier since moving in to their new surroundings’ and the visitor from outside who ‘denounces the symmetry…the abstract rigour of forms and
58 Although Kaës’s study focused on Strasbourg, it made frequent reference to mass housing developments elsewhere and is often cited as an important development in sociology of the grands ensembles . See Frédéric Dufaux, Annie Fourcaut (eds.), Le Monde des grands ensembles (Paris, 2004), p. 39. 59 Kaës, Vivre dans les grands ensembles (Paris, 1963), p. 41. 60 Kaës, Grands ensembles , p. 41. 60
volumes. He evokes the machine, calls to mind the lived or narrated memory of concentration camps’. 61 Yet, while contesting negative representations was relatively straightforward for Kaës, he also described a number of more problematic aspects of estate life, such as the distorted age range of their inhabitants. While under ten year-olds had comprised the largest demographic group on grands ensembles of the Paris region in 1956,
Kaës forecast a fourfold increase in 14-17 year-olds within the next fifteen years. 62
Creating a grand ensemble that aged along with its principal demographic was seen as particularly challenging. Kaës made his uncertainties clear in asking: ‘What dimensions should we give to a youth club, or to a cultural and recreation centre, when you need firstly to satisfy a population of children then quickly one of adolescents and young people?’ 63
Young children were seen as adapting well to their new environment, whereas Kaës saw adolescents as a more complex issue and offered few answers as to how their needs should be met. Kaës cited the shortage of school places, noting resident protests on this issue that had already taken place at Créteil and Sarcelles and had necessitated the use of ad-hoc school buildings. By focusing on the prominent resident issue of school provision, Kaës attempted to use this grassroots activism to contest media narratives of delinquency. 64
However, elsewhere in his study, Kaës perhaps unwittingly consolidated a different set of media stereotypes referring to estate life that centred on mental health issues.
61 Kaës, Grands ensembles , p. 72. 62 Kaës, Grands ensembles , p. 75. 63 Kaës, Grands ensembles , p. 75. These finding reflected the dramatic demographic changes brought about by France’s postwar baby boom. On France’s preoccupation with population issues see Hervé Le Bras, Marianne et les lapins : l’obsession démographique (Paris, 1992). On youth delinquency, see Gerard Mauger, Les Jeunes en France. État de récherches (Paris, 1994); Émile Copfermann, La Génération des blousons noirs : problèmes de la jeunesse française (Paris, 2003). 64 Examples of negative journalistic portrayals of estates will be touched upon in chapter three on claiming the banlieue . 61
While Kaës noted the satisfaction of some residents, he also claimed that ‘facts seem to contradict this information: suicides, a heightened state of nervousness due to isolation, estrangement, the absence of soundproofing in buildings’. 65 Kaës saw the chief problems facing estate residents as noise concerns and the mundane built environment.
While noise could in theory be addressed, Kaës saw mundane aesthetics as more problematic as they simultaneously reinforced the outward stigma of estates and altered inhabitants’ behaviour. Kaës claimed for example that women refused to go window shopping due to the ‘frigid’ window displays put in place by ‘unimaginative’ shopkeepers.
Among children, Kaës noted a curious ‘acceptance’ of their home environment, citing the example of the estate’s schoolchildren who when asked to draw a house, frequently drew
‘a rectangular building, pierced with windows like an IBM punch card, with no chimney or roof…drawn with a ruler’. 66 In describing lived experiences in this way, Kaës suggested that the grand ensemble was a psychological rather than sociological problem and thus
‘unsolvable’ for the social scientist. The schoolchild’s drawing served as a parable for notions of alienation and played into a wider Marxist debates on alienation in modern capitalist society. 67 In 1964 for example, Herbert Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man would echo these arguments in linking consumer society to a gradual withering of creativity and critical thought. 68 While Kaes’s angle was perhaps more Freudian than Marxist, not explaining the precise implications of the ‘punch card house’ left his work open to more radical interpretations.
65 Kaës, Grands ensembles , p. 69. 66 Kaës, Grands ensembles , p. 72. 67 For a critical analysis of Marx’s theory of alienation see Nicholas Churchich, Marxism and Alienation (London, 1990). There is a plentiful literature on the revival of Marxist thought during the 1960s and discussions on the theory of alienation. For an overview of the key debates see for example, chapter nineteen of Julius I. Lowenstein, Marx Against Marxism (Abingdon, 2010); Alain Sica, Steven Turner (eds.), The Disobedient Generation: Social Theorists in the Sixties (London, 2005). On key thinkers on alienation see for example, Constanzo Preve, Politique et philosophie dans l’oeuvre de Louis Althusser (Paris, 1993); Conrad Lodziak, André Gorz: a Critical Introduction (London, 1997). 68 For more on Marcuse and his philosophy see Barry Katz, Herbert Marcuse and the Art of Liberation (London, 1982). 62
Kaës spoke of a profound sense of alienation among grand ensemble inhabitants that produced medical symptoms (such as hypertension and allergies) but did not envisage a tangible cure for such afflictions. Instead, Kaës envisaged that residents would undergo a slow process of adaptation, and warned against any attempts at ‘cultural or social patch-up
[replatrage ] measures’. 69 Yet, while Kaës proposed solutions to certain problems, such as more school buildings and in line with Chombart’s view, a proportion of pavillon homes on every estate, he did not propose a cure to what he explicitly called ‘a grand ensemble pathology’. 70 Kaës thus normalised this atmosphere of psychological malaise yet also externalised it, in implying that such issues were outside of the sociologist’s field of expertise. Post-Foucauldian scholars would perhaps struggle to account for this ‘othering’ of particular forms of knowledge. Jean-Claude Barbier for example would view urban sociology as part of a post-Fordist trend towards governance enacted not directly by the state but by technical professionals. While Barbier does not specifically mention sociology, he describes emergent forms of ‘evaulation’ by experts on matters pertaining to the family, work and relationships and in doing so, implies that these ‘experts’ will always claim to understand the entirety of such categories. Neither were Kaës’s actions an example of state institutions strategically ‘choosing not to know’ its citizens, as he seemed to concede that
69 Kaës, Grands ensembles , p. 141. Despite the apparently cautious tone of his study, Kaës was still criticised by some for being too optimistic in its treatment of mass housing. Charlotte Delbo later wrote that the study viewed the notion of adaptation ‘without pessimism’. She claimed that Kaës ‘sees the beginnings of a collective culture on the grands ensembles . Let us hope so…without really understanding what a collective culture might mean’. See Charlotte Delbo, ‘Review of Vivre dans les grands ensembles ’, Revue française de sociologie 6:1 (1965), pp. 106-107 (p. 107). 70 Kaës was drawing on a pseudo-scientific discourse that had emerged in the print media and public health circles. In 1960, Le Figaro coined the term ‘Sarcellite’ to refer to an illness brought on by the social isolation of grand ensemble residents, that resulted in symptoms such as stress, delinquency and in extreme cases, suicide. The sociologists Serge Jaumain and Nathalie Lemarchand have argued that ‘Sarcellite’ is a mediatised form of ‘urbanite’, a term given by two health professionals in 1960 to ‘a pathology of the modern city’. See Vivre en banlieue: une comparaison France / Canada (Oxford, 2008), p. 29. 63
researchers ‘could not know’ the full extent of the problem. 71 Kaës’s study suggested that when Chicago School sociology was applied to the banlieues , the findings could destabilise sociologists’ claim to rational knowledge by calling for the involvement of other experts such as psychoanalysts. Crucially, Kaës’s methods would be modified by subsequent researchers in order to de-emphasise these ‘unknowable’ elements of banlieue life and to emphasise those that were (in their view) understood.
Chombart wrote the the preface to Kaës’s study, and appeared to have shifted significantly in his view of social science by acknowledging the inherent limitations of the discipline. While Chombart claimed that the social scientist was an intermediary between residents and planners, and ‘expresses the needs of citizens and translates the desires that they do not always know how to express’, he also offered a more reflective assessment of their abilities: 72
The grands ensembles are for him [the sociologist], a gigantic involuntary experiment…They are the result of demographic pressures and complex migratory movements…They also result from deficiencies in the economic system, the absence of a coherent housing policy, a lack of conception of the modern city adapted to new emerging social structures. 73
Chombart saw sociologists as possessing a new role in ‘speaking for’ residents yet also implied a level of inevitability to the ‘failure’ of social housing. Whereas in 1956 he had framed the grands ensembles as a great opportunity, by 1963 he conceptualised them as the product of conflict (and by extension, state failings) and acknowledged the more uncontrollable elements of modernity. Rather than being active agents in the construction
71 The historian Patrick Joyce has spoken of the modern liberal state’s ability to ‘know’ its citizens but also to ‘not know’ them- in other words to only know aspects of a citizen’s life that made social administration possible and efficient. See Joyce, Rule of Freedom , p. 21. 72 Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe, ‘Preface’ in Kaës, Grands ensembles , p. 7. 73 Chombart, ‘Preface’ in Kaës, Grands ensembles , p. 8. 64
of mass housing, Chombart implied that sociologists were instead charged with solving the problems of immigration, government, social policy, and urbanism: problems that increasingly defined mass housing. Such an admission has important implications for understanding of the French technocratic state as it suggests that while Chombart had been eager to associate himself with the ‘harmonious union’ of technocrats in order to secure state patronage in the mid-1950s, he was less keen to do so when problems emerged.
Chombart’s veiled critique of the French state suggests that the system in place was less a technocracy than a loose confederation of experts which operated in a strategic and opportunistic manner. Chombart was also explicit in describing the role of the sociologist within this system: to bring an image of order to an inherently disordered environment characterised by misguided housing policy and residents who were dependent on outside intervention.
Despite Chombart’s introspection, he still criticised the ‘professional sociologist’ who ‘tends to shut himself away in his ivory tower, sorry to see that his research is used incorrectly…is ignored [or] is buried under distorting propaganda’. 74 Chombart may have been responding to what he saw as a lack of empirical research in Lefebvre’s description of
Mourenx, as well as his Marxist leanings. Moreover, Chombart had a turbulent relationship with academic sociology, whereas Lefebvre enjoyed the stability of a permanent position at the University of Strasbourg. There were also significant intellectual and philosophical differences between the two regarding urban space and knowledge production more generally. Lefebvre’s philosophy was closer to the continental approach, with an emphasis not on theoretical models but on ‘the basic issues of human existence, such as anxiety,
74 Chombart, ‘Preface’ in Kaës, Grands ensembles , p. 8. 65
authenticity, death, boredom, identity and so on’. 75 Chombart, and to a lesser extent Kaës, were of a more analytic approach and sought to develop durable models for understanding new modes of suburban living. Lefebvre wanted to use analysis to understand what the grand ensemble ‘was like’, while Chombart and Kaës wanted to produce a system of understanding mass housing that had no internal contradictions. The influence of
Chombart’s mentor Robert Auzelle was central here, as during the early 1950s, Auzelle had used sociological methods to assign absolute values to inhabitants’ needs: values which had become the state norm and were used in housing design. 76 There is thus an important distinction to be made between Lefebvre, for whom issues and contradictions were the essence of his study, and Chombart and Kaës who sought to ‘unload’ such issues from the discipline of urban sociology.
Perhaps learning the lesson of Kaës’s study, a 1965 banlieue study by Claude
Cornuau as part of the Centre de Sociologie Urbaine recast the analytical scope to lessen the likelihood of an ‘open problematic’. 77 Within Cornuau’s CSU research team were a number of sociologists who were sympathetic to Chombart’s methodological outlook. Like
Chombart, Paul Rendu had links to the Catholic Left and had participated in the Jeunesse de l’Église movement, a pro-Marxist Catholic organisation that sought to build a more
75 Bo Mou, Richard Tiesze (eds .), Constructive Engagement of Analytic and Continental Approaches in Philosophy (Leiden, 2013), pp. 103-104. A detailed discussion of these sociological debates can be found in chapter one of E.C. Cuff, W.W. Sharrock, A.J. Dennis, D.W. Francis (eds.), Perspectives in Sociology (London, 2006). 76 Rabinow, French Modern , pp. 4-5. 77 Cornuau’s name appears first alphabetically, but the study also lists Maurice Imbert, Bernard Lamy, Paul Rendu and Jacques Retel as co-investigators. The CSU was originally founded in 1954 as the Bureau d’Études socio-techniques, headed by Chombart. The CSU received a series of lucrative research contracts, firstly from the Ministry of Construction and later from the district planning authority for the Paris region. For more on the CSU see Christian Topalov, ‘Centre de recherche. Le Centre de sociologie urbaine (CSU)’, Politix 5 : 20 (1992), pp. 195-201. 66
communitarian church. 78 Jacques Retel on the other hand, had recently completed a sociological study of the hotel industry; a study that was prefaced and overseen by
Chombart and drew heavily on the practice of participant-observation. Cornuau’s study was funded by various state institutions such as the Commissariat Général du Plan d’Équipement et de la Productivité but was also overseen by Chombart as part of a wider collection entitled L’Évolution de la vie sociale .79 This collection would be one of
Chombart’s last forays into state contract work, due to his increasing criticism of what he saw as incoherent planning policies that saw him gradually frozen out of government circles. 80 Thus, ‘state sociology’ of the banlieues was not a stable discipline, but rather one that echoed the atmosphere of conflict and debate that defined the modernisation process more widely.
According to the urban sociologist Christian Topalov, Cornuau’s team applied a highly original method of analysis to French urban space. Topalov summarised the team’s aims as ‘understanding the behaviour of urban households, at home and in the city, their needs and aspirations’ and argued that the use of ‘complex questionnaires and samples’ was relatively unheard of in France at the time. 81 The sociologist Philippe Masson attributes the growth of the ‘survey model’ (as opposed to interviews and non-participant observation) as part of a more active form of sociology spearheaded by the Institut des
Sciences Sociales du Travail (ISST), a teaching and research institute that was created in
1951 by the Ministry of Labour which sought to address problems of productivity and
78 On the Jeunesse de l’Église see Horn, Gerard, Left Catholicism , p. 95. 79 For a critical summary of Chombart’s study see Abel Chatelain, ‘Review of Paris essais de sociologie 1952-1964 and Des Hommes et des villes’, Annales, économies, sociétés, civilisations 21 : 4 (1966), pp. 945- 946. 80 Newsome, French Urban Planning , p. 134. 81 Topalov, ‘Centre de recherche’, p. 196. 67
industrial relations. 82 Yet, this ‘revolutionary’ approach also served to modify sociological discourse in order to avoid some of Kaës and Chombart’s more problematic conclusions.
For example, Cornuau shifted the research focus by omitting the more ‘problematic’ inner-banlieues and focusing only on suburbs that were at least 10km from the capital.
Cornuau’s study also explored issues of leisure time and consumer spending, thus reflecting a shift in state planning discourse towards the construction of new towns, which would generally be located in outer suburbs and would provide new centres for shopping and leisure. Cornuau’s study also represented a move away from the’ unknowns’ of estate life (such as the psychological profile of inhabitants) and towards more familiar empirical data. There is a notable parallel here with recent histories of poverty by urban historians such as Tom Crook, who argues that social investigators (of Edwardian lodging houses in this case), employed discourses of ungodliness, pathology and barbarism to explain the living conditions within. Crook argues that investigators were involved in ‘drawing lines and… demarcating the limits of civilisation and who or what fell outside of it’ but equally claims that ‘there were definite limits, so to speak, to drawing and acting on these limits. 83
While Crook was discussing slum dwellings rather than social housing, his allusions to state power are highly relevant to this thesis, as they depict a state apparatus that pursued the more ‘achievable’ goal of defining the limits of urban life rather than governing urban space itself. In a similar sense, Cornuau’s study sought to narrow the definition of ‘what the grand ensemble was’ and how it could be discussed.
82 Masson, ‘French Sociology’, p. 722. For a summary of various sociological methodologies, including interviews and non-participant observation and a discussion of their advantages and disadvantages, see chapter twelve of Stephen N. Haynes, William Hayes O'Brien, Principles and Practice of Behavioral Assessment (New York, 2000). 83 Tom Crook, ‘Accommodating the Outcast: Common Lodging Houses and the Limits of Urban Governance in Victorian and Edwardian London’, Urban History 35:3 (2008), pp. 414-436 (p. 424). 68
One of the most striking aspects of Cornuau’s study was that it replicated many of the conclusions that Chombart drew some nine years previously, suggesting that the grands ensembles had had little impact on cultural attitudes and practices in the banlieue .
Like Chombart, Cournuau discovered an intangible ‘pull of the inner banlieue ’ that transcended housing quality. Indeed, the banlieue residents surveyed did not relate their problems specifically to their housing situation. Among residents of both pavillons and grands ensembles , Cornuau did not discern a significant desire to leave the area or a sense that they inhabited a ‘deprived’ space. Resident surveys also indicated that the banlieues outscored Paris on criteria such as ‘the presence and proximity of green space…the appearance of houses and streets, the view from windows…play and leisure facilities for children’. In contrast, Cornuau found that Parisians were more likely to complain about
‘air pollution, noise and the lack of gardens and parks’. 84 Cornuau’s study fed into what the historian Charles Rearick describes as a profound uncertainty among high-profile political figures about Paris’s antiquated infrastructure, declining artistic spirit and the modernisation process itself: epitomised by the Inspecteur des Finances’s famous declaration in 1965 that ‘Paris has become a vast parking lot’. 85 Yet, when read alongside
Chombart’s similar treatment of Paris, there was evidently an element of hyperbole to discourse of this kind that sought to justify development, with new towns as the preferred solution.
Having established that residents ‘wanted’ to live in the banlieues , Cornuau nevertheless argued that these areas did not foster the ‘correct’ kind of community.
Cornuau attributed suburban deprivation to a lack of adequate leisure and commercial
84 P. Rendu, C. Cornuau, M. Imbert, B. Lamy, J-O Retel, L’Attraction de Paris sur sa banlieue (Paris, 1965), p. 33. 85 Charles Rearick, Paris Dreams, Paris Memories: The City and Its Mystique (Stanford, 2011), p. 86. 69
facilities, citing residents who had expressed dissatisfaction regarding the availability of transport, local commerce and schooling. 86 However, Cornuau’s emphasis on statistics such as theatre and cinema attendance (see figure 1.2) presented a distorted and vastly simplified picture of banlieue life. By focusing on forms of leisure that required payment and were passive (involved spectating rather than active participation) Cornuau omitted the clubs and community associations that were actively promoted on the grands ensembles through institutions such as the Maisons de Jeunesse. For example, Castells argued that by the early 1960s, Sarcelles alone was home to over 100 voluntary associations that provided an array of social and cultural activities. 87 Cornuau’s view of the banlieues was emblematic of state discourses that Bourdieu described as promoting ‘a morality which boils down to an art of consuming, spending and enjoying’. 88 As Malcolm Cook and Grace
Davie argue, Bourdieu’s view was part of a wider critique of the commodification of post- war culture and its separation into ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ forms. 89 In the context of the banlieue , this emphasis on consumption would be used to both designate the banlieue as a ‘problem space’ and to justify further state intervention in these areas.
86 Suburban transportation was still limited at this stage, as metro lines made few forays into the banlieues . Work on the RER (Réseau Express Régional) suburban train would not begin until 1961, and the first line completed was designed to serve the new commercial centre at La Défense, west of Paris. From 1959 onwards, the Sarcelles grand ensemble had a direct rail link to St Denis but not Paris, whereas a regular rail link to Paris was mentioned in the original plans for the 4000 logements at La Courneuve, but was not completed until 1984. See Paul Chemetov, ‘Interview given to Laboratoire Architecture Anthropologie’ (undated) [online source]. http://www.laa-courneuve.net/print1964.html accessed on 17 th August 2014. 87 Castells, City and the Grassroots , p. 81. 88 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Harvard, 1984), p. 309. Bourdieu’s study was originally published in 1979 and was based on the author’s research into French culture carried out between 1963 and 1968. 89 Malcolm Cook, Grace Davie (eds.), Modern France: Society in Transition (London, 1999), p. 170. 70
Figure 1.2: Graph comparing frequentation of the theatre, cinema and music halls among youths and adults of Paris and the banlieues. Cornuau, L’Attraction de Paris , p. 33.
In enlisting the views of grand ensemble residents on their home environment, Cornuau acknowledged that mass housing was for the sociologist, a ‘separate world’ and a problematic focus for study. For example, he identified grand ensemble residents as the only geographical category who expressed greater attachment to their home itself than to the neighbourhood they inhabited. While Parisians complained about a lack of green space,
Cornuau was perplexed that grand ensemble residents were apparently no happier, despite their leafier surrounding. For reasons such as this, Cornuau argued that estate residents were less ‘rational’ than other residents of the region in stating:
We are reminded that despite the comfort available to them, the residents of new estates [ensembles ] remain relatively dissatisfied with their residential area, even though it has just the qualities of nature and fresh air that Parisians are so lacking. Because they lack a 71
sufficient transport network, because their relatives and friends are in the town and inaccessible, they do not tend to possess the sort of wisdom that weighs up the possession of one thing against the absence of another. However, it seems one can find it in residents of old banlieue areas and certainly in inhabitants of the pavillons .90
Rather than simply reporting an unexpected finding, Cornuau saw an inherent irrationality in estate residents, and confronted these findings with pathological discourses. Cornuau suggested that while estates did not lack green space, residents had difficulty in accessing the countryside, which ‘has psychological repercussions that border on pathology: it changes how men and women view the Paris region, their neighbourhood and even their apartment’. 91 In other words, the grand ensemble was portrayed as stable in terms of quantifiable ‘technocratic’ phenomena such as noise and green space, yet contained significant ‘irrational’ elements that contrasted with the more ‘rational’ residents of pavillons and older neighbourhoods. While Kaës had used uncertainty as an opportunity for reflexion, Cornuau betrayed a more explicit sense of frustration with residents of suburban estates and a belief that ‘satisfaction’ was an elusive concept rather than a tangible goal. Unlike Kaës, Cornuau viewed these pathologies purely from the point of view of the sociologist, through the methodological issues that they presented. The perceived failure with this survey model was thus recast as ‘the failure of residents’, a practice that would continue in subsequent sociological studies. Subtle stigmatisation of mass housing residents and their views would provide a means of excluding specific aspects of the banlieue from dominant state narratives.
Sociologists of this period struggled to account for the entirety of the grand ensemble lived experience and thus shifted ‘inconvenient’ elements into a sphere of
90 Cornuau, L’Attraction de Paris , p. 45. 91 Cornuau, L’Attraction de Paris , p. 46. 72
‘irrationality’. While issues of sociability (and the ‘complicit’ nature of the sociologist) were seized upon by Lefebvre, sociologists working for the state were under pressure to make sense of these perplexing issues while defending their own position as urban
‘experts’. When Kaës tried to engage with these debates he found his methodology to be unsuited to issues of mental health and a more ambiguous ‘ grand ensemble malaise’.
Cornuau on the other hand, manipulated his methodology in a way that viewed resident viewpoints as dysfunctional. Such evidence suggests that the French state governed by delimiting the boundaries of who could ‘speak for’ the banlieue and de-emphasising issues of lived experience in favour of a narrow range of technocratic problems. One can thus speculate that the narrative of the French technocratic state (and indeed that of the trente glorieuses ) relied on the exclusion of more anomalous, problematic elements. Subsequent studies would continue to discuss mass housing in a way that ‘fabricated’ state power in areas where it frequently lacked influence or knowledge.
3. The grand ensemble as a failed past 1967-1971
During the late 1960s, sociologists enacted a dramatic u-turn from claiming to undertake investigation to pursuing specific conclusions that gradually centred upon the perceived
‘failure’ of mass housing. Developments within sociology of the banlieues during this period have important implications for how state power within these areas is understood.
While the studies analysed in the previous section saw resident views as inconvenient to the prevailing state narrative, Paul Clerc’s 1967 study of the grands ensembles highlighted the issues that arose when sociologists tried to write an explicit account of banlieue problems. Michel Freyssenet’s 1971 study on the other hand, would form part of a concerted move to depoliticise state sociology and emphasise general economic and 73
demographic trends over the more problematic issue of individual experience. For purposes of comparison, this section will also analyse a PCF-led study of Pantin in order to highlight a contrasting view of mass housing that lay outside of ‘mainstream’ state social science.
Cornuau’s belief in a disparity between the ‘rational’ pavillon and the ‘irrational’ grand ensemble was a major influence on banlieue sociology of the late 1960s, notably in
Paul Clerc’s 1967 study of grand ensemble life. 92 Clerc’s study was funded by the Centre de Recherche Urbaine, described by the historian Hayden Lorimer as ‘an important cluster of doctoral researchers…who explored the rapidly emerging fields of urban and industrial geography and especially the changing relationship between town and country’. 93 Clerc’s study was overseen by the influential geographer Pierre George, a former member of the
PCF who had carried out detailed research into mass housing in Kiev and Moscow during the 1930s and 1940s, a project that was partly funded by the Soviet government. Perhaps unsurprisingly, George’s study had praised the Soviet model, describing it as a two- pronged system that used grands ensembles as an initial crisis resolution followed by individual homes ‘following the American formula’. 94 Yet, from the early 1950s onwards,
George became more critical of mass housing and oversaw studies such as Henri Elhaï’s
92 For an alternative sociological view of banlieue life from the same time, see Louis Chevalier’s Les Parisiens (Paris, 1967) which rejected the notion of a clear cultural ideological or cultural divide between city and suburb. Chevalier envisaged a more universal Parisian identity that encompassed the capital and the suburbs and his decision to focus on Aubervilliers (a banlieue that, architecturally, had changed very little since the war) was perhaps a conscious decision to exclude any discussion of mass housing or ‘modern’ notions of banlieue from his study. This emphasis on the pre-modern reflected what the historian Barrie Ratcliffe sees as Chevalier’s shift from championing a new scientific-demographic form of history to being ‘a self-confessed “ancient” combating the “moderns” in history’. See Barrie Ratcliffe, ‘Louis Chevalier’ in Philip Daileader, Philip Whalen (eds.), French Historians 1900-2000: New Historical Writing in Twentieth- Century France (Oxford, 2010), pp. 112-136 (p. 122). 93 Hayden Lorimer, Charles Vithers (eds.), Geographers (London, 2010), p. 37. 94 Frédéric Dufaux, ‘La Naissance de « grandioses ensembles ». Le Regard distancié des géographes français sur la métamorphose urbaine des années 1950-1960’, in Dufaux, Fourcaut, Le Monde des grands ensembles, pp. 62-96 (p. 66). 74
1950 article ‘Les HBM de la Porte d’Aubervilliers’, which highlighted prominent issues such as overcrowding. 95 Clerc’s study intended to continue this critical approach by focusing on problems with mass housing, although his study returned a number of unforeseen findings that questioned the sociologist’s ability not just to understand everyday life but also to construct a coherent narrative of suburban deprivation.
Clerc’s study emerged out of a desire by state planners to widen their understanding of banlieue life and to explore how different suburban spaces impacted upon each other. In 1966, Nicole Haumont published Les Pavillionnaires , a study of private low- rise housing in the banlieues of various French towns and cities. 96 The renewed interest in the pavillon reflected concerns about the nature of their inhabitants and the methods through which planners had justified mass housing constructions. Firstly, there was a desire to understand the values and motivations of the petite bourgeoisie who tended to inhabit such homes, and who had voted in numbers for the anti-Americanisation and anti- industrialisation candidate Pierre Poujade during the early 1950s. 97 Secondly, researchers began to recognise that the grand ensemble programme had been accompanied by a powerful state anti-pavillon discourse that had portrayed the suburban villa as the antithesis
95 See Henri Elhai, ‘Les HBM de la Porte d'Aubervilliers’, in Pierre George, Études sur la banlieue de Paris : essais méthodologiques (Paris, 1950), pp. 149-170 (p. 152). The HBM or Habitations à Bon Marché, were the forerunners of the HLM (Habitations à Loyer Modéré) and emerged from the Siegfried Law of 1894, which gave tax breaks to private housing corporations. Several HBM corporations were formed by philanthropists with the aim of building low-cost housing in working-class areas of Paris. For more on the HBM see Marie-Jeanne Dumont, Le Logement social à Paris 1850-1930: les habitations à bon marché (Liège, 1991). 96 Les Pavillonnaires was one of three concurrent pavillon studies, along with Henry Raymond’s L’Habitat pavillonnaire (Paris, 1966) and Mary-Geneviève Dezès’s La Politique pavillonnaire (Paris, 1966). However, Haumont’s study was notable as it made frequent comparisons with mass housing developments. 97 On Poujade see Romain Souillac, Le mouvement Poujade: de la défense professionnelle au populisme nationaliste, 1953-1962 (Paris, 2007) and James Shields, The Extreme Right in France: From Pétain to Le Pen (Abingdon, 2007), pp. 85-89. 75
to collective living. 98 Clerc’s own take on mass housing represented a similar cynicism about the merits of post-war planning.
The preface to Clerc’s study, written by Jean Bourgeois-Pichat, the director of the
INED, viewed the pavillon as a divisive influence within the modern banlieue , claiming that ‘the grand ensemble resident feels frustrated by the visible freedom presented by the pavillon ’ and that they ‘continue to nurture [the pavillon ] as an ideal’. 99 Clerc blamed this dichotomy partly on the grand ensemble ’s architectural style being in total opposition to the ‘traditional banlieue ’ and its ‘ideal of the individual home’. 100 As Kaës and Haumont had done, Clerc discussed the importance of the perceptions and symbolisms attached to housing. 101 For example, Clerc alluded to negative cultural depictions of banlieue residents that had emerged during the early 1960s in claiming that ‘for its inhabitants the grand ensemble is not a disruptive phenomenon. But it often is, as we know, for public opinion’. 102 Yet, Clerc discussed the grand ensemble in a way that reified these negative portrayals and consolidated its reputation as ‘problem housing’. Indeed, Clerc’s study sought not to challenge these notions but to provide them with a rational basis, and to use them to construct his methodology.
Clerc’s definition of a grand ensemble was critical to the direction that his study took as his sample only included estates of 1000 housing units and above. This focus had
98 Raymond, L’Habitat pavillonnaire , p. 53. For a discussion of this anti-pavillon discourse see Jean-Noël Blanc, ‘Le Consensus sur les grands ensembles ou le grand malentendu’, in François Tomas (ed.), Les Grands ensembles: une histoire qui continue (Saint-Étienne, 2003), pp. 55-56. 99 Jean Bourgeois-Pichat, ‘Préface’ in Paul Clerc, Grands ensembles, banlieues nouvelles: enquête démographique et psycho-sociologique (Paris, 1967), p. 11. 100 Clerc, ‘ Grands ensembles ’, p. 302. 101 For an example of the discussion of ‘ pavillon symbolism’ in Haumont’s work see Haumont, Les Pavillonnaires (Paris, 1966), p. 22. 102 Clerc, ‘ Grands ensembles ’, p. 302. 76
the effect of tilting Clerc’s focus towards grands ensembles of the Paris region (which in
1964, contained an average of 2076 housing units) rather than those in the provinces
(which contained 1603 housing units on average). 103 Clerc justified this choice by reasoning that ‘criticisms usually addressed to this type of construction most often blame problems on issues of size’. 104 Rather than seeking to combat the outward stigma of banlieue estates, Clerc used these negative portrayals to determine his sample, claiming that focussing on larger estates allowed his study to ‘better define problems, by observing them in contexts where one can assume they are most serious’. 105 In Bourdieu’s terms
Clerc was clearly answering a demand for a ‘rational’ discourse on the ‘problem space’ of the grand ensemble . Indeed, sociologists were already being portrayed as out of touch with the social realities of grand ensemble life. A 1966 article from the daily newspaper
France-Soir ridiculed social scientists in the following terms:
What is a grand ensemble ? Firstly it is a myth that has spawned a literature and even a new vocabulary […] In short, for most people and for a long time, a grand ensemble is like Sainte-Anne’s psychiatric hospital transplanted into one of those barrier neighbourhoods where gangs of young hoodlums rule the roost when night falls. But for sociologists? It is, one of them responded solemnly to me, an urban collective containing both a high number of housing units (500 to several thousand) and an architectural and urbanist design involving the organisation of space. 106
The article suggested that the prosaic language and methods of social science were becoming increasingly obsolete in the face of the social realities of grand ensemble life.
Delinquency and other forms of ‘ banlieue danger’ had become a prominent issue that sociologists needed to address or else risk further ridicule. If Clerc did intend to highlight these social problems however, his findings were deeply problematic. When surveying
103 Raymond Josse, ‘Review of Grands ensembles , banlieues nouvelles ’, Annales de géographie 78 : 427 (1969), pp. 341-344 (p. 342). 104 Clerc, Grands ensembles, p. 20. 105 Clerc, Grands ensembles, p. 20. 106 Joseph Pasteur, ‘Le Monde des mille et une fenêtres’ France-Soir, 2nd February 1966. Sainte-Anne refers to a hospital in Paris’s 14 th arrondissement that specialises in neurology and mental health issues. 77
grand ensemble residents, Clerc actually found a greater level of praise than condemnation among those surveyed, particularly regarding aspects such as fresh air and general housing conditions. Yet, Clerc echoed Cornuau’s frustrations when he claimed that complaints were more diverse and thus harder to correlate. While 81% of those surveyed gave examples of disadvantages associated with estate life, there was considerable variation in these responses, with the somewhat ambiguous category of ‘housing flaws’ [défauts de logement ] the most commonly-occurring response (24% of those listing disadvantages). 107
Clerc claimed that ‘it is difficult to give specific weight to these diverse arguments…they seem interchangeable, or rather correspond to the tastes of different households’. 108
Resident praise on the other hand, was more unanimous with 88% of those given relating to satisfactory or acceptable housing conditions.
While Clerc expected to find residents unanimous in misery, he found little consensus among them about precisely what was wrong with mass housing. Although
Clerc noted the ambiguous nature of his data he also stressed that, ‘the sincerity of those surveyed, and the objectivity of the enquiry are not in question, and is far from absurd, presenting a multi-faceted reality [ une réalité sous des angles divers ], [that]…is actually the mark of intelligence’. 109 Whereas Chombart had claimed in 1963 that the sociologist’s role had shifted from being a problem-solver to being a ‘problem-manager’, Clerc implied that sociologists now had a near-impossible task of recording a reality that was by its very nature flawed and complex. The diffuse nature of resident opinion prevented Clerc from making a ‘grand claim’ about the impact that new housing complexes had on suburban
107 Clerc, Grands ensembles , p. 413. 108 Clerc, Grands ensembles , p. 413. 109 Clerc, Grands ensembles , p. 414. 78
societies and he conceded that urban space had little bearing on resident satisfaction. In a synthesis of his study published in the sociological journal Population , Clerc stated that:
The absence of a link between discontent and certain factors (gender, social grouping, location in Paris or elsewhere) or between the level of satisfaction and the level of amenities in the grand ensemble …strongly suggests that problems are in no way linked to this new type of housing. 110
The discovery that urban space did not condition inhabitants in a significant way was hugely destabilising for the sociological profession as it cast doubt on its own methodology.
Clerc evidently felt that he had been unable to use quantitative methods to isolate the phenomena identified by Lefebvre and Kaës. Clerc’s study cast doubts on the ability of the
French technocracy to manage the housing spaces that it had created. Clerc’s study would feed into subsequent studies that would dispense with the grand ensemble as an instrument for social analysis entirely. In Patrick Joyce’s terms, the perplexing nature of mass housing compelled researchers to shift the grand ensemble into the category of ‘not knowing’. Yet, this was not a strategic decision but rather an admission that elements of suburban life were ‘unknowable’ to the state. A later study by Michel Freysennet would construct a vision of the banlieue in which the issues of the grand ensemble were no longer regarded as necessary for the governance of these areas.
While Clerc’s study represented the central state’s view of mass housing, the PCF commissioned a sociological study of Pantin and its principal grand ensemble of Les
Courtillières in 1969, which presented an alternative view of the situation. 111 The study was carried out by the planning firm ORGECO (Organisation d’Études Coopératives), which was established by the PCF in order that ‘the local governments save money and the
110 Paul Clerc, ‘ Grands ensembles , banlieues nouvelles (présentation d'un cahier de l'INED réalisé avec le CRU)’, Population 22:2 (1967), pp. 297-302 (p. 301). 111 The planning and construction of Les Courtillières will be discussed in chapter two. 79
Party avoids dealing with “capitalist” enterprises’.112 The ORGECO enabled local municipalities (often governed by the PCF in the case of banlieues ) to develop a level of autonomy from the regional prefecture and central government. As chapter two will argue, there were deep divisions between local municipalities and state planners over issues arising from mass housing throughout the 1950s and 1960s. At Les Courtillières, due to issues over the funding of parts of the estate, the PCF had even taken the step of appointing its own architects to finish the estate’s library and schools. The ORGECO survey described the town as being in ‘a state of sclerosis and even recession’ due to a land shortage and a fall in job opportunities (a fall of 13.9% between 1962 and 1968, compared with a fall of just 0.2% in La Courneuve). 113 Les Courtillières was described as ‘totally isolated from the rest of the town’ and the report recommended redeveloping the estate ‘to ensure its
“transparency” and to provide a pedestrian and road link to the centre of Pantin’. 114 As subsequent chapters will argue, studies such as this shared Clerc’s objective of isolating the source of ‘ banlieue problems’, but did so in order to unite residents around common grievances arising from social housing. The increasing politicisation of the grand ensemble as a sociological issue was another important factor that led ‘mainstream’ social researchers to discuss the banlieues in other, less controversial ways.
Michel Freyssenet’s 1971 study focused on migration and social division within the
Paris region and analysed the banlieues not on a micro estate level but on a macro municipal level. His study combined census data with existing studies by the CSU, in order to determine the changing socio-economic profile of different suburbs. In doing so,
Freyssenet offered a more politically-neutral take on suburban society and demographic
112 Ronald Tiersky, The French Communism 1920-1972 (New York, 1974), p. 355. 113 ORGECO, Rapport sociologique de Pantin (Paris, 1969), p. 24. AMP/U001. 114 ORGECO, Rapport , p. 75. 80
change. Although still early in his career, Freyssenet had carried out sociological research for various state institutions including the Ministry of Public Works in Lyon, for whom he carried out projects on migration and the evolution of social structures. This work was carried out as part of an OREAM (Organisation d’Études d’Aménagement d’Aires
Métropotaines), which were created in 1966 to manage the state’s regional planning strategies. 115 Freyssenet also had recent experience of planning in Algeria, having carried out research in the country between 1968 and 1970 into developments strategies for major cities as part of a military cooperation programme between France and a newly independent Algeria. 116 Freyssenet was thus a product of a mid-1960s consensus surrounding urban planning and demography that envisaged solutions not on a small scale but on a large scale, with new towns and ‘growth poles’ that would, in theory, rival Paris in stature.
Freyssenet’s study also reflected a desire to depoliticise the discipline of urban sociology. For instance, he criticised existing studies of social change in the Paris region
(although he addressed none specifically), which he described as ‘ideological constructions of the ideological fight between social classes or class division’. 117 Freyssenet’s allusion to a ‘constructed’ class struggle referenced the recent activities of both right and left that had
115 OREAM bodies were both multi-disciplinary (containing planners, government officials, and elected local commissions) and also addressed several cities as once, often across multiple départements. OREAMs were created for Lyon-St Etienne, Aix-Marseille, Nantes-St Nazaire, Nancy-Metz and the Nord. Central to the state’s more holistic approach was the Schéma Directeur de la Région de Paris or SDAURP, which was a piece of planning legislation that targeted the whole of Ile-de-France, and determined the state’s preferred location for housing, industry, and commerce. As well as viewing the Paris region as a contiguous whole, it was also addressed the banlieue directly and emphasised state concerns about the development of suburban space. The SDAURP will be analysed in more detail in chapter two on constructing the banlieues. 116 On the breadth of Franco-Algerian cooperation programmes post-independence, see chapter three of Phillip Chiviges Naylor, France and Algeria: A History of Decolonization and Transformation (Gainesville FL, 2000). 117 Michel Freyssenet, Tomaso Regazzola, Jacques Retel, Ségrégation spatiale et déplacements sociaux dans l’agglomération parisienne de 1954 à 1968 (Paris, 1971), p. 7. 81
laden the grand ensemble with an array of ideological baggage. In the aftermath of the
May 1968 protests (which will be discussed in more depth in chapters 3 and 4) strike action in the banlieues was taken up in gauchiste campaigns, while right-wing appropriation of the grand ensemble ranged from press articles that linked them to a dangerous new suburban underclass to a close far-right interest in the university campus at
Nanterre and the activities of Algerian residents of the bidonville .118 It is also likely that
Freysennet had Clerc’s study in mind, in which the grand ensemble and the pavillon were depicted as oppositional ideological spheres and may have served as a euphemism for class.
Despite the fact that his study covered the years 1954-1968, a period that saw the construction of over 130,000 mass housing units, the grands ensembles were conspicuously absent from Freyssenet’s study.
Freyssenet’s solution to the politicised grand ensemble was to analyse urban life across whole municipalities rather than individual estates and to explore social segregation through the more ‘neutral’ category of professional occupation. His study divided each banlieue and Parisian arrondissement into eight ‘types’ denoted by their socio-professional profile, with ‘type 1’ representing an area dominated by high level professionals and at the other end of the spectrum, ‘type 8’ in which unskilled workers made up at least two thirds of the population. In other words, lower numbers denoted more affluent communes and higher numbers denoted less affluent areas. There is a notable parallel with Claude
Cornuau’s 1965 study which had analysed the banlieues chiefly through the narrow lens of leisure activities and consumption. Indeed, there was a common link between the two
118 For examples of press coverage of grand ensemble crime, see for example Lucien Rebatet, ‘Deux balles à La Courneuve’, Rivarol , 18 th March 1971. On Nanterre in the discourse of the far right, see Todd Shepard, ‘Algerian Reveries on the Far Right: Thinking about Algeria to change France in 1968’, in Julian Jackson, Anna-Louise Milne, James S. William (eds.), May 68: Rethinking France's Last Revolution (London, 2011), pp. 76-93. 82
studies as the sociologist Jacques Retel assisted in both projects, meaning that Freyssenet would have been made aware of the ‘problematic’ nature of the grands ensembles . Yet in contrast to preceding studies, Freyssenet focused on overarching general economic trends rather than individual viewpoints and sought to assimilate the banlieues into narratives of progress and prosperity.
By comparing employment statistics for 1954, 1962, and 1968, Freyssenet highlighted the gentrification of banlieues such as Saint-Mandé, Bourg-la-Reine and
Fontenay le Fleury: suburbs which all experienced a rise in the proportion of residents who classified as high-level professionals. 119 Even some areas dominated by mass housing were seen as gentrified, notably Sarcelles which changed from a category 7 in 1954 to a type 5 in 1962, reflecting planners’ attempts to build more expensive flats on the estate during the late 1960s. 120 Elsewhere, the study suggested that banlieues were becoming more socially heterogeneous, as in 1954 there were 45 ‘type 8’ banlieues whereas by 1968 there were just 5. In addition, the number of ‘type 4’ areas, where ‘the percentages of different social categories are very close to each other’ saw the greatest increase, from 13 in 1954 to 71 in
1968. 121 To an extent, this greater social heterogeneity was indicative of a ‘broadening out’ of the French middle class, which was both expanding in number and developing a series of subcategories including superior cadres , middle cadres and liberal professionals. 122
Freysennet’s analytical focus implied that parts of the Paris region were becoming more bourgeois, yet also rendered the problematic elements of banlieue life less visible. While
119 Freyssenet, Ségrégation spatiale , p. 86. 120 The housing association at Sarcelles used low-interest loans to encourage home ownership, and by 1974, one third of residents were homeowners. In addition, from the mid-1960s onwards, three new neighbourhoods were built on the estate with higher rents and improved housing quality. For more details see chapter nine of Castells, City and grassroots . 121 Freyssenet, Ségrégation spatiale , p. 87. 122 Rebecca Pulju, Women and Mass Consumer Society in Postwar France (Cambridge, 2011), p. 177. 83
Freyssenet alluded to the serious ‘social problems’ experienced by workers as a result of their transplantation from Paris to the suburbs, he did not address the issue in any further depth. Alongside areas of gentrification, Freyssenet also uncovered areas of relative stagnation, notably La Courneuve, Bobigny, and Nanterre, which had not evolved in terms of social composition and remained in categories 7 or 8. 123 While these areas (which were all sites of intense mass housing development) bucked the general trend, they represented only a minor statistical anomaly in the context of the banlieues as a whole. In constructing a macro view that rendered individual struggles invisible, Freysennet’s study would seem to reinforce prominent critiques of early 1970s urban planning, notably the journalist and activist François Maspero’s assessment of an estate constructed at Aulnay-sous-Bois in
1971:
The matter was entrusted to the public housing body and put in the hands of a town planner whose career notes say that he was interested only in aerial photos: viewed from a plane, problems of different ethnic groups living in overcrowded conditions; waterproofing; lack of soundproofing and the quality of building material obviously become hazy: only large masses matter. 124
When viewed in the context of Freysennet’s study, Maspero’s claim can be seen not just as a general comment on post-war housing but on a specific post-1968 view of banlieue space that emphasised ‘the whole’ over the constituent parts and subtly viewed the estate or even the street as divisive categories. Indeed, Freysennet’s study was one of several works of the period that moved banlieue sociology away from the case study of the grand ensemble and focused on a more diverse geographical sample or on explicit criticism of past housing policies. 125 In Bourdieu’s terms, Freyssenet pursued a form of ‘truth’ that sought to apply
123 Freyssenet, Ségrégation spatiale , p. 87. 124 François Maspero, Roissy Express: A Journey Through the Paris Suburbs (London, 1994), p. 37. Maspero was a leftist who founded the publishing house Éditions Maspero, which published controversial literature such as Frantz Fanon’s Les Damnés de la terre in 1961. 125 See for example Susanna Magri, Politique du logement et besoins en main-d'oeuvre (Paris, 1972), Jacques Lecureuil, Analyse de l’organisation de l’espace dans six grands ensembles de la region parisienne. Étude rétrospective de l’évolution de la conception depuis le plan masse initiale à la réalisation (Paris, 1972). 84
state narratives of progress to the banlieue , accentuating elements of affluence, gentrification and social homogenisation. Furthermore, Freysennet continued a tendency developed by Cornuau and Clerc whereby mass housing experiences were viewed as anomalous and external to ‘mainstream’ urban life.
Sociology of the banlieues during this period experienced a significant level of disenchantment due to the increasing belief that it no longer offered a comprehensive set of tools of social analysis. The period from 1967 to 1973 marked the demise of the grand ensemble as a category for sociological analysis, as researchers came to terms with the inherent limitations of their ‘imagined’ view of social housing. Clerc’s study represented a desire to write the definitive state account of ‘problem estates’, and raised concerns that while sociology could not portray the grand ensemble as a rich community, neither could it bring issues of decline into focus. Subsequently, Freyssenet’s study ceased to look for such problems altogether and should be viewed in the context of a growing state fear of the politicised nature of the ‘housing question’ and the banlieues more generally. This is a significant example of how a malleable meaning of banlieue emerged within the French state and how sociologists worked to render disorder less visible. By the early 1970s, mass housing had become a statistical non-entity, due to its association with the more perplexing,
‘ungovernable’ elements of French urban modernity.
85
Conclusion
Banlieue sociologists and their studies have been used to demonstrate significant limitations to social science as a tool of governance and to the reach of state knowledge in these areas. Increasingly, sociologists did not seek to render the banlieues transparent to knowledge but rather to render them opaque: by homogenising complex issues and excluding elements of anomalous knowledge. Lefebvre’s critique of narratives of ‘progress’ viewed banlieue problems as a largely inevitable by-product of modernisation and when discussing these concerns, sociologists employed a range of diversionary strategies, from shifting the problem to the field of psychoanalysis to denying the omniscience of the sociologist and subtly accepting that some problems were ‘unsolvable’. While sociologists such as Kaës and to a lesser extent Chombart, were candid about the limitations of their research studies, subsequent studies focused on presenting the illusion of totalising power.
During the mid-1960s researchers recast the problem in order to portray it not as a failure of sociology but a failure of housing as an analytical category, and the inherent
‘irrationality’ of residents themselves. Sociology became by the late 1960s, in Bourdieu’s terms, more concerned with erasing ‘truth’ than in pursuing it: a means of re-imagining the
French city to give the impression of order in an inconveniently complex environment. By this time, it could be argued that France ‘needed’ problematic urban space as it justified ongoing redevelopment of the banlieue and allowed a wide range of anxieties about modern France to be shifted to the urban periphery. However, the fact that sociologists struggled to develop the ‘right’ conclusions demonstrates that researchers were often drawing on anecdotal knowledge of what the banlieue was, knowledge that bore little resemblance to the reality.
86
On a personal level, the strategic ‘ignoring’ of certain elements of banlieue life allowed sociologists to safeguard their position as constructors of rational, scientific ‘truth’.
On a state level, it constructed an illusion of power and order, which obscured the limitations of state knowledge and rendered the anomalies if not invisible, then inconsequential. This did however have the long-term consequence of making the state less receptive to the subsequent path that mass housing would take, and less clear about its own role within the banlieue . Indeed, just as mass housing began to fall from favour so too did the state’s confidence in urban sociologists begin to end. Christian Topalov notes that a state conference entitled ‘pluridisciplinary analysis of urban growth’ organised in 1971 included around 40 participants, only four of whom were sociologists. 126 While Topalov attributes this in part to the increasing political radicalisation of many sociologists, it is no coincidence that the end of the state’s close affiliation with social scientists should correspond almost exactly with the formal end of the grand ensemble programme in 1973.
As the task of constructing housing was replaced with that of managing its inherent problems, the state moved towards experts on crime and policing that would support and justify its actions. Yet, this chapter has challenged the notion of 1973 as marking the failure of technocratic goverance of the banlieue . Instead, sociology of the grands ensemble s has been used to demonstrate that modernisers of the banlieue had always relied on a figurative, simplified portrayal of modern life that suited the limited scope of the
French state.
126 Christian Topalov, ‘Trente ans de sociologie urbaine’, Métropolitiques , 16 th October 2013 [online source]. http://www.metropolitiques.eu/Trente-ans-de-sociologie-urbaine.html , accessed on 11 th November 2014. 87
Chapter Two: Constructing the Banlieue
Little by little, La Courneuve is getting rid of the 4000 logements. ‘Were four thousand flats too much for one town?’ asks Lucette Delahaye, project leader at La Courneuve (Seine-Saint-Denis) between 1984 and 1990. Debussy in 1986, Renoir today, Presov and Ravel in 2002. More than half of the 4000 logements will have been demolished. With these operations, the town hopes to kill two birds with one stone: correct its terrible image, rebuild more welcoming neighbourhoods and less dense urban planning. ‘Like Les Minguettes in Venissieux, the 4000 logements reinforces the image of the fear of the banlieues ’ says one of their publications. 1
Libération , 8th June 2000
This chapter will focus on the built environment of the banlieues , and will consider the design, construction and modification of two grands ensembles in the Paris region during the period 1955-1973. As outlined in the above extract from Libération , the demolition and redevelopment of banlieue estates is more than an urban planning issue: it marks the dismantling of a particular image of suburban life and an ‘outmoded’ view of the French city. Yet, the position of the grand ensemble as a symbol of failed planning policy means that estates have often been homogenised in academic discourse and their materiality has been neglected. The process of constructing and managing the grands ensembles is a crucial case study for understanding the contested meanings of urban modernity in post- war France. Planning records allow for a closer questioning of how French modernisation manifested itself at a local level within different urban contexts. 2 This chapter will argue
1 Didier Arnaud, ‘La Courneuve divise ses 4000 par deux’. Libération, 8th June 2000. It was not unusual for particular towers or areas of grands ensembles to be named after composers, artists or other cultural figures. Presov was a reference to the town in modern-day Slovakia that was twinned with La Courneuve. 2 ‘Planning records’ in this context refers archived material, including council minutes, architectural plans and other related sources such as magazine articles and publicity material. 88
that the ostensibly universal image of the grand ensemble shrouded not just a diversity of planning approaches but significant conflicts and uncertainties within notions of French modernity.
Histories of the post-war banlieues are dominated by notions of an ‘ordering’ modernity, and tend to imply a certain all-encompassing, dirigiste quality to the grand ensemble as an ideological project.3 Kristin Ross for example, described the grand ensemble as part a wider ‘national re-orientation’ towards the governance of everyday life and the domestic sphere. 4 Ross argues that developers used ‘the lure of modernisation’ as a ploy to encourage immigrant families and the elderly to leave Paris, as part of a vast reworking of social boundaries within French cities. 5 The historian Paul Silverstein shares the notion of the grand ensemble as the ‘new imperialism’ in describing estates as having a
‘civilising mission’, yet he gives little mention of how this might have operated. 6 These narratives of a ‘civilising’ state offer a valuable analysis of the discourse of modernisation but this chapter will develop these understandings by exploring the debates and conflicts that underpinned the construction of post-war modernity. Furthermore, this chapter will challenge the notion that the grands ensembles represented a singular, generic ideology by arguing that any belief in a ‘national’ housing policy soon gave way to a looser, more ambiguous set of principles which became a necessity as the demands of the social housing outstripped the ordering capabilities of the French state.
3 Although usually only applied to an economic context, scholars have pointed to a more general cultural form of dirigisme , such as Andrew Knapp’s view of dirigisme as ‘a shared culture’ of ‘economic “rationality” and “progress” that helped to gain the support of the Catholic church and the communist party. The concept of dirigisme is thus important as it appears to imply a widespread political consensus regarding the modernisation process. For a fuller discussion of the role of dirigisme in deploying civil society see, Andrew Knapp, Vincent Wright, The Government and Politics of France (London, 2006), pp. 18-24. 4 Ross, Fast Cars , p. 7. 5 Ross, Fast Cars , p. 155. 6 Silverstein, Algeria in France , p. 106. 89
A number of more recent studies highlight elements of contestation within the modernisation project, yet still regard disaccord as a short-term obstacle rather than an embedded feature of the planning process. The planning historian W. Brian Newsome for example, highlights sociologists as a prominent source of criticism to mass housing, but argues that such debates subsided by the late 1960s when more democratic planning practices were adopted. 7 Similarly, the urban historian Jean-Noël Blanc recognises the vast ideological differences between the PCF ‘local state’ and the national ministry yet also suggests that for communist municipalities, grands ensembles represented ‘urban monuments…to a confident, glorious working class’. 8 Blanc cites the sociologist Jacques
Rey’s view of mass housing as ‘a true consensus between the workers’ movements, particularly the communist tendency, and other social forces controlling institutions of various levels, social promoters, bureaucracies and the economy’. 9 This chapter will challenge these harmonious depictions of estate planning by highlighting significant divisions that emerged between different modernisers regarding the design and role of social housing. In doing so, this chapter will reassess the grand ensemble not as a clear expression of state power but as an uneasy compromise between competing notions of the modern city.
This chapter will analyse the design and construction of the Les Courtillières estate at Pantin and the 4000 logements in La Courneuve, in order to highlight the contextual, uneven nature of the grand ensemble programme. In doing so, this chapter will challenge the notion of the grands ensembles as a planning consensus by arguing that estates
7 Newsome, French Urban Planning , p. 134. 8 Jean-Noël Blanc, ‘Le Consensus sur les grands ensembles ou le grand malentendu’, in Tomas , Les Grands ensembles , p. 58. 9 Jacques Rey, ‘Vaulx-en-Velin, histoire passionnante et chaotique d'une politique urbaine périphérique’, Les Temps modernes 545-6 (1991) cited in Blanc, ‘Le Consensus’, p. 58. 90
provoked ongoing debates between the municipal and ministerial officials regarding the future of the banlieues and modern France more generally. This chapter will argue that rather than being a totalising expression of state power, estates often demonstrated more conciliatory, location-specific approaches. Overall, this chapter will use estate planning to present an alternative view of French post-war modernisation as a process that was largely shaped by what modernisers could not do or did not know . This chapter will thus argue that the planning and construction of the grand ensemble was central to the idea of ‘fantasies of state power’ as it served as a means of projecting aesthetic and ideological unity in a socially and politically divided environment. In considering the relationship between grand ensemble constructions and notions of French state power, this chapter will draw on
Thomas Gieryn’s research into the agency of the built environment and the ‘double reality’ of buildings; the notion that they shape human actions but are also subject to reshaping by human agents. 10 Gieryn argues that while buildings have a role in stabilising social life and institutions, they do so imperfectly. As Gieryn states, ‘buildings don't just sit there imposing themselves. They are forever objects of (re)interpretation, narration and representation - and meanings or stories are sometimes more pliable than the walls and floors they depict’. 11 Gieryn’s notion of buildings as subject to reinterpretation is particularly relevant to how this chapter seeks to understand the grands ensembles : as a malleable element within urban planning that shrouded deep uncertainties about the future of suburban life.
The first section of this chapter will analyse initial debates surrounding the planning and construction of Les Courtillières in Pantin, between 1957 and 1961. This section will consider significant divisions that emerged between the chief planner’s vision
10 Thomas F. Gieryn, ‘What Buildings Do’, Theory and Society 31: 1 (2002), pp. 35-74 (p. 41). 11 Gieryn, ‘What Buildings Do’, p. 41. 91
for the estate and that of the local PCF council. Les Courtillières will be seen not as the product of consensus but as a compromise between conflicting notions of social housing as a crisis solution and as an aspirational bourgeois environment. Section two will focus on the near-contemporaneous planning and construction stage of the 4000 logements in La
Courneuve between 1959 and 1963. The La Courneuve estate will be seen as an example of modernisers’ tendency to ascribe vastly different meanings and roles to social housing in the banlieues , which betrayed deep uncertainties inherent to the planning process.
Section three will focus on the period 1961-1965 and will analyse the nature of the domestic space that planners produced. Contrary to scholarly views of the grand ensemble as the embodiment of a singular, generic ideology, this section will highlight the varying ways in which apartment interiors served to ‘condition’ their inhabitants. Section four focuses on the period 1965-1971 and looks at the two estates in the context of a growing state belief in the ‘failure’ of social housing. In particular this section will explore the figurative ‘destruction’ of the grand ensemble as a key means through which ministerial and municipal officials continued to debate the future of banlieue space and the direction of post-war modernisation.
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1. Planning for aspiration or destitution? Les Courtillières, 1957-1961
Les Courtillières was an uneasy compromise between competing obligations of the post- war modernisation process. While the PCF council viewed housing as principally a ‘crisis solution’ the chief planner and housing association sought to plan for a more affluent resident profile. In exploring these debates, it can be argued that the ordered façade of Les
Courtillières shrouded a deeply contested space, and projected a vision of order in an internally complex and disordered environment. While the grand ensemble is often seen by scholars as a ‘rupture’ within French post-war history, it also served to preserve a number of existing paradigms within urban planning. Mass planning in the banlieues had already been enacted by the socialist mayor Henri Sellier in Suresnes during in the interwar period, which the historian Emmanuel Bellanger argues was governed by new conceptions of ‘the social’. 12 It is in the work of Sellier that Rabinow sees a significant shift from planning that centred on philanthropic discourses over workers’ housing towards a ‘rhetoric of objectivity’ that promoted ‘urban experts’ such as sociologists to the forefront.
In terms of scale, France’s colonies had served as a testing ground for many of the more ambitious modernist visions, notably Henri Prost’s development of major Moroccan cities between 1913 and 1923, which he would later replicate within the Paris region and the eastern city of Metz during the late 1920s. 13 Colonial planning knowledge continued to inform developments in the metropole well into the 1960s, through the work of planning
12 For a more comprehensive discussion of Sellier’s project see Emmanuel Bellanger, Villes de banlieues: personnel communal, élus locaux et politiques urbaines en banlieue parisienne au XXe siècle (Paris, 2008), p. 98. On earlier developments such as Tony Garnier’s 1902 Cité Industrielle, see Siegfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 787-790. For a discussion of the nature of ‘the social’ and its evolution during the twentieth century, see for example, chapter one of James Vernon, Hunger: A Modern History (London, 2009). 13 For further discussion of these projects see Jean Marrast, ‘Maroc’ in Louis Hautecoeur et al, L’Oeuvre d’Henri Prost : architecte et urbaniste (Paris, 1960). 93
minister Paul Delouvrier who had overseen housing construction in Algiers as part of the
French government’s Constantine Plan (1959-63) and later published a comprehensive plan for the Paris region: the Schéma Directeur de la Région de Paris (SDAURP) of
1965. 14
Urban planning also represented significant elements of continuity between the
Vichy era and post-war governments. The former Pétainist André Prothin who had headed
Vichy’s main planning commission, the Délégation Générale à l'Équipement National
(DGEN) was retained under de Gaulle’s Minister for Reconstruction Raoul Dautry.
Reconstruction projects offered a path back to political respectability for former members of the Vichy government and in the view of Nicole Rudolph, served as a salve to postwar
France that enabled policymakers to put aside their differences and embrace ‘a political and social order designed by experts’. 15 It is in this context of French urban planning as an uneasy fusion of new and existing notions of the city that the housing developments at
Pantin and La Courneuve are best understood.
The town of Pantin was located between the traditionally more affluent banlieues of Pré-Saint-Gervais and Romainville and the industrial suburbs of La Courneuve and
Aubervilliers. 16 Pantin expanded as an industrial centre as a consequence of the opening of the Canal de l’Ourq in 1822, which bisected Pantin and was constructed to bring fresh water to Paris and to provide alternative shipping channels to the river Seine. The arrival of railways in 1849 brought further development and the installation of large-scale industry, notably the Grands Moulins de Pantin flourmill and later, the Motobécane motorcycle
14 On the Constantine Plan see Martin Evans, Algeria: France's Undeclared War (Oxford, 2012), pp. 241- 243. 15 Rudolph, ‘Who Should Be the Author of a Dwelling?’, p. 542. 16 Silverstein, Algeria in France , p. 98. 94
company. 17 Pantin suffered from an acute housing crisis after the Second World War due to a combination of war damage to buildings and an already decaying housing stock. The declassification of Paris’s military fortifications in 1926 led the area around Fort d’Aubervilliers (in the far north of the commune) to become Pantin’s equivalent of La
Zone , an area of itinerant lodgings. By 1954, this land around the Fort d’Aubervilliers had become home to an emergency settlement of 150 state-funded emergency lodgings that became known locally as the cité d’urgence . While these houses were more salubrious than the nearby bidonvilles at La Courneuve, with cement walls, several interior rooms and a small garden, they still lacked even the most basic amenities.
This land became the designated site for the Les Courtillières estate: a site far from the industrial activities of the Ourq canal that drew frequent complaints from residents, but also far from the mairie and other public services. Council meetings of April 1955 were dominated by calls for more permanent housing, as well as schools and a marketplace. 18
The architect selected to design the new complex was Émile Aillaud, who had already been involved in the reconstruction projects in Pas-de-Calais and Lorraine, as well as a social housing development: the Cité de l’Abreuvoir in nearby Bobigny. 19 Despite the fact that issues of homelessness and poor housing were raised by the municipality, Aillaud appeared to favour more affluent residents in his plan for the estate. In a council meeting in
July 1956, the communist Deputy Mayor Jean Lolive praised Aillaud’s housing plans but expressed doubts with the notion of ‘bourgeois living for workers’ as he feared that the
17 Since 2009, the Grands Moulins de Pantin is now a central office of the bank BNP Paribas. 18 ‘Pantin Council Minutes’, 20 June 1955,, AMP/134. 19 Aillaud would later become Georges Pompidou’s official architect and would play an important role in the redevelopment of the Les Halles market during the early 1970s. Aillaud is perhaps best known for the construction of the renowned estate of La Noë at Chanteloupe-les-Vignes, which featured in the acclaimed 1995 film La Haine. For more on Aillaud’s earlier projects, see Hélène Le Bon, ‘Émile Aillaud (1920-1988) ou le retour à l'enfance’, Urbanisme 340 (2005), p. 83-89. 95
housing offered would be too expensive for the less affluent. 20 Census data from 1954 for example had indicated that around 160,000 families were living in ‘unconventional’ dwellings in Paris, which included hotel rooms and temporary shelters. 21 Lolive also expressed cynicism about the provision of only one crèche facility given the number of children he anticipated would soon inhabit the area. 22 He equally cited a smaller development nearby on Rue Anatole France in which flats could be rented for around 25% cheaper per square metre, despite not benefitting from the same economies of scale. 23 The average rental price at Anatole France was just under 13 Francs per square meter and the average for Pantin town centre was 15.40 Francs. At Les Courtillières on other hand, the eventual rental prices would vary from 16.30 to 18 Francs per square meter; comfortably above the municipal average. 24
During the initial planning and construction stage of Les Courtillières, Pantin was governed by the socialist SFIO, which had clashed with the PCF on a number of national issues such as the invasion of the Suez and the SFIO’s decision to join de Gaulle’s government. 25 This debate surrounding Les Courtillières supports Gieryn’s notion that
‘design is both the planning of material things and the resolution of sometimes competing social interests’, and in this case the PCF’s critical stance was overridden by a more
20 Jean Lolive (1910-1968), a member of the PCF, served as deputy mayor of Pantin from 1953 until he was elected mayor in 1959. He also served as a deputy in the Assemblée Nationale from 1958 until his death in 1968. Lolive had professional experience of construction, having spent several years as a cement worker, during which he had also represented the construction industry in the CGT trade union. 21 Anne Power, Hovels to Highrise: State Housing in Europe Since 1850 (London, 1993), p. 43. 22 By 1966 for example, half of the estate’s population would be under fourteen years-old. 23 ‘Pantin Council Minutes’, 12 April 1956, AMP/134. 24 ‘Rental prices, 1963’, AMP/W100. 25 The SFIO (Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière) was a French socialist party that existed between 1905 and 1969. Among its leaders were influential politicians such as Édouard Vaillant and Jean Jaurès. The party’s leader from 1946 to 1969 was Guy Mollet, who also served as Prime Minister of France between 1956 and 1957. On the history of the SFIO see Alain Bergounioux, Roger Martelli, 1905 la création de la SFIO : unité et diversité des socialistes (Paris, 2006); Jacques Kergoat, Histoire du parti socialiste (Paris, 1997). 96
general desire to take action on the housing issue.26 Aillaud may have targeted the estate at a more affluent demographic, anticipating the arrival of professionals and cadres (mid- level managers) as a result of further industrial investment in the region. Indeed, the architectural historian Jean-François Dhuys argued that the towers of Les Courtillières were designed to echo the design of ‘white-collar spaces’ such as the office block and argued that features such as tall windows going up the inner staircase were ‘a rare luxury in social housing’. 27 Similarly, Aillaud later claimed that the winding barres of Les
Courtillières were inspired by the Georgian Crescents of Bath, and aimed to bring the aesthetics of ‘bourgeois’ and ‘worker’ housing closer together. 28
Figure 2.1: Photograph of Fonds d’Eaubonne towers, Les Courtillières (source: author’s own)
Yet, Aillaud also made a number of subtle concessions to the estate’s role as a
‘slum solution’. The star-shaped Fonds d’Eaubonne towers closely resembled the blocks of
Le Corbusier’s unrealised Ville Radieuse (see figure 2.2) that gave each apartment three
26 Gieryn, ‘What Buildings Do’, pp. 41-42. 27 Jean-François Dhuys, L’Architecture selon Émile Aillaud , (Paris, 1993), p. 129. 28 Émile Aillaud, Désordre apparente,ordre caché (Paris, 1975), p. 88. 97
outside walls and thus helped to improve air circulation. While Aillaud marketed this spatial form as a strategy to prevent overlooking (perhaps as an attempt to promote the virtues of privacy) the design also recalled early modernist concerns over tuberculosis outbreaks and worker hygiene.29 It seems counterintuitive that estates such as Les
Courtillières could contain vast open spaces yet also group blocks close together and make overlooking a potential concern. However, as with other estates the spatial layout was often determined by the working radius of a single crane rather than a specific urban design theory. Aillaud replicated a number of other standard practices for French mass housing design, including the ‘Camus process’ of prefabrication which was becoming increasingly widespread. 30 The use of prefabricated units necessitated the presence of an overarching authority to coordinate construction, which Les Courtillières had in the form of the SEMIDEP (Société d'Économie Mixte Propriété de la Ville de Paris) the housing association that administered the estate. 31 Thus, in practice Les Courtillières resembled a compromise between competing visions of prosperity and the ongoing issue of poor housing.
29 John N. Tuppen, France Under Recession: 1981-1986 (Albany, 1988), pp. 194-195. 30 The Camus process was named after its inventor, the engineer Raymond Camus. For a fuller discussion of Camus’s career and prefabricated housing, see Kimberly Elman Zarecor, Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity, Housing in Czechoslovakia 1945-1960 (Pittsburgh, 2011), p. 266. For a more far-reaching historical analysis of the implications of industrial standardisation and the evolution of ‘objective’ technical knowledge in France see Ken Alder, ‘Making Things the Same: Representation, Tolerance and the End of the Ancien Régime in France’, Social Studies of Science 28:4 (1999), pp. 499-545. 31 Florian Urban, ‘Mumbai's Suburban Mass Housing’, Urban History 39 (2012), pp 128-148. The overall financing of Les Courtillières stemmed from three housing organisations: the SEMIDEP (a public company that also incorporated private interests), the Société Centrale Immobilière de la Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (a state financer of social housing) and the Office Central Interprofessionnel du Logement (which was responsible for collecting employers’ contributions towards housing construction).
98
Figure 2.2: ‘Concept drawing from Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse ’ (1924) [online source]. http://www.archdaily.com/411878 accessed on 5th August 2013.
However, if Les Courtillières was constructed as some level of poverty ‘solution’,
Aillaud did so in a way that bypassed some of the more ‘inconvenient’ aspects of modernising the banlieues and centred on an outward display of state benevolence. The most prominent building on the estate, the snake-like Serpentin which was formed as a
1.5km-long sinuous curve and housed 791 apartments, represented a highly conspicuous solution to the housing crisis. The Serpentin had echoes of the work of the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, particularly his Baker House which was a student dormitory constructed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1946. Like Aillaud’s
Serpentin, the Baker House was built as a sinuous curve, in an attempt to maximise views while also allowing for a housing higher density than parallel blocks. 32 Aillaud also sought to make Les Courtillières stand out among other grands ensembles , thus enhancing the visibility of this ‘grand display of state benevolence’. In an apparent display of nepotism,
Aillaud hired his son-in-law, the artist Fabio Rieti to paint the exterior walls of the
Serpentin in vivid greens and blues, which contrasted with the bare concrete of Sarcelles.
32 David Leatherbarrow, Mohsen Mostafavi, Surface Architecture (Boston, 2005), pp. 54-56. 99
The distinct form of the Serpentin epitomised a trend in European post-war social housing described by the architectural historian Sam Davis as ‘strong visual reminders that the poor were being attended to in a dynamic fashion’. 33 Similarly the historian David Drakakis-
Smith described a practice of ‘tokenism’, namely housing programmes that act as ‘visible symbols of governmental concern for the poor’ that are intended to ‘win approval and votes, or impress overseas visitors’. 34 In this regard, the bold aesthetics succeeded in attracting the attention of Parisian observers, with Le Parisien Libéré calling the estate ‘the longest building in the world’ and Le Figaro dubbing it ‘Manhattan in Pantin’. 35 However, the contrasting reaction from inhabitants and local councillors undermined the notion that
Les Courtillières was actually helping to address the housing crisis.
Figure 2.3: Site map of Les Courtillières with main facilities. Michel, Derainne, Aux Courtillières , p. 91.
33 Sam Davis, The Architecture of Affordable Housing (London, 1995), p. 13. 34 David Drakakis-Smith, Urbanisation, Housing and the Development Process (London, 1981), p. 124. 35 ‘Manhattan à Pantin’, Le Figaro, 12th November 1958, unpaginated cutting, AMP/AM/134. 100
In 2007, the Pantin council published a social history of Les Courtillières that included testimonies from the first residents to inhabit the estate. 36 While one should be wary about drawing conclusions from resident views that have been assembled and selected by the (since 2001, Parti Socialiste-governed) municipality, it is important to consider how new arrivals to the estate viewed Aillaud’s creation. Interestingly, early testimonies suggest that inhabitants viewed their new surroundings as some level of interim housing rather than a permanent home. One resident Viviane Belhassen, a social activist, claimed that the entire estate was transitory in nature, describing it as ‘temporary housing…that replaced the cité d’urgence , and was built to be demolished after a certain time’. 37 Despite being only five years old when her family moved to the estate in 1958,
Geneviève Amghar noted that at first, ‘the walls weren’t even completely dry. The market square didn’t exist…There was no school, there was nothing’. 38 Madeleine Bouchard, a housewife, echoed this view when she described the complex in December 1958 as being
‘under construction, a pile of mud with soil everywhere’ and emphasised the composite nature of the estate at the time in stating that ‘my eldest daughter lived at Les Courtillières in a shack [ un baraquement ]’. 39 Testimonies from these residents suggest that the estate was viewed as a ‘hybrid space’ between permanent and temporary housing. While
Belhassen viewed Les Courtillières as an extension of the cité d’urgence , Amghar and
Bouchard claimed that at least initially, the estate was only a marginal improvement on their former surroundings. Such testimonies are perhaps inevitable in an unfinished estate but also suggest that the outward impression of order belied the internal ambiguities of mass housing and its role. The internal disorder of the grand ensemble project was also
36 Resident experiences of social housing will be covered in more depth in chapters three and four. 37 Michel, Derraine Aux Courtillières , p. 63. 38 Michel, Derraine, Aux Courtillières , p. 30. 39 Michel, Derraine, Aux Courtillières , p. 38. 101
picked up on in municipal discourse of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which began to criticise Les Courtillières more openly.
Following the PCF victory in the municipal elections of 1959 and Jean Lolive’s accession as mayor, the party intensified its criticism of Les Courtillières. Aillaud’s grand ensemble offered in theory, a development that could serve as an ‘urban monument’ to a new, confident workers’ banlieue.40 However, municipal officials continued to criticise the estate for being ‘too bourgeois’ and a mere drop in the ocean in the context of the town’s housing needs. Lolive tried to exert pressure on estate planners, reminding them in April
1959 that post boxes had not yet been installed and that a proposed annex of the town hall, police alarms and public transport improvements were yet to be completed. 41 The PCF had a vested interest in portraying Les Courtillières as a failed estate- the party felt that it lacked adequate representation on the housing nomination committee (the body which decided who should be allocated flats), as its two representatives could be outvoted by those appointed by the prefect and the housing associations. Despite attempts to intervene by Georges Valbon, the communist president of the Conseil General, PCF calls to increase their representation were dismissed by the HLM authority, which demonstrates that the estate was administered by competing interests rather than any form of ‘harmonious’ union. 42
Deputy Mayor Jean Doutre, who occupied one of the PCF’s positions on the nomination committee, made his frustrations clear in a series of municipal bulletins published on the subject of the bidonvilles . Doutre published a bulletin in 1959 in which he
40 Blanc, ‘Le Consensus’, p. 58. 41 ‘Pantin Council Minutes’, 12 th April 1959, AMP/AM716. 42 Letter from Jean Lolive to president of Pantin HLM office, 26 th July 1960. AMP/W100. 102
argued that the Les Courtillières estate was failing to adequately address the housing issue.
He argued that Pantin still contained ‘numerous unsanitary blocks [ îlots insalubres ] and buildings to renovate and replace’ and featured a photograph of one such area around the
Place de l’Église, which he described as ‘without air, without light’. 43 Doutre claimed that only once 1755 further proposed housing units at Les Courtillières and elsewhere in Pantin were completed would the needs of ‘working families of modest income’ be addressed.
Doutre published another bulletin in 1960 in which he spoke of the ongoing severity of the town’s housing crisis and the recent efforts of the municipality (as opposed to the HLM office) to solve it. He described the most deserving recipients of social housing as being not white-collar cadres but ‘young couples living in cramped, expensive hotel rooms…waiting for the home of their dreams’ and ‘the badly housed and homeless ’.44
Doutre blamed the national government for the slow progress of construction, claiming that ‘[housing] would have come quicker if state funds had been allocated not to instruments of death, but to civil spending, to instruments of life!’ Doutre also noted the cost of de Gaulle’s force de frappe (France’s nuclear deterrent), arguing that 500 billion francs was enough to buy 350,000 low-cost dwellings. 45 Doutre’s words were an explicit attack on any notions of ‘tokenism’ within the design of Les Courtillières, and expressed reservations over whether social housing was being allocated to the most deserving tenants.
While these were internal bulletins, it is highly likely that such messages were also circulated publicly, as by 1960 the SEMIDEP had begun to campaign against the circulation of PCF propaganda within Les Courtillières. 46 Thus, there were significant
43 Jean Doutre, ‘Le Grave problème du logement’ (1959), AMP/AM27. Like Lolive, Doutre had an industrial background and had been active in the CGT. He served as Deputy Mayor of Pantin from 1959 to 1965. 44 Jean Doutre, ‘Construire des logements pour ceux qui en ont le plus besoin’, (1960), AMP/AM27 . 45 Doutre, ‘Construire des logements’, p.12. 46 The SEMIDEP action against the PCF will be discussed further in chapter three. 103
divisions between state officials regarding the purpose of the grand ensemble , which fed into wider debates about the limits of French modernisation.
The debate surrounding Les Courtillières offers a fresh perspective on the nature of debate within French post-war modernisation, which has principally been seen in terms of a conflict between clearly defined ideologies. The political analyst Gabriel Goodliffe for example, argues that the first decade of the Fifth Republic was marked by ‘a conflict between “old” and “new” men, pitting “modernisers” against “conservatives”, “technocrats” against “Malthusians”’. 47 Yet Rosemary Wakeman recognises that discord also existed between different modernisers and highlights a rift between the planning ministry’s vision of modernism as ‘the antidote to all ills’ in which ‘all suffering was denied’, and the PCF’s
‘commitment to a socially conscious urbanism’ that favoured public projects such as youth centres, schools and sports facilities. 48 A similar debate appeared to be taking place at Les
Courtillières, between the ‘pragmatics’ of the PCF and the ‘idealists’ of the national ministry. Yet, there was also a level of ambiguity to the ideological position of each side: the national government, for instance, employed both technocratic and (in the view of the
PCF) Malthusian design principles. Similarly, the PCF harboured both an enthusiasm for mass housing and an inherent conservatism that resisted the ‘wrong kind’ of change. Les
Courtillières was thus not shaped by a binary debate between ‘old’ and ‘new’ but rather by a more fluid set of competing ideologies that sought both to claim ownership of the modernisation process and to contest its more ‘undesirable’ elements.
47 See Gabriel Goodliffe , The Resurgence of the Radical Right in France: From Boulangisme to the Front National (Cambridge, 2012), p. 210. 48 Wakeman, Heroic City , p. 323. 104
This is not to say that the PCF was the only critical voice with regards to Les
Courtillières, as ministerial commentators began to note that the estate still lacked key facilities. In a 1961 letter to the Prime Minister, Pierre Sudreau (the Minister of
Construction) expressed deep concerns about the estate, arguing that ‘the north part [of
Pantin] is particularly deprived and locating new public services is proving rather difficult’. 49 Planning became an important means through which modernisers debated the future of Les Courtillières, by proposing alternative visions for the future of Pantin and the banlieues more generally. Echoing a growing trend towards ‘inter-communality’ (the amalgamation of the banlieues to form new artificial ‘cities’), Patrick Gervaise’s plan for the area, published in 1961, proposed joining the territories of Pantin, Romainville, Pré-
Saint-Gervais, Les Lilas and Bagnolet into an agglomeration simply named ‘Ensemble no.33’. However, according to the plan, the Pantin grand ensemble would still occupied a peripheral position, as the majority of the proposed services were located beyond a series of physical barriers; the Fort d’Aubervilliers, the Pantin cemetery, the industrial zone, railway line and canal. Gervaise’s plan represented an increasingly holistic approach to planning in Ile-de-France that planned across whole municipalities rather than at a more focused neighbourhood level. Yet, the conspicuous ‘ignoring’ of Les Courtillières suggested that such approaches, while promising to address banlieue issues on a larger scale, actually provided a means of rendering localised issues invisible.
The national government’s ongoing interest in amalgamated banlieue cities was also motivated by a desire to dilute the PCF’s influence in the suburbs by redrawing electoral boundaries. It may be no coincidence that the first ministerial proposals for ‘inter- communality’ were published in 1959, a year of widespread PCF success in municipal
49 Letter from Pierre Sudreau to the Prime Minister, (1961), AP/27/ WR7. On Sudreau’s political career see Christiane Rimbaud, Pierre Sudreau (Paris, 2004). 105
elections. Perhaps tellingly, architects employed by the PCF proposed a more localised solution that did not involve integrating Pantin with non-communist banlieues such as Pré-
Saint-Gervais and Les Lilas. Paul Chemetov’s 1962 plan for the town did not subscribe to the idea of intercommunality and continued to view Pantin as an urban centre in its own right. 50 Chemetov proposed the construction of additional schools and markets at Les
Courtillières, but as with Gervaise’s plan, the vast majority of his proposed public services and cultural infrastructure were to be located south of the canal de l’Ourq and thus far from the estate. Chemetov’s plan (which was subsequently adopted) followed Aillaud’s original plans for Les Courtillières closely and perhaps signified a PCF desire to supplant the local
HLM office as the ‘benevolent’ provider of social housing. Chemetov’s plan also enabled the PCF to complete the much-delayed youth club to its own specifications and thus to gain a foothold in influencing the social and cultural life of the estate. Debates at Les
Courtillières thus remained rooted not in the bricks and mortar of the estate but in wider concerns over the governance of banlieue space. Indeed, subsequent state planning legislation followed a similar path to the sociological studies analysed in the previous chapter in consciously disregarding social housing. The grand ensemble would become increasingly, a non-entity that state modernisers sought to marginalise from mainstream conceptions of the modern city.
The early years of Les Courtillières betrayed a level of uncertainty and discord over precisely who social housing was for and how the modern banlieue should function.
Following its construction, the estate betrayed the fractured nature of France’s modernisation project, and debates fed into a wider intra-state conflict over who should
50 During this time, Paul Chemetov was principally involved with the redevelopment of unsanitary blocks in and around Pantin. He was also a founded member of the pro-communist AUA (Atelier d’Urbanisme et d’Architecture): an architectural collective that was hired to develop Les Courtillières in the mid-1960s. 106
govern banlieue space. While Aillaud and the national ministry sought a level of banlieue gentrification, the municipality saw social housing as a local solution to problems of slum dwellings. At a more macro level, the estate became the proxy in a conflict between different notions of the modern French city. The national ministry used the construction and management of Les Courtillières as a subtle means to widen its influence within the banlieues and to undermine the powers of the local PCF. The PCF on the other hand, began to employ the estate as a tool to critique government policy and to resist elements of suburban change that it viewed as undesirable. The debate on Les Courtillières serves as an example of how social housing gave the illusion of unity within a deeply contested post- war urban modernity.
2. Dormitory estate or new urban core? The 4000 logements, 1959-1963
Whereas Les Courtillières emerged as a hybrid of competing views of modernisation, the
4000 logements was largely an improvised strategy to address a constantly changing set of
‘banlieue problems’. Indeed, the La Courneuve estate underwent a successive re-imagining by planners throughout the 1960s as an attempt to control suburban sprawl, a container for
‘surplus’ populations and a new suburban city. The inherent malleability of the planning ideologies attached to the 4000 logements can be used to demonstrate the vague social objectives that underpinned much of the modernisation process and planners’ deep uncertainties about the demographic and economic future of the banlieues as a whole.
The town of La Courneuve, located five miles from the centre of Paris, had expanded significantly from the 1860s onwards with the establishment of heavy industry 107
by firms such as Rateau and Mécano. 51 Like Pantin, the town suffered severe bomb damage during the Second World War that had depleted its housing stock and had necessitated humanitarian intervention by the national aid agency Secours National. 52 The
La Courneuve site was designated as one of the government’s flagship Zones à Urbaniser en Priorité (ZUP), which were created to facilitate the rapid development of land, which was vital given the competing pressures of a rural-to-urban exodus, large amounts of war- damaged housing (particularly in northern and eastern France), the baby boom and increased levels of immigration. 53 Situated near to the French capital and close to major industrial employers, La Courneuve was an attractive site for mass housing and the Paris
HLM office gained special dispensation to acquire the site in 1957. The estate was therefore administered as an exclave of Paris, with the national planning ministry determining the design of the complex and precisely who would be allocated housing within it, while the local municipality committed to financing the estate’s facilities. The growing demographic pressures on the Paris region were clear to see: while Les
Courtillières was a relatively low-density complex of around 1600 lodgings across 57 hectares, the 4000 logements concentrated double the number of housing units into a land area of just 37 hectares.
51 Rateau located to La Courneuve in 1917 and manufactured components for the gas turbines used in power stations. The company suffered during the early 1970s as a result of economic downturn and France’s increasing reliance on nuclear power, and was later taken over by Alsthom. Mécano were a manufacturer of machine tools who had been based in La Courneuve since 1914. The firm experienced a gradual downsizing during the mid-1970s and the plant closed for good in 1978. 52 For a wider discussion of the history of Secours National and its post-war activities see part one of Claudia Baldoli, Andrew Knapp, Richard Overy (eds.), Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe 1940-1945 (London, 2011). 53 Over the course of ten years the ZUPs facilitated the construction of over 800,000 housing units across France much of which took the form of grands ensembles . France’s economic growth in the early 1950s created a need for workers and there was intense political debate over what sort of migrants to attract. Initially the majority came from Portugal, Italy and Spain, but from the late 1950s, immigration came to be dominated by arrivals from the North African colonies that took advantage of their temporary freedom of movement and sought economic opportunities in mainland France. For more information on French 1950s immigration policy see Matthew J. Gibney, Randall Hansen (eds.), Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present, Volume 1 (Santa Barbara, 2005), pp. 278-280. 108
Figure 2.4: ‘View of 4000 logements, La Courneuve’, [online source]. http://cites9- 3.skyrock.com/77613602-Les-4000.html accessed on 20th July 2012.
The 4000 logements was designed by the architects Henry-Charles Delacroix and
Clément Tambuté. Delacroix’s recent projects included work on the post-war reconstruction of Caen in Normandy, notably a housing development near the historic
Maison des Quatrans that attracted some controversy due to its incongruous modernist design. 54 Tambuté had also flirted with controversy during his comparatively short career.
The Parisian architect was best known for his work on the reconstruction of Abbeville in
Picardy that was criticised for using poor quality bricks and for employing ‘apartment bridges’ that obscured views of a nearby church. 55 Mass housing at La Courneuve on the other hand, presented a new set of challenges and competing pressures to these maligned architects.
54 Patrice Gourbin, ‘La reconstruction de l'Hôtel d'Escoville après 1944 : histoire d'un conflit’, Annales de Normandie 51:1 (2001), pp. 71-95 (p. 94). The Maison des Quatrans was a large 14 th century timber-framed building that had survived the bombings of 1944 and was later made a listed building. During the reconstruction of Caen, it gave its name to a number of neighbouring historic buildings that became known collectively as ‘les Quatrans’. 55 Hugh Clout, ‘Paying the Price for Freedom: from Destruction Towards Reconstruction in Northern France, 1940-1960’ in Scott Kirsch, Colin Flint (eds.), Reconstructing Conflict: Integrating War and Post-War Geographies (Farnham, 2011), pp. 157-159 (p. 168). 109
During the initial development stage of the 4000 logements, planners were optimistic about what they hoped to achieve. Plans for the estate were published in 1958 and revealed a wide range of services compared with other developments of this size.56
Tambuté and Delacroix’s development consisted of a series of 16-storey barres and a smaller number of tower blocks arranged across two sites to the west of La Courneuve’s town centre. The plans featured a meeting room, a youth centre and several schools, as well as a church, a cinema and perhaps most unusually for a grand ensemble , a hotel. The smaller site along Avenue Henri Barbusse would house the shopping centre and crèche and eventually, trains every 8 minutes would link the estate to Paris’s Gare du Nord (although a link through to the main shopping centre at Châtelet was yet to be completed). 57 In this regard, residents certainly fared better than those at Sarcelles, where travel times to the capital were far greater, although the southern area of the estate was much further from the railway station. 58
On the surface, the bold new plan reflected a general feeling in post-war French planning that the planning historian Mario Bonilla described as a ‘disgust with the past’, typified by a desire to exorcise the legacy not just of Pétainism but also ‘traditional’ notions of the city epitomised by the ‘two headed monster’ of the zone pavillonnaire and
56 In comparison, the far larger estate of Les Minguettes near Lyon had very little provision for social infrastructure in the original plans. On Les Minguettes, see Tuppen, France Under Recession , p. 195. On British satellite towns, see Alison Ravetz , Council Housing and Culture: The History of a Social Experiment (London, 2001), pp. 100-101. 57 ‘External plans, 4000 Logements, 1958’, AMLC/C397. 58 Planners sometimes had to settle for more isolated sites when constructing mass housing and Sarcelles was a prime example of this. Lobry expressed regret about the isolation of Sarcelles, claimed that Le Bourget would have been a preferred site for the grand ensemble , closer to the capital and more integrated with its ‘sister commune’ of St Denis. See Jean Lobry, Construction et urbanisme dans la région parisienne (Paris, 1958), p. 315. 110
the faubourg. 59 In a wider sense, the 4000 logements also echoed a futurist tendency in
European post-war planning, that Anthony Alexander views as a ‘rejection of the historic urban form…in cities blighted by traffic, factory smoke and poorly-maintained housing, which was visible in the British new towns movement’.60 One could equally link the design of the 4000 logements to radical urban planning principles including the collectivised community of the Soviet microrayon and the German notion of the aufgelockerte gegliederte Stadt or ‘loosely articulated city’, in which low-rise blocks were employed to separate housing from the other key ‘functions’ of work and leisure. 61 Yet, as with Les Courtillières, the design of the La Courneuve estate was not just a response to transnational trends or national concerns but also reflected a series of specific ‘ banlieue debates’.
Planning discourse of the time subtly attempted to instil an oppositional relationship between the estate and the surrounding town. In 1958, Planning Minister Jean
Lobry praised the plans for the 4000 logements, claiming that it would bring ‘a definite social equilibrium’ to an area that presently had an ‘almost excessively industrial character’. 62 In criticising the industrial nature of La Courneuve, Lobry may have been alluding to the town’s continued preference for electoral candidates of the left. The estate offered the possibility to populate the commune with a more politically-diverse
59 Mario Bonilla, ‘Le Grand ensemble comme forme urbaine’ in Tomas, Grands ensembles , p. 169. Yet, as Newsome notes the first large-scale grands ensembles were actually constructed under the Vichy government. See Newsome, French Urban Planning, p. 89. 60 Anthony Alexander, Britain's New Towns: Garden Cities to Sustainable Communities (Abingdon, 2009), pp. 163-164. 61 The microrayon, developed in the USSR in the 1920s, was a compact, collectivised housing complex that responded to the country’s rapid urbanisation. As well as comprising of housing units, the microrayon also included services such as schools, shops and entertainment. The loosely articulated city was a principle that informed the reconstruction of several major German cities during the 1950s. Drawing on Wagner’s Siedlungen, it separated urban life into separate ‘functions’ with traffic as the new ‘lifeblood’ of the city. For more information see Susan Mazur-Stommen, Engines of Ideology: Urban Renewal in Rostock, Germany, 1990-2000 Munster, 2005) p. 62. 62 Lobry, Construction et urbanisme , p. 279. 111
demographic and thus dilute the left’s political dominance in the area.63 The political implications of demographic change brought a new facet to the social housing question and the state desire to ‘reshape’ existing working-class communities. Conversely, the architectural historian Jean-Claude Cavard argues that in the context of the late 1950s, densification had widespread approval across the political spectrum as it offered the possibility to ‘break [ casser ] the banlieue ’ by preventing suburban sprawl (which included the unsanitary shanties) from spreading too far. 64 Yet, plans for the estate did suggest some desire to make the 4000 logements a monument of Parisian civilisation within the
‘disordered’ banlieues . Publicity campaigns tended to portray the 4000 logements as an autonomous new town that depended little on the existing settlement nearby. One publicity image (see figure 2.5) blurred out all surrounding structures (including incidentally, several streets of pavillons ) and depicted the estate as two urban ‘islands’ joined by a major road.
Plans placed the six routes crossroads as the meeting point between the two sides and envisioned an underground walkway that would provide direct pedestrian access. 65 While planners were not explicit about seeking to instil an oppositional relationship between estate residents and the ‘traditional’ banlieue , subsequent state planning legislation would make these reservations somewhat clearer.
63 The political persuasion and electoral impact of new arrivals was an acute concern across the political spectrum. The pro-communist CGT trade union for example, had called for Italian immigrants to be screened for their political sympathies. Similarly, de Gaulle was conscious that many pieds-noirs arriving from Algeria were former Pétainists and employed Gaullist activists in Algiers to try and channel discontent into support for his administration. See Julian Jackson, De Gaulle (London, 2003), p. 72. 64 Jean-Claude Cavard, ‘Le département de Seine-et-Oise: urbanisation et politique départementale d’aménagement de 1940 à 1965’, in Paris et Ile-de-France; mémoires 36-38, (1985), pp. 325-361 (p. 353). 65 ‘Plans for 4000 logements’, AMLC/C397. 112
Figure 2.5: Publicity image produced by the Office Public de la Ville de Paris of the 4000 logements showing the estate’s two sites. AMLC/C390.
Even before the 4000 logements was built, ministerial planners were imagining how the estate would fit into the Paris region, and in doing so, sought to lessen the influence of the traditional PCF-controlled banlieues . In 1959 the Ministry of
Reconstruction commissioned a study by architect Olivier Rabaud into the current administrative strategies for these areas bearing in mind recent increases in population. 66
This was also the year in which the Ministry of Construction’s ‘Plan Directeur de Paris’ designated one-tenth of the surface area of Paris for urban renewal, heightening the need for additional housing outside of the capital. 67 Almost certainly responding to PCF gains in the 1959 municipal elections, Rabaud argued that exising départemental and cantonal boundaries were ‘rather anachronistic due to the anarchic development of built-up areas’
66 Olivier Rabaud was more notable for his theoretical planning projects than for his actual realisations which were limited to a medium sized housing complex at Puteaux completed in 1968. In 1965 Rabaud would work with the grand ensemble architect Marcel Lods in the theoretical project ‘Ville de Demain’ which was a town plan based largely on automobile circulation, with rents directly correlating to the price of cars. 67 Rearick, Paris Dreams , p. 90. 113
and argued that in reality these banlieues were simply divided between ‘dormitory communes and…industrial communes’.68 His proposed solution was to re-draw administrative boundaries in order to bring a greater sense of ‘order’ to the suburbs.
Rabaud imagined the amalgamation of several northern banlieues into three new urban agglomerations, speculatively named ‘Bourg-Mesnil’, ‘Drancigny’ and
‘Auberneuve’ as portmanteaus of the towns of Le Bourget, Le Blanc Mesnil, Drancy,
Bobigny, Aubervilliers and La Courneuve. Each hypothetical city had its own unique character, with Auberneuve designated as an industrial city that would provide employment opportunities to the smaller nearby city of Drancigny (Drancy was mainly pavillon housing, while Bobigny was becoming increasingly dominated by grands ensembles ) which would remain largely residential. In short, Rabaud called for a kind of
‘de-banlieue -isation’ whereby the general character of suburbs would be retained but would become industrial or residential areas of new cities. The agglomeration of
Auberneuve is particularly relevant for this study, as it imagined the 4000 logements as part of a city of 130,000 people, serving as a dormitory commune for industrial areas to the northeast. The idea of the 4000 logements as a dormitory estate is closer to what the economist John N. Tuppen saw as being the intended purpose for the Les Minguettes near
Lyon: a larger estate with far fewer social facilities, ‘offering dwellings but little else.69
While Rabaud’s theory of banlieue cities was never realised, one can thus point to a subtle shift in planning discourse away from viewing the 4000 logements as an autonomous satellite town and towards viewing it as a ‘concentration of population’ that would depend on other urban centres. Rabaud’s plan also points to the wider strategic use of French
68 Oliver Rabaud, ‘Report for Ministère de la reconstruction et du logement, aménagement de la région parisienne’, March 1959, AP/27/WR1. 69 Tuppen, France Under Recession , p. 195. 114
modernisation as a diversionary tactic that obscured a more ambiguous set of political objectives.
While the planning stage of the 4000 logements was relatively straightforward, the construction stage raised debates about the nature of the housing produced. Gieryn alluded to potential problems in planning processes more generally, which he described as ‘a mix of insistence and compromise, whereby interests and purposes are resolved in and through a palimpsest of floor plans, only the last of which gets built’. 70 In a similar vein, at La
Courneuve new purposes and demands were constantly emerging as a result of the redevelopment of the Paris region and migration patterns. 71 Bernard Barre, an urbanist responsible for developing La Courneuve between 1974 and 1985 described the demographic pressures that confronted planners from the late 1950s onwards:
…this was the time of slum clearance operations in the 13 th arrondissement around the Place des Fêtes etc…with this hygiene discourse where they bulldozed the city, threw out the people and told them they couldn’t ‘reintegrate’ these houses. This was also the time of shantytown clearances, there was the Franc Moisins one (Saint Denis), La Campa at La Courneuve by the racecourse…and then in ’62, Algeria achieved independence and the initial population of the 4000 logements was 40% repatriates from North Africa. 72
Barre’s testimony hints at a continually evolving set of demands on the 4000 logements over the course of the early 1960s. The end of the Algerian war would prove particularly significant in demographic terms. Overloaded ferries of ‘repatriated’ pieds-noirs and harkis began arriving at the port of Marseille during the course of the summer of 1962,
70 Gieryn, ‘What Building Do’, p. 34. 71 For a general discussion of economic migrants to France in the post-war years, see Philip E. Ogden, ‘Labour Migration to France’, in Robin Cohen (ed.), The Cambridge Survey of World Migration (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 289-296. For a more specific analysis of the impact on the banlieues see chapter three of Aurélie Bray, Soraya Thabet, Les Phénomènes migratoires: un défi pour la France? (Paris, 2009). 72 Bernard Barre, ‘Interview given to Laboratoire Architecture Anthropologie’, (undated) [online source]. http://www.laa-courneuve.net/print1958.html accessed on 16th April 2012. 115
with around 900,000 arriving in total. 73 In time, the ‘problem’ of new waves of refugees from Algeria became a Parisian one, with the well-publicised establishment of a squatter settlement in a derelict Paris building known as ‘the sphinx’. 74 As argued in chapter one, the issue of squatter settlements and shantytowns populated with North African immigrants was nothing new to the Paris region. The sheer scale of the influx may have made social housing in the banlieue an attractive measure for several reasons. Firstly, as the political analyst Ian Lustick has argued, the government had only anticipated 300,000 arrivals and wanted to conceal the real number from the public. 75 Housing in the banlieue offered a means to render the influx less visible and thus to reduce public criticism of the government’s Algeria policy. It is from this influx of Algerians to estates such as the 4000 logements that notions of the grand ensemble as a postcolonial ‘containment’ strategy emerged. In addition, the influx of pieds-noirs and pro-French harkis offered another means to reshape the electoral map of the banlieues as the new arrivals would cast their votes in the La Courneuve municipal elections. Yet, both groups of Algerians shared a mistrust of Gaullism, as they viewed the Evian Accords as a significant betrayal. 76 As the
73 The majority of arrivals to France were pieds-noirs ; Algerian settlers of European origin, who cultivated a ‘hybrid Mediterranean’ culture. In 1950 there had been around one million pieds-noirs living in Algeria. See Matthew Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post- Cold War Era (Oxford, 2002), p. 11. For cultural studies of the pieds-noirs , see Pierre Nora, Les Français d’Algérie (Paris, 1961); Eric Saverese, L’Invention des pieds-noirs (Paris, 2002). On pieds-noirs who chose to remain in Algeria after independence, see Jean-Jacques Viala, Pieds-noirs en Algérie après l’indépendance: une expérience socialiste (Paris, 2001). Harkis were Muslim Algerians who supported French rule. On the experiences of harkis before and after Algerian independence, see Fatima Besnaci- Lancou, Gilles Manceron (eds.), Les Harkis dans la colonisation et ses suites (Paris, 2008). While some harkis arriving in France were housed in permanent accommodation others faced several years in transition camps. On the mistreatment of harkis in France see chapters four and five of Vincent Crapanzano, The Harkis: The Wound That Never Heals (London, 2011); chapter nine of Todd Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (New York, 2006). 74 ‘Des Rapatriés squatters à Paris’, La Croix , 13 August 1962 quoted in Cécile Mercier, Les Pieds-noirs et l’exode de 1962 à travers la presse française (Paris, 2003), p. 167. 75 Ian Lustick, ‘The Unravelling of Algérie Française and the Fate of the Pieds-Noirs’, in Arie Marcelo Kacowicz, Pawel Lutomski (eds.), Population Resettlement in International Conflicts: A Comparative Study (Plymouth, 2007), pp. 41-57 (p. 50). 76 On the Evian Accords and the debates surrounding them see Benjamin Stora, La Gangrène et l'oubli : la mémoire de la guerre d'Algérie (Paris, 2005). 116
next section will argue, the sensitive nature of in-migration may have influenced estate planners to create a relatively flexible living environment that was designed to ‘appease’ these new citizens.
As construction on the La Courneuve estate began, there was evident frustration among modernisers that demands of scale overrode more qualitative approaches. For example, the President of Paris’s HLM office later spoke of densification as the overriding priority, describing the need for ‘155 apartments per hectare including facilities’, which required blocks of 15 to 20 storeys. With just 37 hectares to work with in total, he conceded, ‘the land wasn’t cheap so we had to densify’. 77 Landscape architects also shared a sense of unease about the scale of the barres . One such architect, Jacques Sgard, later claimed that:
What architecture couldn’t do, we tried to do with green space. For example, the barres were extremely long, painfully long, so we needed to find other spaces, to create a complexity on the ground that the architecture didn’t provide. And I didn’t quite achieve that at La Courneuve…So much for my dreams as a young landscaper! 78
While Sgard’s testimony should be read in the context of the subsequent stigmatisation of the estate, it is possible to detect a level of frustration with the estate’s design due to its perceived monotony. There are echoes of the ‘implacable, abstract blocks’ that Lefebvre described at Mourenx, and Sgard’s testimony also touches on critiques of social housing as
‘tokenism’ that gives the impression of strong state benevolence.
77 José Martins Dias, ‘Aménagement de La Courneuve, 1924-1972’, Unpublished MA Thesis, ADSSD/9J/169. 78 Jacques Sgard, ‘Interview given to Laboratoire Architecture Anthropologie’ (undated) [online source]. http://www.laa-courneuve.net/print1963.html accessed on 23rd November 2013. Sgard spent some time studying in the Netherlands and developed a keen awareness of algorithms of ‘green space per inhabitant’: a formula that he felt that he was unable to apply to the 4000 logements. 117
Retrospective testimonies from Sgard and the HLM office also drew on the knowledge that despite the boldness of the original plan, the built environment of the 4000 logements would not match the planners’ vision. This rift between vision and reality was replicated elsewhere: British post-war projects such as the Wythenshawe Civic Centre in
Greater Manchester and Speke in southeast Liverpool proposed an almost identical array of facilities to La Courneuve, which included cinemas, hotel, public halls and churches. 79 At
La Courneuve, the estate’s shopping centre was completed in 1964, but as in Wythenshawe and Speke, services such as the hotel and cinemas were never built. In the British case,
Alison Ravetz attributes this stagnation to ‘long deferred industrial growth’ that meant that estates were planned with the assumption of future prosperity. 80 In France, envisaging the grand ensemble on the drawing board as an autonomous town with plentiful services demonstrated modernisers’ faith in trickle-down economics, whereby growing prosperity among the upper income levels would eventually benefit poorer sections of society. 81 Bold plans also enabled urbanists to present a series of illusions about mass housing, in order to make developments more marketable to developers and new residents. Indeed, it was not unusual for ministers to plan estates in this way but subsequently to cancel the proposed infrastructure but retain the housing. Jean Lobry had employed a similar tactic at Sarcelles, by suggesting in plans that the estate would form part of a new city of 25,000 people, La
Dame Blanche: a project that was later shelved. 82 Section four will develop this notion of planning as ‘myth making’ by analysing the ongoing use of hypothetical plans as a means of contesting and debating elements of the modernisation process.
79 Ravetz, Council Housing , p. 101. 80 Ravetz, Council Housing , p. 101. 81 Cook, Modern France , p. 241. For a more detailed study of modernisation theory in post-war France see Régis Boulat, ‘Jean Fourastié et la naissance de la société de la consummation en France’, in Alain Chatriot, Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel, Matthew Hilton (eds.), Au nom du consommateur : consommation et politique en Europe et aux États-Unis au XXe siècle (Paris, 2004), pp. 98-114. 82 Lobry, Construction et urbanisme , p. 315. The name ‘La Dame Blanche’ was later given to an adjacent grand ensemble at Garges-les-Gonnesses. 118
The 4000 logements estate was both a generalised solution to the French housing crisis and a highly strategic way of planning and administering the banlieue . For the planning ministry and the Paris HLM office, the estate served as a subtle attack on the
‘traditional’ banlieue but also provided a sufficiently ambiguous planning strategy that could be reshaped and manipulated to suit changing priorities. The estate was thus not the embodiment of a singular ideology but rather a dialogue between modernisers who harboured private uncertainties about mass housing. While modernisers were aware that the estate emphasised quantity over quality, the elaborate estate plans and the idea of
‘amalgamated cities’ indicated that the grand ensemble provided an environment for the strategic manipulation and re-imagining of banlieue space. Overall, the 4000 logements allowed planners to simultaneously present an outward image of order that shrouded their inner uncertainties over the future of the estate and of the banlieue more generally.
3. Social engineering or urban engineering? Domestic space, 1961-1965
The processes of planning and constructing the Les Courtillières and the 4000 logements illustrated distinct debates and uncertainties in each context. Similarly, the interior design and layout of these grands ensembles serves to further challenge the notion of mass housing as a generic modernising ‘event’ enacted by a totalising technocratic state. Indeed, the interior design used at the 4000 logements were in essence a rejection of the earlier planning ideologies employed at Les Courtillières, which has important implications for how historians understand the post-war modernisation process. The changing internal layout of social housing can be mapped onto a wider shift from paternalistic planning to a 119
more flexible approach that served to betray planners’ uncertainties about the future of the banlieues .83
Interior space at Les Courtillières was emblematic of rigid design principles that were applied to initial post-war housing. Apartments followed the template of the HLM cellule , which was France’s answer to German interwar developments in rationalist home design and household efficiency, particularly Ernst May’s Existenzminimum apartments near Frankfurt. 84 In theory, cellules were built according to address common human needs
(a restful environment after work for men, a labour-saving home for women and place for children to play) and were governed by a series of model blueprints that encouraged uniformity in design. 85 In keeping with these principles, Les Courtillières apartments incorporated features such as small ‘lab’ kitchens that were designed for efficiency and to be too small to facilitate dining.86 Instead, a serving hatch that allowed meals to be taken in the largest room, the séjour , a term that designated this room as the space where residents would spend the most time.87 The size and layout of the kitchen is an important feature for social housing, and scholars have used its remodelling to link the grand ensemble project to a universal remodelling of the domestic sphere. Nicole Rudolph describes a general post-war project inherent to banlieue housing whereby ‘state actors conceived of domestic
83 Scholars have often claimed that the grands ensembles were poorly-maintained: see for example Castells, City and Grassroots , p. 81. However, in the archives visited, maintenance records for grands ensembles were a notable absence, so it is difficult to assess the demand for housing repairs during the period concerned. 84 On May’s Existenzminimum see chapter seven of Trevor Garnham, Architecture Re-assembled: The Use (and Abuse) of History (Abingdon, 2013). 85 Rudolph, ‘Who Should Be the Author of a Dwelling?’, p. 546. 86 ‘Interior plans for Les Courtillières’, AMP/AM134. It should be noted that the available archive material on interiors at Les Courtillières referred to the Fonds d’Eaubonne towers rather than the Serpentin. 87 The Frankfurt kitchen or ‘lab kitchen’ as it became known in France emerged out of May’s 1920s planning of Frankfurt and was distinct in that it did not feature a dining area. Instead, it was solely a food preparation space, separated from the social and leisure space by a wall. The Frankfurt kitchen was an attempt by planners to ‘emancipate’ women from the traditional union of their work and leisure space, but was only one of a number of spatial models for the modern kitchen. For a comprehensive discussion of the role of kitchen space in competing notions of modernity see Jerram, ‘Kitchen sink dramas’. 120
space as a national social space, one in which relationships of class and gender could be organised for the nation’s benefit’. 88 Focusing specifically on the kitchen, Newsome argues that the elimination of the traditional French ‘eat-in’ kitchen was designed to construct family sociability around the more ‘bourgeois’ dining room and to force men to accept women into the masculine space of the parlour. 89 Newsome argued however, that confinement went hand in hand with emancipation and that by making the home more appealing to women, it lessened the likelihood that they would seek work. 90
1. Living room 2. Bedroom 3. Kitchen 4. Bathroom 5. Toilet 6. Entrance hall 7. Cupboard 8. Gas main 9. Water main 10. Rubbish chute 11. Lift 12. Cellar 13. Bicycle storage
Figure 2.6. Floor plan for ground floor level of a blue tower with author’s rendering of key. Michel, Derainne, Aux Courtillières , p. 91.
88 Rudolph, ‘Who Should Be the Author of a Dwelling?’, p. 544. 89 Newsome, French Urban Planning , p. 91. 90 Newsome, French Urban Planning , p. 91. 121
Apartments at La Courneuve on the other hand followed the ‘Referendum model’, which reflected a more flexible approach to domestic planning that appeared to retreat from the more prescriptive approach employed at Les Courtillières. The Referendum model was devised by the Ministry of Planning in 1959, and was based on a survey of resident satisfaction conducted among 300 residents of early grands ensembles . While this design developed the cellule model to some extent, it equally signaled a retreat from some of planners’ bolder objectives for the remodeling of domestic life. Whereas planners at Les
Courtillières had prevented an eat-in kitchen, architects at La Courneuve placed a dining table in the séjour (the main living room) but also illustrated a dotted-line square in the kitchen, indicating where a dining table might be placed. 91 The return of the eat-in kitchen was a key feature of the Referendum Apartment and reflected the fact that families continued to dine there. Indeed, La Courneuve apartments had no serving hatch between the kitchen and séjour and neither did the two rooms join directly on to each other. The séjour maintained some primacy as it was the only room in which large families might realistically dine together, but evidently did not occupy the same privileged position as at
Les Courtillières in which living rooms had the best views and were larger in proportion to the kitchen. 92 A larger kitchen on the other hand, provided an alternative living space that allowed families ‘separate space for simultaneous activities’. 93 In Lefebvre’s terms, although the 4000 logements still used the family as the main ‘social nexus’, interior design did at least mean that families were not ‘forced’ to adopt the same routine. 94
91 Plans for 4000 logements, La Courneuve, AMLC/C397. 92 Proportions varied between apartments, but generally, kitchens at La Courneuve were a little under 50% of the size of the séjour. At Les Courtillières, kitchens were less than 30% of the size of the séjour. See Michel, Derainne, Aux Courtillières , p. 91. 93 Davis, Affordable Housing , p. 102. 94 Lefebvre, ‘Utopie Expérimentale’, p. 198. 122
Elsewhere in the La Courneuve apartment, there were further concessions to
‘traditional’ working-class modes of living that were absent in Pantin. To avoid the health concerns associated with drying laundry indoors, communal drying areas were present on every floor, providing a space for social exchanges. Conversely, planners at Les
Courtillières did not provide drying areas, and tenants were expressly forbidden from drying their washing on balconies or in reception rooms. 95 La Courneuve apartments also catered for the needs of larger families through inclusion of a second sink to make hygiene routines easier and the separation of ‘day’ rooms; the kitchen and living rooms, and ‘night’ rooms; the bathrooms and bedrooms. On the other hand, very large families were still expected to tolerate a level of inconvenience. Internally, seven-person apartments had one bedroom that overlapped with the living space and could only be closed off with a retractable screen, known as a cloison mobile (see figure 2.7). This design feature (which was allegedly unpopular with residents) was partly due to spatial necessity but also reflected a trend in modernist social housing for rooms to ‘communicate’ with each other. 96
In some cases, plans suggested no separation between the two rooms at all, with a bed simply occupying an ‘alcove’ of the living space, a feature that Rudolph argues may have been intended for ‘parents or an older child living at home’.97 Yet, this was still a more favourable arrangement than other social housing developments nearby. On the smaller La
Courneuve estate at Rue Dugny for example, a five-bedroom apartment would typically have four doors leading directly from the living room, including two bedrooms.98 There was thus greater acknowledgement among planners of the 4000 logements that larger
95 Extract from Les Courtillières general regulations (1957), AMP/AM134. 96 On the use of this feature in French social housing see Pierre Mardaga (ed.), L'Habitation en projets: de la France à l'Europe (Liège, 1990), pp. 73-75. For a wider ethnographic study of open-plan design in post-war modernist housing see Judy Attfield, ‘Bringing Modernity Home: Open Plan in the British Domestic Interior’, in Irene Cieraad, At Home: An Anthropology of Domestic Space (Syracuse, 1999), pp. 73-95. 97 Plans for 4000 logements, La Courneuve, AMLC/C397. 98 See ‘Plans for Tower 3A, Rue Dugny’, AMLC/W21. 123
families would use the estate and less desire to discourage such groups. Internally, the proto-bourgeois rationale of Les Courtillières had given way to a more pragmatic approach that ceased to view the grand ensemble as a significant rupture with traditional modes of living.
124
Figure 2.7. Floor plan of 6 room and 2 room apartments, La Courneuve. AMLC/C390.
125
While the 4000 logements offered a more flexible living environment than Les
Courtillières, its design created issues of overcrowding that the grands ensembles became known for. Both estates made differing use of semi-private communal areas such as vestibules, staircases and lifts. The narrow vertical structure of the Les Courtillières towers meant that each floor contained just three flats, with each flat occupying one ‘point’ on the star shape (see figure 2.6). By arranging residents vertically in this way, planners created in theory, an environment where ‘residents come easily to know one another, forming small, cohesive clusters’. 99 Another consequence of this design was that flats did not share common walls, which presumably lessened issues of noise. The identical dimensions of each storey meant that each apartment had two bedrooms, which ensured a level of social homogeneity by excluding larger families. There were thus several ways in which the design of Les Courtillières encouraged orderly and (ideally) cordial neighbourly relations.
At La Courneuve on the other hand, the dense structure of the estate increased the likelihood of more strained neighbourly relations. In theory, the size of the barres allowed the possibility for large communal areas that followed the ‘streets in the sky’ template, in which a row of flats was linked by a long central corridor that was open to the elements. 100
These ‘aerial streets’ were an early-1960s reaction to the isolated towers of many estates and represented an attempt by planners to recreate the ‘close-knit working-class life’ of the city. 101 In practice however, the barres at the 4000 logements were too narrow to allow space for a communal corridor, meaning that internal staircases and small vestibules
99 Davis, Affordable Housing , p. 89. 100 The ‘streets in the sky’ or ‘deck access’ concept was the remnant of the wider ‘streets in the air’ concept that proposed to incorporate ‘familiar street objects’ such as post boxes, plants and shops into the construction of access balconies for flats. ‘Streets in the sky’ continued a wider interest in elevated urban living that dated back to early modernist planners. Le Corbusier for instance, integrated an elevated shopping street into his Unité d’Habitation in Marseille. See Justin Wintle (ed.), The Concise New Makers of Modern Culture (Abingdon, 2009), p. 442. 101 Owen Hatherley, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (London, 2010), pp. 90-91. 126
provided the only common areas. Unlike at Les Courtillières, larger apartments tended to be grouped together, which meant that that large families often shared the same stairways and common walls, which exacerbated noise problems and created congestion in lifts. 102
Congested corridors offered less ‘defensible space’, which critics of modernist housing would later view as a factor that led tenants to ‘relegate responsibility for all activity outside the immediate confines of their apartments to public authority. 103 Thus, there were several ways in which the overarching goal of densification and the belief in the grand ensemble as an emergency housing solution caused planners to compromise on their social vision for the estate.
This increasing tendency to compromise in design epitomised state planners’ shifting priorities. The design of Les Courtillières addressed a chiefly metropolitan issue, namely a post-war desire to in Rudolph’s words, ‘alleviate the burden of the middle-class woman who could no longer find household help, and soothe the class antagonism of the factory worker whose home now shared the same plumbing and central heating system as that of the bank manager’. 104 Scholars often assume that despite growing demographic pressures, this process largely continued with the next wave of social housing. Paul
Silverstein for example, argues that estates of the early 1960s were still being marketed as an ‘ultra-modern haven for the lower middle classes…and state functionaries’. 105 However, the design employed at La Courneuve suggested that idealism was very quickly rejected in favour of an approach that was pragmatic and highly flexible in ideological terms. The
102 The historian John Tuppen noted similar issues at Les Minguettes near Lyon. See France Under Recession , p. 95. 103 Oscar Newman, Defensible Space: Crime Prevention through Urban Design (New York, 1972) On Newman’s influence as a critic of modernist housing, see John R. Gold, The Practice of Modernism: Modern Architects and Urban Transformation, 1954–1972 (Abingdon, 2007), pp. 352-353. 104 Rudolph, ‘Who Should Be the Author of a Dwelling?’, p. 543. 105 Silverstein, Algeria in France , p. 103. 127
shift in design from Les Courtillières to the 4000 logements was not merely a revision in state policy but a gradual ‘uncoupling’ of state planners from issues of the banlieue domestic sphere. As the next section will argue, this shift in the banlieue interior was the precursor to a wider trend whereby ministerial planners rethought the role of the banlieue within modern France. In the face of an increasingly perplexing social and architectural environment, banlieue planners would seek new ways to present an overarching narrative of order.
The internal design of Les Courtillières and the 4000 logements can be used to map a significant shift from the paternalism of the immediate post-war years to a more prosaic belief in mass housing as a container for uncertain, ambiguous suburban life. By extension, one can argue that the notion of the grand ensemble as a nationwide remodelling of the domestic sphere seems more relevant to the late 1950s than to the early 1960s. Yet, state planners were rethinking not just housing design but approaches to governing the banlieue and notions of what made ‘effective’ social administration possible and efficient. 106 While
Les Courtillières constructed state power through the domestic sphere, the 4000 logements subtly rejected this approach. Instead, planners created a looser model that perhaps reflected the increasing administrative demands of governing these areas. As the next section will argue, from the mid-1960s onwards this ‘domestic shift’ manifested itself in overarching state planning legislation, which sought to imply a sense of order in banlieue areas that were seen as increasingly ungovernable.
106 Joyce, Rule of Freedom , p. 21. 128
4. Destroying the grand ensemble , 1965-1973
The evolution of banlieue planning policy between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s represented a gradual ‘rejection’ of mass housing among banlieue modernisers. Legislation passed during this period acknowledged the perceived failure of the grands ensembles and illustrated a desire to bring greater order to ‘troublesome’ suburban communities. The competing futures that ministerial and municipal planners envisaged for areas such as
Pantin and La Courneuve indicated that mass housing had become a key means through which different elements of the French state debated the future of modern urban life. As this section will argue, these debates served to further question the notion of the grands ensembles as a ‘planning consensus’ and betrayed limitations in the ordering capabilities of the French technocracy.
In the mid-1960s both Les Courtillières and the 4000 logements were still largely unfinished. By 1965, Les Courtillières had established a twice-weekly market, schooling facilities and a gymnasium, but the planned developments of a post office and a local hospital lagged behind. The idea for a local youth club, absent from Aillaud’s original plan, was first mooted in 1964 but a council meeting of January 1965 acknowledged that the project had fallen behind and instead recommended a general network of foyers
(smaller spaces for meeting and recreation). 107 Conversely, further housing units were still being added, and seven additional towers and two low-rise blocks were added to the estate over the course of 1965 and 1966. Much of these new homes were Logécos housing, part of a ministerial programme that provided low-cost flats for middle-class families with children. To an extent the addition of Logécos signalled a desire to appeal to a broader
107 ‘Pantin Council Minutes’, 29th January 1965, AMP/AM/716. 129
range of economic groups, although immigrants were ineligible were for the new housing, meaning that Les Courtillières remained a selective environment. 108 Despite this, the PCF still reportedly claimed that since 1962, Algerian repatriates had been given preference in the allocation of housing compared to the local population. 109 As chapter three will argue, the estate remained largely inaccessible to poorer residents of the Paris region, whether foreign or French.
At La Courneuve, while a 1964 article in the housing periodical Revue mensuelle
HLM praised the 4000 logements for its large and varied shopping centre, the article omitted to mention that the sports centre and schooling facilities were still yet to be completed.110 As chapter four will explore, the lack of adequate schooling would become a particular source of resident discontent in the decade that followed. The situation at Pantin and La Courneuve was not atypical of social housing in the Paris region. Indeed, at
Sarcelles the estate’s library, civic club and legal counselling services were all provided by voluntary associations formed by residents themselves.111 While the 4000 logements was condemned in the popular daily newspaper France-Soir , the article in question focused on the inherent dangers of the banlieues rather than planning issue per se. The journalist
André Fontaine claimed that while ‘the 4000 logements estate is new, comfortable and well designed’, and had succeeded in rehousing ‘Algerian repatriates who had rotted for
108 Haffner, The View from Above , pp. 84-85. 109 Nick Bullock et al, ‘Les Courtillières Ordinary Housing Project—Extraordinary History?’, Docomomo 39 (2008), pp. 12-17 (p. 15). 110 Revue Mensuelle HLM , unpaginated cutting, April 1964 AMLC/C397. Revue mensuelle HLM was published by the Union Nationale des Fédérations d’Organismes HLM. It was circulated among France’s various HLM associations, the media and housing ministries. While it formed a public relations wing of social housing it also devoted articles to issues and debates arising from social housing such as the admission of foreigners to HLM estates. 111 Castells, City and Grassroots , pp. 80-81. 130
months in squalid hostels’, it was ‘invaded every evening by thugs [ voyous ]’. 112 Fontaine argued that the delinquents came not from La Courneuve itself but from nearby suburbs such as Saint-Denis, Stains, Drancy, Aubervilliers, and Saint-Ouen. He even claimed of the estate’s gardiens (concierges) ‘They are not armed. But that might be better’. 113 Just as
Fontaine attributed the problem not to the grand ensemble but to the very nature of the banlieue itself, so too did state planning leglislation of the mid-1960s. The state’s response to the situation in the Paris region, the Schéma Directeur de la Région de Paris (SDAURP), sought not to address estate deprivation but rather to create a new blank canvas for development in the region. Rather than challenging such preconceptions, the SDAURP
‘agreed’ with these mediatised views of the grands ensembles and used them as a premise to move existing estates to the fringes of French thinking on the city.
The SDAURP was the work of Paul Delouvrier, who served as Delegate-General of the Paris region between 1961 and 1969. Delouvrier had gained political capital through his role in the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community and later planning projects in Algeria during the late 1950s. Although the SDAURP was not the first comprehensive planning strategy for the Paris region, it was the most far-reaching. For example, Henri Prost’s plan of 1934 had treated the Paris region as a contiguous whole, and designated zones for urbanisation, green space and transport links across a wide geographical area. 114 Similarly, the PADOG plan of 1960 (drawn up following de Gaulle’s return to power in 1958) aimed to create ‘growth poles’ and new cities in the suburbs but as with Prost’s plan, it was never formally enacted. The PADOG did however, set out
112 See André Fontain, ‘A La Courneuve, livrée tous les soirs aux voyous, pas un poste de police pour les 4000 logements et bientôt plus de 20000 habitants ‘, France-Soir, 19 th September 1964, p. 8. 113 Fontain, ‘A La Courneuve’, p. 8. 114 On Prost’s life and career see Hautecoeur et al, L’Oeuvre d’Henri Prost . 131
many of the planning concerns that that the 1965 legislation would seek to address. 115 The
SDAURP was the first overarching planning strategy that incorporated the lessons learned from social housing developments and offers a useful commentary on state views of banlieue space during this time. It also set the tone of state planning in the banlieue for the next two decades.
If the differing planning approaches of Les Courtillières and 4000 logements signalled a level of realism infusing state planning of the banlieues , then Delouvrier was one of the key state officials who heralded this more ‘detached’ approach. While some modernisers such as the geographer Jean Bastié continued to praise the grands ensembles ,
Delouvrier represented a more cynical voice. In 1964 for example, Delouvrier commissioned a study by Bastié which praised the grands ensembles , describing Sarcelles as ‘one of…the most successful’ and hinted at further constructions in the St Denis that would house 200,000 more people and provide employment for 50,000 more workers. 116
Perhaps inspired by a post-Algerian war interest in ‘prestige projects’, Bastié also envisaged the construction of a vast stadium and a new airport within the Paris region. 117
Yet, in his introduction to Bastié’s study, Delouvrier tempered the unbridled optimism of his researcher in describing the book as ‘more than an intellectual pleasure, a broad subject for reflection’, suggesting that it represented more of a hypothetical vision than a blueprint
115 Another key difference was that while the PADOG legislation foresaw a plausible population of ten million for the Paris agglomeration, the SDAURP foresaw a population of sixteen million. See Paul White, ‘Paris: From the Legacy of Haussmann to the Pursuit of Cultural Supremacy’, in David Gordon, Planning Twentieth Century Capital Cities (Abingdon, 2006), pp. 38-58 (p. 56). For a more extensive discussion of PADOG see Monique Dagnaud, ‘A History of Planning in the Paris Region: from Growth to Crisis’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 7 (1983), pp. 219–236. 116 Jean Bastié, Paris en l’an 2000 (Paris, 1964), p. 60. 117 Prestige projects such as Concorde and the development of nuclear weapons have been seen by historians as an attempt to recast France’s military failure as a victory. See Jean-Christian Petitfils, Le Gaullisme (Paris 1981), p. 16 and Evans, France’s Undeclared War , p. 349. 132
for state action. 118 While the SDAURP would employ similar hyperbolic language to
Bastié’s study, the legislation was much an attack on the ‘old’ banlieues as a proposal for something new.
Perhaps most striking about Delouvrier’s plan was its acerbic discussion of the existing banlieues , which were described as ‘old village centres that little by little have become unsanitary blocks [ îlots insalubres ] and ‘interminable schemes of pavillons with small gardens’. 119 Delouvrier blamed industrial development for ‘disturbing the appearance of communes [which have been] transformed into large factory estates [ cités industriels ]’ with the job of ‘housing the workforce that Paris needs and which it can no longer house’. 120 The minister went further still in discussing the expanding banlieue as a menacing entity that had ‘devoured the little département of the Seine, eaten the strange ring of Seine-et-Oise and has even encroached into Seine-et-Marne’. 121 Although the
SDAURP was not officially approved until 1968, its handling of the banlieues betrayed a desire to ‘forget’ aspects of the mass housing experiment and to condemn these areas as anarchic and disordered spaces.
According to the anthropologist Beth Epstein, the SDAURP emerged out of a belief that the grands ensembles had not been ambitious enough and had failed to halt the anarchic expansion of the Paris region. 122 Scholars such as Edward Welch and François
Maspero view the SDAURP as a form of neo-Haussmannisation, and both cite de Gaulle’s
118 Paul Delouvrier, ‘Introduction’ in Bastié, Paris , p. 7. 119 Delouvrier, Schéma directeur , p. 12. 120 Delouvrier uses the word cité which has ambiguous connotations. It can designate a town or a neighbourhood of a town but from the 1960s onwards, cité was frequently used as a synonym for grand ensemble . 121 Delouvrier, Schéma directeur , p. 17. 122 Beth S. Epstein, Collective Terms: Race, Culture, and Community in a State-Planned City in France (London, 2013), p. 43. 133
alleged utterance to Delouvrier that ‘The Paris region is a mess. These inhuman banlieues are making the Paris area a shambles- sort them out’. 123 In this regard, the legislation also signalled a vast administrative reorganisation of the Paris region. As well as creating new towns such as Cergy-Pontoise, the SDAURP also divided Ile-de-France’s three administrative départements into eight smaller départements .124 The newly created département of Seine-Saint-Denis (into which both Pantin and La Courneuve were incorporated) represented an attempt to fracture the Seine département (perceived as large and unwieldy) into smaller administrative divisions each with its own centre. The designation of Bobigny as the chef-lieu (administrative capital) of Seine-Saint-Denis was another strategic decision. While Bobigny had negative associations for the national government, as one of the most long-standing PCF municipalities, Annie Fourcaut argues that the construction of the prefecture and subsequently the regional archive and law courts were an attempt by the central state to stamp a new identity on the town and symbolically reconquer the banlieue rouge .125 Pantin and La Courneuve on the other hand, had strong associations with the old faubourgs and by the mid-1960s was seen as a symbol of industrial decline. 126 There was thus a level of continuity between French planning principles employed in the grands ensembles and through the SDAURP: both sought to erase ‘undesirable’ elements of banlieue and both employed highly context-specific means in order to do so.
123 Maspero, Roissy Express , p. 156 and Welch, ‘Coming to Terms with the Future’, p. 127. 124 For a detailed study of Cergy-Pontoise and the new towns project more widely, see Epstein, Collective Terms . 125 Fourcaut, Bobigny , p. 15. 126 Paquot, Banlieues , p. 56. For discussion of the faubourgs and their cultural identity see Alain Faure, ‘Un Faubourg, des banlieues, ou la déclinaison du rejet’, Genèses 2 : 51 (2003), pp. 48-69 ; Louis Chevalier, Classes laborieuses et classes dangereuses à Paris pendant la premiere moitié du XIXe siècle (Paris, 1958), pp. 66-67. 134
The SDAURP legislation had a number of impacts on residents of Les Courtillières.
As Bobigny became the site of the new Seine-Saint-Denis prefecture, Pantin residents’ main point of contact for identity cards, vehicle registration and work permits for foreigners would henceforth be far harder to reach than Paris had been. Furthermore, the
Théâtre d’Aubervilliers (situated close to Les Courtillières and highly frequented by local inhabitants) was relocated to Bobigny, although it would not re-open in its new location until 1980. The reason for the move, according to André Malraux, the Minister for Cultural
Affairs, was that it would place cultural activities closer to the communes of Aulnay-sous-
Bois, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine and Stains, which were currently underserved. 127 Elsewhere, legislation set out a new set of design norms, but many were impossible to incorporate within existing grands ensembles . For example, a 1966 planning proposal for Noisy-le-Sec directly to the east of Pantin incorporated a series of new regulations, including a minimum apartment area of 250m2, a minimum depth of 20m and a minimum width of 10m
(although these measurements could be modified subject to consultation). 128 Apartments would have an unobstructed view of 8 metres as a minimum, and a wider range of industrial activities were forbidden close to residential areas. This tabula rasa approach to suburban planning made it increasingly clear that state planners viewed existing grands ensembles as an anachronism.
Despite their marginalisation from planning discourse on the banlieue , both estates remained prominent sites for debate between municipalities, ministers and planners. While municipal officials sought to create a culture of protest by uniting residents around shared grievances, ministerial officials used estates within plans to weaken the PCF’s authority and render the banlieues more governable. At the high point of the May 1968 protests, La
127 Letter from Minister of Cultural Affairs to Prefect of the Paris Region, 10 th November 1967, AP/27WR1. 128 Noisy-le-Sec, Plan d’urbanisme, January 1971, ADSSD/1613/W1. 135
Courneuve Mayor Jean Houdremont highlighted a number of major problems with the estate centring on the high cost of living and recommended ‘freezing rent…ending additional charges, revising housing allocations, ending parking charges’. 129 He also confirmed that the municipality was prepared to take over the maintenance of the estate’s roads and street lighting, provided that were given over to its ownership, an offer that the
Paris HLM office subsequently refused. This refusal reflected the fact that the HLM office was reluctant to cede any form of control to the PCF, not least because labour migration into France was at its peak in the late 1960s, meaning that the demand for housing was particularly high. 130
The PCF also sought to make incursions at Les Courtillières by both planning and surveying the estate. When the Pantin council commissioned a pro-communist architectural collective led by Paul Chemetov to construct the Les Courtillières library,
Émile Aillaud wrote an article defending his practices in the magazine Techniques et
Architecture . Aillaud attempted to separate his projects from ‘mainstream’ modernism by attacking attempts at social conditioning. He claimed that ‘…facades of aluminium and glass…condition the occupant so effectively that they produce adults as smooth as limestone and…unhinged [désaccordés ] adolescents’. Aillaud instead argued that the architect’s role was to ‘install a window with the least involvement possible’ and ‘not to
129 Unknown author, ‘1500 Personnes avec Jean Houdremont au meeting des 4000 logements. 54 Adhésions au Parti Communiste Français’, Journal d’Aubervilliers , 24th May 1968. Houdremont gave his speech on the same day that protester s set fire to the Paris stock exchange. The attack on the Bourse de Paris can be seen as a high point of the May 1968 protests. While protests emerged in several western European countries including West Germany, Italy and Spain, it was in France that activists were closest to achieving a revolution. There is an extensive literature on May 1968. For a discussion of the intellectual origins of the May 1968 movement, see chapter one of Gerd-Rainer Horn, The Spirit of ‘68 (Oxford, 2008). For discussion of the protests see chapter two of Daniel Gordon, Immigrants and Intellectuals: May ’68 and the Rise of Anti- Racism in France and Michael Seidman, The Imaginary Revolution: Parisian Students and Workers in 1968 (New York, 2004). The impact of May 1968 on the banlieues will be discussed in more depth in chapter four. 130 Jeannette Money, Fences and Neighbors: The Political Geography of Immigration Control (New York, 1999), p. 123. 136
construct a building that [we] like, but to create a world fit to be lived in’. 131 Aillaud also evidently sought to distance himself from the paternalist instincts of the immediate post- war years and to position himself within the less prescriptive planning rationale of the
1960s.
Another prominent feature of the PCF’s ‘incursion’ into Les Courtillières was the commissioning of an architectural survey of Pantin and its grand ensemble in 1969, by the
ORGECO institution. 132 The survey described the town as being in ‘a state of sclerosis and even recession’ due to a land shortage and a fall in job opportunities (a fall of 13.9% between 1962 and 1968, compared with a fall of just 0.2% in La Courneuve). 133 Les
Courtillières was described as the sharp end of this deprivation, and seen as ‘totally isolated from the rest of the commune’.134 The report recommended redeveloping the estate ‘to assure its “transparency” and to provide a pedestrian and road link with the centre of Pantin’. 135 The ORGECO report echoed many of Sudreau’s findings from 1961, but none of the report’s proposals were actually enacted until the 1980s. Again, whether due to financial constraints or the inherent vagueness of the proposal, planning discourse served as a trope through which to present rival visions of banlieue space rather than a blueprint for redevelopment. This figurative restructuring of the banlieues would be a recurrent feature of intra-state debates during the early 1970s.
131 Quoted from Bernard Marrey, Franck Hammoutene, Le Béton à Paris , (Paris, 1999), p. 98. It was telling that Aillaud’s arguments appeared not in a municipal newsletter but in a periodical read by fellow architects and state planners, illustrating that he sought some positive publicity to accompany his new grand ensemble project at Chanteloup-les-Vignes. 132 ORGECO was the Organisation d’Etudes Cooperatives, which was an architectural planning firm established by the PCF to work with banlieue municipalities. 133 ORGECO, Rapport géographique (Paris, 1969), p. 24. AMP/U001. 134 ORGECO, Rapport , p. 24. 135 ORGECO, Rapport, p. 75. 137
As well as seeking to attribute grand ensemble deprivation to mismanagement by housing associations, HLM offices and the national government, the PCF also sought to promote its own vision for banlieue space. In 1970, municipal planners at La Courneuve published a redevelopment project for the town centre, which was an explicit attempt to counterbalance the influence of the 4000 logements. The programme proposed the renovation of 238 houses and the construction of schools, sports facilities, a social centre and two youth clubs. In addition, 1500 social housing units were planned, a number that the municipality described as ‘a maximum that one should not go above’: an oblique reference to the grand ensemble nearby and to the central state’s new towns project. 136
Significantly, these new builds and renovations would bring the final number of housing units in the town centre to the symbolic figure of 5000, thus eclipsing the hegemony of the
4000 logements. This plan was also a clear signal to the city of Paris HLM office that the
La Courneuve municipality would not allocate any further funds to the 4000 logements.
The plan illustrated the complexity of the PCF stance towards the 4000 logements, as the party publicly placed itself as the moral voice of the estate, whilst privately condemning it.
In response to the municipality’s ‘5000 logements’ plan, ministerial planners unveiled their own strategy for the La Courneuve and Pantin area in 1971 that attempted to rebrand existing estates as a success. The plan was a response not just to municipal apathy but also to a wider image crisis of the 4000 logements. Following the killing of a youth by a café owner on the 4000 logements in 1971, an article in Le Monde expressed surprise that prior to the event, Minister of Public Works Alain Chalandon had never visited a grand ensemble . The article placed the blame squarely with planners in claiming that ‘many studies’ already attested to the ‘monotony of their planning, the lack of maintenance of
136 ‘La Courneuve Council Minutes’, 17th June 1970, AMLC/20/ W28. 138
buildings and their environment, the absence…non-tenant participation in their management’. 137 The ministerial plan praised the 4000 logements in ambiguous terms, for providing a sense of ‘urban equilibrium’ that planners hoped ‘will positively counterbalance that of Paris. 138 Closely following the boundaries of Rabaud’s figurative city of ‘Auberneuve’, the regional plan promised to integrate La Courneuve into the Paris region through a new RER route, a prolongation of metro line 7 to Fort d’Aubervilliers
(close to Les Courtillières) and the construction of the A1 motorway. 139 In a direct response to municipal criticisms of mass housing, the plan claimed that ‘the grands ensembles …which are found at the former urban cores of Aubervilliers and La Courneuve, will see new value’. 140 While there was thus a subtle concession that mass housing had
‘failed’, the plan was also an attempt at historical revisionism, as it claimed that Les
Courtillières had been designed to serve Aubervilliers rather than Pantin. Significantly, the plan proposed no structural changes to the Pantin and La Courneuve estates but rather re- imagined them within the wider region.
When viewed in the context of François Maspero’s critique of 1970s planning where ‘only large masses matter’, both the municipal and ministerial plans for La
Courneuve emphasised an outward image of order. 141 The municipality aimed to reconstruct an ordered town centre that contrasted with the declining estate to the west, while the national ministry used its plan to weave suburban estates into state discourses on new towns and to refute criticism of the grand ensemble . The continuous reimagining of
137 ‘Un Ministre dans les grands ensembles ’, Le Monde , 7th October 1971. 138 ‘Plan inter-communal’ (1971), AP/28/WR1. 139 ‘Plan inter-communal’ (1971). The programme also promised the completion of the regional park at La Courneuve and a university hospital in Aubervilliers. The university hospital project was later shelved, while the metro extension was completed in 1979, several years behind schedule. 140 Ministère de la Construction, Schéma directeur d’aménagement et d’urbanisme du nord-est de la Seine- St-Denis (Paris, 1972), ADSSD/2092/W1. 141 Maspero, Roissy express , p. 37. 139
the role of the grand ensemble challenges Gieryn’s theory of the inherent ‘permanence’ of the design process. Gieryn argues for instance that the ultimate goal of the planner is to
‘freeze in place’ their preferred vision of society. 142 Yet, the debate surrounding the grands ensembles suggests that even the more prescriptive designs (such as Les Courtillières) were built as deliberately ‘impermanent’ structures that reflected deep state uncertainties about the future of the banlieues . Whereas Gieryn’s theory is dependent on a clear ideological vision for the built environment, the grand ensemble provides an example of where social visions were retrospectively and sporadically applied to urban space. This level of impermanence further supports the argument that state power in the banlieue was a fantasy, in that it employed urban planning to overlay a coherent narrative over a deeply contested environment.
Planning discourse of this period became a rhetorical tool through which urban experts began to debate the future of the banlieues . Within these views of suburban space, both municipal and ministerial commentators sought figuratively ‘destroy’ the grand ensemble in its present form. While municipal commentators focused on accentuating the deprivation of the grands ensembles , ministerial planners instead sought a fresh banlieue narrative that could re-imagine estates as a success. Often viewed as emblematic features of French suburban planning between the 1950s and the early 1970s, the arguments from this section suggest that any form of consensus surrounding mass housing was short-lived.
In Gieryn’s terms, no sooner had estates been completed than ‘wrecking balls of discourse’ moved in to destroy them. 143 Despite the apparent permanence of the grands ensembles, they actually served as a highly disposable and malleable feature of French urban modernity.
142 Gieryn, ‘What Buildings Do’, p. 44. 143 Gieryn, ‘What Buildings Do’, p. 35. 140
Conclusion
On the 12 th of May 1973, Planning Minister Olivier Guichard published a detailed article in Le Monde in which he emphatically declared, ‘the grands ensembles are henceforth forbidden’. 144 In formally bringing the curtain down on France’s mass housing experiment,
Guichard laid much of the blame on ‘poorly equipped municipalities’ who had struggled to manage the financial, technical and administrative demands of mass housing. The minister also claimed that a more modest scale was required in order that ‘municipalities can act usefully’ and argued that ‘the giganticism of the grands ensembles has only had dire
[funestes ] moral and social consequences’. 145 Conversely, Guichard held Émile Aillaud’s plans up as a ‘new urbanism’ that planners should embrace that proposed not just a modest scale but the principle of ‘order hidden behind apparent disorder’. 146 The evidence discussed in this chapter illustrates that Guichard’s words did not bring anything new to the debate: modernisers’ tendency to view the grands ensembles as outmoded and to blame each other for the mismanagement of estates were recurrent features of the post-war period. Guichard was thus not describing a further ‘rupture’ in French suburban planning; he was describing how it had operated for much of the 1960s and how it would continue to operate for years to come.
This chapter’s consideration of the planning and construction process of the grands ensembles invites several conclusions about the nature of state power in these areas.
Firstly, this chapter has argued that the grands ensembles were not a planning consensus but rather the site of an ongoing intra-state power struggle between ministry and
144 Olivier Guichard, ‘Pas de ville sans cité’ Le Monde, 12th May 1973. 145 Guichard, ‘Pas de ville’. 146 Guichard, ‘Pas de ville’. 141
municipality. While Les Courtillières played host to disagreements between the idealistic and pragmatic functions of social housing, the 4000 logements offered a means for the central state to manipulate the demographics of the banlieue and to reshape the identity of the suburbs. Looking inside the grands ensembles revealed a significant shift in state power within the banlieues away from paternalism and towards a more flexible approach that compromised on the social engineering goals of mass housing. Increasingly planners sought not totalising control but a sufficient level of intervention required to merely portray an ordered housing environment. State legislation of 1965 signalled a new trend within banlieue planning that led modernisers to semantically destroy and re-imagine the grand ensemble . Redevelopment plans became the currency in a battle to imagine a future for the banlieues and to debate the relative merits of mass housing. Overall, the ongoing planning and ‘re-planning’ of the grands ensemble s has been used to demonstrate that estates implied a level of permanence to a deeply uncertain set of state objectives for suburban space. Increasingly the grand ensemble was not used to govern the banlieue but to project idealised visions of suburban life that often contradicted or contested each other.
142
Chapter Three: Claiming the banlieue
The images stay in the memory. Nicolas Sarkozy at the 4000 logements in La Courneuve, Seine-Saint-Denis (93). Flashes. Outstretched microphones. The rush of cameramen. News correspondents. The Minister of the Interior’s words: ‘I’ll come and clean with a Kärcher ...’, ‘order ...’, ‘insecurity ...’ Strong words. And a surprising commitment from a member of the government: ‘I will return as many times as it takes.’ The 4000 logements has officially become the testing ground for Sarkozy’s political action.
L'Humanité , 16 August 2005. 1
This chapter analyses the theme of ‘claiming’ the banlieue and principally focuses on the interplay between local governance and inhabitants during the period 1955-1973. 2 The grand ensemble remains a space in which state officials have sought to project their authority, and the above article refers to one of the most ubiquitous modern examples of this. Nicolas Sarkozy’s controversial speech on suburban unrest as Minister of the Interior and the subsequent response to it were defining moments in the minister’s political career and serves as a prominent image of the precarious relationship between banlieue citizens and various elements of the state. 3 Aside from the future president’s use of the grand ensemble as a site for political posturing, Sarkozy’s words also allude to the position of the banlieue as a space that various groups have sought to ‘own’. Sarkozy’s speech in August
2005 was a response to a series of extreme events, but it is equally important for historians
1 Kaci Mina, ‘La Cité des 4000 entre fantasme et réalité’, Humanité , 16th August 2005. Kärcher is a well- known brand of high-pressure water cleaner. 2 Within these dates, some periods (notably the early years of each estate and the emergence of social problems by the late 1960s) feature more prominently than others as they more aptly illustrate the changing relationship between inhabitants and different levels of the state. 3 When Sarkozy toured the suburb of Argenteuil two days later, he was pelted with bottles and stones, prompting him to refer to rebellious banlieue youths as ‘racaille’ (scum). See Stefan Goodwin, Africa in Europe: Interdependencies, Relocations, and Globalization (London, 2009), p. 327. For historical assessments of the Sarkozy presidency and comparisons with other presidents of the Fifth Republic see David S. Bell, John Gaffney (eds.), The Presidents of the Fifth Republic (Basingstoke, 2013); Gino G. Raymond (ed.), The Sarkozy Presidency: Breaking the Mould? (Basingstoke, 2013). 143
of post-war France to consider the everyday process of governing space and establishing authority in the early years of suburban mass housing. The position of mass housing within ongoing (as opposed to event-driven) political action is a key case study for exploring the nature of state power within these areas, particularly in terms of the ideological struggle between the PCF, housing associations and inhabitants themselves. Indeed, the grand ensemble can serve as a microcosm for viewing the wider debates between different groups who sought to appropriate banlieue space or to claim ownership of French post-war modernity.
Existing scholarship has tended to view the post-war banlieue as the passive testing ground for hegemonic state ideologies, whether those of the ceinture rouge or the post-war technocratic state. The historian Jacques Girault for example, argues that following the municipal elections of 1959, the banlieues became ‘citadels of republican defence’ and
‘places of conquest’ for the PCF. 4 He views PCF governance as relatively uncontested and even complacent, citing a communist party mayor who claimed in 1976 that councillors had been ‘too comfortable’ in their management of banlieue communes. 5 Conversely, studies by scholars such as Paul Silverstein and David Murphy view the banlieue as a neo- colonial space governed by a homogeneous ‘civilising’ state. Silverstein for instance, views the grand ensemble as a means of ‘civilising’ the immigrant, and implies that the
PCF enacted rather than resisted such planning policies. 6 Murphy on the other hand, argues that the banlieue remains a colonial space in the French political imagination and cites recent popular campaigns to combat images of the banlieue as a ‘savage land facing
4 Jacques Girault (ed.), Des Communistes en France: années 1920-années 1960 (Paris, 2002), p. 311. 5 Girault, Des communistes , p. 350. This claim, made by Vitry Mayor Marcel Rossette, formed part of a wider debate on PCF municipal power. See Cahiers d’histoire de l’institut Maurice Thorez , ‘Municipalités et luttes politiques’, 19 : 4 (1976), p. 157. 6 Silverstein, Algeria in France , pp. 99-100. 144
conquest by a domineering, civilising France’.7 Such studies offer an illuminating analysis of the rationale of various state institutions, but tend to depict a binary power structure of the state ‘dominating’ its citizens and do not reconcile the competing interests of ministry and municipality. This chapter will use the everyday experiences of inhabiting and governing the grands ensembles to question the notion of the banlieue as a site of hegemonic state control.
The propensity for banlieue inhabitants to challenge (or conversely construct) the dominant power structures of their home environment has been largely overlooked in scholarship on the banlieues . Incidences of confrontation (such as protest and rioting) will be discussed in chapter four but more this chapter will consider more subtle, everyday forms of subverting or challenging state authority that have been overlooked from academic study of the banlieues . In current scholarship, residents are seen as being able to challenge negative representations of their home environment but not the political structure itself. 8 Bruno Levasseur’s study of the 4000 logements for example, challenges dominant journalistic representations of the estate by arguing for an alternative ‘third kind’ representation described as a ‘culture de plais/ance ’: a combination of pleasure and resistance that characterised estate life. Much of Levasseur’s evidence is drawn from photographs taken by a resident, Maurice Bernard, that depict incidents of protest but also
7 David Murphy, ‘The Postcolonial Manifesto: Partisanship, Criticism and the Performance of Change’, in Alec Hargreaves, Charles Forsdick, David Murphy (eds.), Transnational French Studies: Postcolonialism and Littérature-Monde (Liverpool, 2010), pp. 76-78. Murphy cites the example of the Appel des Indigènes de la République, an antiracist campaign that emerged in 2005 that called on France to recognise the errors of its colonial past and to return to the original egalitarian principles of the Revolution. He also cites ‘Qui fait la France?’, a literary manifesto published in 2007 by self-titled ‘writers of the banlieues ’ that pledged a commitment to more realistic and less ‘bourgeois’ literature. 8 For further cultural examples of ‘reclaiming the banlieues ’ see Michel Agier, ‘The Ghetto, the Hyperghetto and the Fragmentation of the World’, International Journal of Urban & Regional Research 33:3 (2009), pp. 854-857; Carrie Tarr, Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France (Manchester, 2005). 145
more ‘mundane’ events such as a children’s afternoon tea and a family meal. 9 While
Levasseur perhaps overstates the symbolic value of such sources, describing them as
‘disrupting of the widespread populist rhetoric of the 1960s and 1970s afflicting the French banlieusards and their supposed “difference” in terms of national identity’ he offers a valuable study of the multi-faceted nature of banlieue everyday life that this chapter seeks to build on. 10 Yet, there are several issues with Levasseur’s approach, notably the risk of treating the photographs in a similar way to oral testimony and to construct history that the historian Luisa Passerini describes as ‘complacent populism’ due to its tendency to
‘replace certain of the essential tenets of scholarship with facile democratisation’.11 Thus, while this chapter engages with oral testimonies these sources will not be viewed as the sole source for understanding ‘the everyday’ or the relationship between state and citizen.
This chapter seeks to use the interplay between the state and inhabitants as a lens through which to look more critically at the nature of state power in the banlieues . In scrutinising state power at a local, everyday level, this chapter will argue that France’s post-war modernisation process was administered not by clear, totalising forms of authority but by methods of governance that were more opportunistic and ambiguous in nature.12 It will not simply be argued that the governance of everyday life was uneven, but rather that the conditions of governance were continuously negotiated between state and citizen rather than imposed in a top-down fashion. This argument has important
9 Bruno Levasseur, ‘National Identity and Everyday Cultures in Contemporary France: Re-Constructing Frenchness through “Third Kind” Representations of the Cités (1960–2000)’, Modern & Contemporary France , 17:3 (2009), pp. 267-282 (p. 271). Maurice Bernard was a PCF councillor and resident on the 4000 logements estate. He also provided interviews for the Laboratoire Architecture Anthropologie’s study of the estate. 10 Levasseur, ‘National Identity’, p. 271. 11 Luisa Passerini, ‘Work Ideology and Consensus under Italian Fascism’, History Workshop Journal 8:1 (1979) pp. 82-108 (p. 84). 12 See Latour, We Have Never Been Modern , p. 131. 146
implications for how the post-war French state is viewed as it will suggest that the veneer of authoritarian consensus institutions such as the PCF relied on symbolic power that was concentrated in a limited area. While the above scholars have suggested that social housing provided a bureaucratic tool for the governance of citizens, this chapter will argue that estates only offered a limited entry point into the everyday life of residents. Therefore, the governance and administration of the grands ensembles did not grant totalising authority to any single group, political or otherwise.
In terms of methodology this chapter draws on Max Weber’s discussion of the nature of rule. Weber outlines three different forms of ‘conventional’ rule or ‘legitimate domination’, based on the imposition of laws, the use of tradition or the charisma of a specific individual. 13 In Weber’s later work Economy and Society (published posthumously in 1922) he also outlined a form of ‘non-legitimate’ domination prevalent in the medieval
European city, explained by the historian Claus Wittich as the substitution of the ruler’s
‘traditional legitimacy’ for ‘various types of usurpatory consociations of the ruled’. 14 The type of consociation that Wittich and Weber describe recognises the agency of localised power and alliances between individuals: themes that feature prominently in this chapter. 15
13 Max Weber, Hans Gerth, ‘The Three Types of Legitimate Rule’, Berkeley Publications in Society and Institutions 4:1 (1958), pp. 1-11. For further discussion of Weber’s notions of domination see Wolfgang Mommsen, ‘The theory of the “Three Pure Types of Legitimate Domination” and the Concept of Plebiscitarianism’ in Wolfgang Mommsen, The Age of Bureaucracy (London, 1974) and chapter six of Charles Camic, Philip S. Gorski, David M. Trubek (eds.), Max Weber's Economy and Society: A Critical Companion (Stanford, 2005). 14 Max Weber, Claus Wittich, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (London, 1978), p. 1234. A consociation refers to a political system where power is shared among a number of often antagonistic social groups. 15 For a fuller discussion of these concepts within Weber’s sociology see Engin Fahri Isin, Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship (Minneapolis, 2002), pp. 145-147. For an example of the use of non-legitimate domination in historical research see Richard Bell, ‘Endorsement as Nonlegitimate Domination: An Application of Experimental Research to Historical Settings’, in Jacek Szmatka, John Skvoretz, Joseph 147
While Weber’s models tend to depict hegemonic domination of a space by state or quasi-state institutions, this chapter considers state power as a contested entity and draws on relevant concepts from the field of subaltern studies. 16 The historian Ranajit Guha for instance, describes British colonial power in India as ‘dominance without hegemony’ due to the tensions between ‘colonial’ ideals of particularism and ‘European’ ideals of universality. 17 Rather than using the theory of the ‘ banlieue as colony’ to depict an authoritarian ‘civilising’ power structure, this chapter explores the coloniality of the grand ensemble in a fuller sense, as a means of exploring the fractured, pluralistic nature of banlieue governance. Subaltern theories of power are particularly relevant to banlieue study as they focus upon a ‘distant’ power attempting to govern an environment that as banlieue planners themselves admitted, contained elements of the unknown. For example, the 1965 SDAURP planning legislation emphasised the inherent opacity of banlieue space when it described the banlieues as an ‘urban magma’ within which ‘one loses oneself intellectually’.18 While chapters one and two argued that the French central state did not comprehensively ‘know’ the banlieue , this chapter will argue that this lack of knowledge also permeated governance of banlieue space at a local level.
In exploring the micro-politics of the banlieue , this chapter will draw on sources such as resident correspondence, journalism, existing oral testimonies, PCF records and council minutes. This diverse corpus of sources is necessary in order to divert from existing event-driven narratives of banlieue life and to highlight ways in which the grands
Berger (eds.), Status, Network, and Structure: Theory Development in Group Processes (Stanford, 1997), pp. 404-425. 16 For a critical introduction to the field of subaltern studies see David Ludden (ed.), Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalization of South Asia (London, 2002). On Africa see Frederick Cooper, ‘Conflict and Connections: Rethinking Colonial African History’, American Historical Review 99:5 (1994). 17 Ranajit Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (London, 1997), p. xii. 18 See Delouvrier, Schéma directeur , p. 12. 148
ensembles challenge notions of an all-powerful French state. PCF records will be used to highlight the changing agenda of the local state, while correspondence between residents and the local municipality will be used to explore the relationship between state and citizen. Section one focuses on Pantin during the 1960s, and will explore the municipal culture that the local PCF sought to advance following its victory in the 1959 council elections. This section analyses ideological tensions between state planning firms and the local municipality in order to understand how these groups sought to use social housing to serve very different agendas. Section two will focus on experiences of governing and inhabiting the 4000 logements in La Courneuve during the early 1960s and explores the form of civic culture that the PCF sought to promote among residents. Section three analyses the situation on both estates during the early 1970s in order to explore how elements of ‘crisis’ were experienced and managed by residents and municipal officials.
1. Governing Pantin and Les Courtillières 1957-1961
During the late 1950s, significant conflicts emerged between PCF council and local planning authorities regarding the role of social housing. As a result, residents were subject to a contradictory set of messages about what the grand ensemble was for and how they were expected to behave within it. With the election of the Communist Jean Lolive as
Pantin’s new mayor, the PCF had greater powers to shape the town’s civic identity, particularly through building links with the USSR. 19 In 1959 PCF councillors had recommended twinning the town with a British as well as a Soviet city, and ultimately only
19 Pantin already had some links with the USSR, as the town had welcomed the Soviet Minister for Construction in 1956, and an exchange programme was already in place with at least one school in the Soviet Union. 149
the latter was adopted. 20 In December 1959, council minutes heralded the upcoming visit to France of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev as ‘an important step towards détente and the reinforcement of friendship ties between the Soviet and French people’. 21 Councillors claimed that they were ‘convinced that the entire population of Pantin will be proud and happy to welcome this great messenger for world peace’. The phrase ‘messenger of peace’ was to be inscribed in the ‘medal of the town of Pantin’, which was to be presented to the
Soviet premier should he visit the town. 22 An increase in municipal activities that reached out the USSR could be seen as an attempt to create a rupture with the town’s more moderate past and in Weber’s terms, to create a form of ‘traditional authority’ established through custom. 23 The council also moved to encourage popular activism, and opened a council meeting in June 1960 to local factory workers who wanted to air their desires for an end to the war in Algeria and for self-determination for the Algerian people. 24 The PCF had become more pro-FLN from the mid-1950s onwards which reflected a similar shift in the Algerian Communist Party, described by Donald Busky as a populist strategy to court
Muslim voters. 25 Despite the atmosphere of activism fostered by the town’s mairie , the
20 ‘Pantin Council Minutes’, 6th December 1959, AMP/AM716. Pantin was formally twinned with the Meshchansky district of Moscow in 1966. 21 Khrushchev visited France in April 1960 and discussed the ‘German question’ with de Gaulle. The two parties also agreed to increased trade and exchanges in the field of research between the two countries. There is no record that Khrushchev visited Pantin, however. See George Ginsburgs, Robert Melville Slusser (eds.), A Calendar of Soviet Treaties: 1958-1973 (Alphen aan den Rijn, 1981), p. 92. 22 ‘Council Minutes’, 6 th December 1959. 23 The move was also reflected in PCF party policy more widely. While the party had had lost over a million votes in the 1956 election, largely due to its unswerving support for the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the PCF felt the need to continue its support for Khrushchev as a means of outflanking De Gaulle RPF party. Many of the party’s lost votes in 1956 had gone to the Gaullist UDR party, and De Gaulle’s decision to criticise US hegemony in NATO and to sign a friendship treaty with the USSR in 1960 threatened to undermine the PCF strategically. The historian Maud Bracke has argued that in the face of this challenge from the right, an openly pro-Soviet stance was the only way for the party to underline its credentials. See Maud Bracke, Which Socialism, Whose Détente? West European Communism and the Czechoslovak crisis of 1968 (Budapest, 2007), p. 73. 24 ‘Pantin Council Minutes’, 28 th June 1960, AMP/AM716. 25 Donald F. Busky, Communism in History and Theory: Asia, Africa, and the Americas (Westport, 2002) p. 99. 150
construction of the Les Courtillières estate presented a threat to the PCF’s political hegemony.
The presence of the PCF in municipal government was seen as potentially divisive by planning authorities who administered the estate. As discussed in chapter two, while the
PCF was not excluded from the housing nomination committee (the body who decided who should be allocated flats) its voting powers were limited due to the presence of oppositional institutions such as the SEMIDEP and the local HLM office. 26 In retaliation,
PCF councillors became increasingly critical of the lack of estate facilities, and began to question whether the estate was truly contributing to solving the housing crisis.27 Despite the PCF’s limited powers in the governance of Les Courtillières, the SEMIDEP, the housing association that financed the estate, sought to combat any PCF attempts to politicise residents of the grand ensemble through political campaigning. In January 1960, the SEMIDEP issued a set of guidelines to estate residents that stressed the need for the
‘right kind’ of communication between residents and those who housed them:
It would be useful to establish an information link that could contribute to an atmosphere of trust that it seems most of our tenants are looking for. This is the goal that we set ourselves, through the distribution of these bulletins…excluding however, issues of a political nature that it is not for use to introduce, directly or indirectly, in the running of our buildings. 28
The SEMIDEP thus sought to establish itself as the principal organ of communication between tenants and the central state and to promote its attributes as a politically neutral organisation that would serve as the sole voice for all residents. The bulletin went on the single out the divisive influence of the PCF in more explicit terms in stating:
Incidentally, propaganda bulletins, of which the unique origin is well known, posted en masse through letter boxes, can only influence those whose good sense gives way to
26 Bellanger, Villes de banlieues , p. 125-126. 27 ‘Pantin Council Minutes’, 4 th April 1959, AMP/AM716. 28 SEMIDEP, ‘Bulletin d’information des locataires’, 1 st January 1960, AMP/AM134. 151
naivety. Indeed, it is always easy to advance the most unlikely arguments to a disadvantaged group that unfortunately is engaged in a permanent financial struggle, and in this regard, is the chosen group for the spread of false claims may possibly improve his situation. These practices are associated with organised exploitation of human misery. 29
This evidence is significant for several reasons. Firstly, it highlights a key limitation in the
PCF’s ability to govern everyday life within the grand ensemble , as the SEMIDEP sought to promote Les Courtillières as a kind of ‘quarantine space’ that would be isolated from the more politically-charged environment of the ceinture rouge . Social housing thus served as a means for the national ministry to govern the banlieue at a distance and weaken the influence of the mairie , using the ‘neutral’ language of neighbourliness and community. In
Guha’s terms, the SEMIDEP and the PCF represented rival counter-hegemonic blocs that challenged each other’s authority over banlieue space.30 One can thus question whether the
PCF was truly able to govern the grand ensemble or whether its power was concentrated symbolically to displays of civic unity enacted through the mairie . The SEMIDEP bulletin also highlights the uneven fashion through which the grand ensemble was ‘policed’ on an ideological level, as there is no record of similar anti-communist publicity being issued to residents of the 4000 logements. In Weber’s terms, the grand ensemble enabled the planning ministry to install a ‘well-working bureaucracy’ that created a direct line of communication between inhabitants and the central state, thus challenging the PCF’s claim to legitimate rule. 31
The SEMIDEP sought to use the grand ensemble to instil a hierarchy between itself; the benevolent provider of housing, and the grateful citizen. Indeed, the firm stated in the bulletin that it sought to preserve ‘the sense of euphoria felt by the majority of
29 Bulletin d’information, 1st January 1960. 30 Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony , p. 128. 31 Richard Swedberg, Max Weber and the Idea of Economic Sociology (Woodstock, 1998), p. 73. 152
people rehoused in apartments worthy of their human condition’. 32 Yet, it is also evident that the SEMIDEP viewed its new role as the manager of banlieue communities with a sense of uncertainty and trepidation, especially more deprived households who were seen as the most amenable to PCF propaganda. It was largely for this reason that the SEMIDEP and the Pantin HLM office worked to control the number of disadvantaged households who were able to reside at Les Courtillières. Rather than enacting a bold neo-colonial
‘civilisation’ strategy, these local authorities sought above all to construct a benign,
‘governable’ space within the banlieues .
The argument that the SEMIDEP was reluctant to make Les Courtillières an estate
‘for the poor’ is supported by the fashion in which housing was allocated, a process that the local PCF could not influence. On this issue, the discretionary powers of the HLM office and the strategies of resident themselves played a significant role in determining who was allowed to inhabit Les Courtillières. As well as questioning the extent of the
PCF’s control within the grand ensemble , the allocation process also leads to a questioning of whether there was any single form of hegemonic authority on the estate. The HLM office’s desire to favour the ‘right kind’ of applicant is touched upon in the municipal social history Aux Courtillières , but a testimony from one resident suggests that personal connections could be used in order to secure housing. Madeleine Bouchard, a housewife claimed that her initial housing application was refused because her husband’s income was insufficient for them to qualify for HLM accommodation. Income criteria were a convenient means through which the HLM office and the SEMIDEP could ensure that rent would be paid, while excluding the more destitute households who were seen as more amenable to PCF propaganda. Bouchard was eventually assisted in her application by a
32 Bulletin d’information, 1st January 1960. 153
close friend in politics who claimed that ‘everyone asks us to pull a few strings to get through the red tape’. 33 Bouchard’s difficulty in obtaining housing is indicative of a wider trend whereby HLM income criteria forced lower-income families into poor quality private-sector housing, but her story also suggests that residents themselves could influence the inner-workings of the allocation process if they possessed the necessary connections. 34 The allocation process at Les Courtillières seems to support the findings of the lawyer Jane Ball who claims that housing officers in France could exercise considerable discretion in processing applications. In particular, Ball highlights that officials were given the ‘power of appreciation’, which refers to ‘the necessary room to manoeuvre to assess a situation in relation to ‘the facts’. 35 The evidence from Les
Courtillières suggests that these powers also enabled housing officers to exercise considerable discretion in their decisions and at times, to grant special favours to friends and associates. Social housing was therefore not a totalising ‘rational’ system but rather an atomised process influenced by individual relationships and prejudices.
The atomised, individual nature of social housing is further demonstrated by the role of the gardiens (concierges) , who enforced rules and regulations at a local neighbourhood level. The image of the gardien presented in Aux Courtillières is of a strict matronly figure, with one resident noting that ‘our gardienne was so strict that we weren’t allowed to walk on the grass’. 36 Indeed, the content of the general regulations handed out
33 Michel, Derraine, Aux Courtillières , p. 38. 34 C. Theodore Koebel, Shelter and Society: Theory, Research, and Policy for Nonprofit Housing (Albany, 1998), p. 56. 35 Jane Ball, Housing Disadvantaged People?: Insiders and Outsiders in French Social Housing (Abingdon, 2012), p. 106. Such discretionary acts were not confined to France, however. For example, in their study of Stirling in the interwar period, James Smyth and Douglas Robertson argue that allocation was carried out on an ambiguous basis and were influenced by a range of actors, most notably elders in the local kirk parish. See James Smyth and Douglas Robertson, ‘Local Elites and Social Control: Building Council Houses in Stirling Between the Wars’, Urban History 40:2 (2013), pp. 336-354 (p. 349). 36 Michel, Derraine, Aux Courtillières , p. 32. 154
to residents illustrates the wide range of rules that gardiens were responsible for imposing, which governed both external behaviours (drying washing on balconies, children playing on stairwells) but also behaviour within one’s apartment, notably a ban on ‘washing or drying laundry in kitchens or reception rooms’. 37 The gardien ’s powers to survey and dictate rules was further underlined by the fact that the only public telephone boxes on the estate were situated in their offices and that monthly rent was paid in cash directly to them.
Yet, the gardien also provided a means of accessing a more flexible social housing experience whereby certain rules would be relaxed. The housing sociologist Bridget J.
Franklin argues that the estate concierge had an enlarged role following the decline of many housing developments. Franklin argues for example that:
The concierges spend a great deal of time chatting to tenants as they pass the reception area, and congratulate themselves on knowing all by sight, most by name and many by their first name. They are always willing to be called up on the intercom system by lonely individuals who merely want someone to talk to, or to console or comfort people who appear at any time of the day or night for reassurance or company. 38
Franklin chiefly focuses on Britain where concierges were a relatively recent addition (the first being introduced on the Wirral in 1978) and thus were a conscious attempt to address the decline of social housing. Yet, the sociologist Jean-Marc Stébé argues that in France, the gardien (present on the grands ensembles from the beginning) played a similar role.
Stébé claims that the gardien ’s office provided an ‘out-of-sight space’ in which ‘tenants come to confide and tell their secrets, to such an extent that the gardiens-concierges possess “guilty knowledge”, knowledge that they must keep secret for their sake of their job’. 39 A rapport with the gardien could also grant spatial privileges; for example, Jean-
37 Extract from Les Courtillières general regulations (1957), AMP/AM134. 38 Bridget J. Franklin, ‘Concierges in Tower Blocks: A Strategy in the Mediation of Change’, Scandinavian Housing and Planning Research 13:1 (1996), p. 33. 39 Jean-Marc Stébé, Maria Basile, Xavier Engels, Hervé Marchal, ‘Le Métier du gardien au sein du parc immobilier social’, in Roselyne de Villanova, Philippe Bonnin (eds.), Loges, concierges et gardiens: enquêtes en Europe. Paris, Londres, Barcelone, Milan, Oslo (Paris, 2006), pp. 241-273 (p. 247). 155
Claude a resident of the Jean-Billardon estate near Dijon, claimed on one hand that gardiens were ‘very strict’ but also that ‘…the terrace was closed. I was allowed to go on it because we were good friends with the gardien ’. 40 At Les Courtillières, as will be discussed below, residents’ relationship with the gardien could also permit a level of legal transgression that challenged official forms of administration.
Thus far it has been implied that governance of the grand ensemble was characterised by a divide between the PCF’s view of social housing as a humanitarian project and the HLM office’s desire to exclude the most destitute. However, there is evidence to suggest that the PCF shared the belief that social housing should confront only the more ‘governable’ side of French modernity. While the Pantin PCF occupied only a marginal position on the estate’s nomination committee, it did have the power to grant or refuse requests to requisition vacant flats. According to requisition laws granted in October
1945, any property presumed to be vacant for at least six months could be reported to the council and if successful, the plaintiff would be allowed to move into the flat concerned on payment of a small administration fee. Due to the severity of the post-war housing crisis, local municipalities were given new powers to recruit controllers who produced lists of vacant or under-occupied housing. 41 Jane Ball notes that these new rules were stringently applied in some areas and residents frequently fell foul of them. For example, a Madame
Stock (whose home town is not given) ‘made the mistake of going away to Toussaint for four days, and returned to find her home requisitioned’. 42 For the PCF, requisition offered in theory, an opportunity to have a greater say in housing allocations by deciding on who
40 Sylvain Taboury, Karine Gougerot, Billardon: histoire d’un grand ensemble (1953-2003) (Paris, 2004), pp. 191-196. 41 Jane Ball, Housing Disadvantaged People?: Insiders and Outsiders in French Social Housing (Abingdon, 2012), p. 79. 42 Ball, Housing Disadvantaged People , p. 79. 156
could (and who could not) obtain any flats that were left vacant. Yet, the way in which the party used these powers raised questions about the disparity between the ideological tone of the PCF (expressed by Jean Doutre for example) and its more pragmatic bureaucratic practices.
At Pantin, requisition records illustrated the PCF’s aversion to allocating housing to the very poor, as well as the tendency for residents and gardien s (concierges) to bend housing rules to their advantage. During the early 1960s, the municipality received a number of applications for flats at Les Courtillières from individuals living with friends, in worker hostels or in unsanitary conditions within Paris. In December 1961, a Monsieur
Medjekane, an Algerian immigrant who was living in a hotel in Paris’s 4 th arrondissement, applied for an apartment but was informed that it had already been re-rented. 43 In another example from July, 1962, a Monsieur Dançak (a name that suggests Turkish origin) had a request turned down because the couple who rented the apartment (Monsieur and Madame
Guery) were currently on a four-month professional secondment to Saigon, a claim that was verified by the building’s gardien .44 The report relating to this application stated that according to requisition rules, the tenants ‘have more than 15 months dating from their departure to communicate their decision [to retain their apartment of not]’, which suggests a considerable level of leniency towards tenants who had successfully obtained housing. 45
The use of the gardien to corroborate the story raises questions about the ‘special relationships’ that may have punctuated the social housing environment and the PCF’s reliance on anecdotal evidence when processing requisition applications. In another example from 1964, an absent tenant was able to continue to sub-let his flat (a practice that
43 ‘Monsieur Medjekane Requisition Application’, (December, 1961), AMP/AMU022. 44 ‘Recensement, batîment A’ (1962), AMP/AMU022. 45 ‘Recensement’ (1962) AMP/AMU022. 157
was technically illegal) after neighbours testified to his good character. 46 The investigation of such applications illustrated not the enforcement of overarching rules but a rather a state apparatus that was ‘in dialogue’ with residents and could thus be swayed by individual prejudices or interests.
The issue of requisition thus suggests that the PCF either shared the HLM office’s concerns about the ‘wrong kind’ of resident or that it felt that it was unable to challenge this principle. Requisition also suggests that residents were able to construct a form of legitimacy that could subvert the bureaucratic structures of the PCF, private planning firms and the HLM office. While the affair of Monsieur Dançak illustrates the obstacles facing poorly-housed individuals who sought social housing (as well as a rift in circumstances between residents who could afford to pay their rent in absentia and those who coveted housing of any kind) residents were also able to ‘vet’ individuals.
While it may seem a facile argument to link requisition to a form of social or racial profiling, it may be significant that applications to acquire vacant commercial space (an investment that required a certain level of wealth) were almost always granted. Between
1958 and 1961, requisition applications that were approved at Les Courtillières included space for a hairdresser, butcher, laundrette, dying works, poultry butcher and a bakery. 47
Interestingly, these approved applications all came from applicants with European French names, such as Noël, Massaloux, Hamon, Valton, and Debrie. It is likely that the PCF, rather than simply ‘rubber stamping’ applications, shared some of the SEMIDEP’s concerns about allocating housing to potentially ‘troublesome’ residents. Applications from immigrants were particularly significant in this regard, as while the PCF showed
46 ‘Madame Moncey Requisition Request’ (March, 1964), AMP/AMU022. 47 List of commercial requisitions, AMP/AMU022. 158
some interest in appealing to their concerns, they were also a problematic group for a party who were in theory, opposed to nationalist concerns and who drew their principal support from white working-class voters. 48 Requisition records suggest that despite the PCF’s outward display of championing the immigrant and the destitute, it privately fell into line with the views of its supposed opponents. Requisition thus represented a limited consensus between PCF, housing office and existing residents that some level of social selection should take place within the grand ensemble .
The case study of requisition suggests that the local PCF was complicit in excluding the most destitute from the area, an argument which is further supported by the reluctance with which the party dealt with remaining ad-hoc lodgings in the cité d’urgence from the late 1950s onwards. The serpentin and Fonds d’Eaubonne towers initially coexisted alongside areas of low-rise barrack-style housing that had been the government’s initial response to the post-war housing crisis. Under both the SFIO and (after 1959) the
PCF, there was confusion among residents of the cité d’urgence regarding precisely who was responsible for addressing their housing situation. In August 1957 for example, the
Mayor of Pantin (Ezio Collaveri, Lolive’s predecessor) asked the Paris HLM office to take action on a number of complaints he had received relating to poor sanitation at the cité d’urgence .49 In November of that year, Monsieur Lebrun, an investments manager living in temporary housing at Allée Kepler wrote to his prefect complaining that all residents on his street had the same problem, claiming it had led to ‘nauseating odours and sights too horrible to describe’, and arguing that ‘the Pantin commune and the HLM Office refuse to
48 Caroline Izambert, ‘The Example of a Communist Paper Aimed at Algerian Immigrants: L’Algerien en France (1950-1960)’, in Wendy Pojmann (ed.), Migration and Activism in Europe Since 1945 (Basingstoke, 2008), p. 107. 49 Letter from Enzo Collaveri to Paris HLM office, 17th August 1957, AMP/AMQ010. 159
get involved in the issue’. 50 Lebrun seemed mindful of the stigma that afflicted temporary housing such as his own, claiming ‘it is important in the cités d’urgence , to differentiate between bad tenants and those who are clean and upstanding’. 51 A fortnight later, the prefect wrote to Pantin’s mayor asking him to provide information about the source of the problem and what action should be taken. Another two weeks passed and the mayor replied, claiming that the cité d’urgence was administered by the HLM office and that
Monsieur Lebrun should therefore address his concerns to them. Some four months had passed and Allée Kepler was evidently no closer to attaining basic sanitation, which suggests that no clear power structure existed that was willing or able to address the issue.
While the case of Monsieur Lebrun suggested an administrative ‘blind spot’ in the handling of the cité d’urgence , other examples implied some level of indifference to the plight of the badly housed. On another occasion, a resident appealed to the local HLM office, arguing that the municipality was indifferent to her concerns. In February 1958,
Madame Devaux of Allée Leverrier complained to the HLM office about a blocked drain and claimed to have been ignored by the local PCF council. She claimed ‘that makes four times that I’ve telephoned and they’ve promised to come this week, but I’m still waiting…with four young children, the living room stinks to high heaven’. 52 The HLM office subsequently circulated an internal memorandum warning of complaints from tenants of the cité d’urgence , but gave no indication of whether the problem was being addressed.
50 Letter from Léon Lebrun to Prefect, 13 th November 1957, AMP/AMQ010. 51 Lebrun, letter. 52 Letter from Madame Devaux to Prefect, 15 th February 1958, AMP/AMQ010. 160
From 1959 onwards, the incoming PCF administration made clearer promises to address the issue of poor housing in Pantin, notably through deputy mayor Jean Doutre’s pledge to provide for ‘those of greatest need’ (see chapter two). 53 Yet, when one looks at the PCF’s response to poor housing, municipal government remained limited in its ability to address these issues. Resident complaints became less frequent during the early 1960s
(as more inhabitants of the cité d’urgence were allocated permanent housing) but nonetheless pointed to ongoing hygiene issues. In 1963 Madame Le Painteur of Allée
Kepler complained to Mayor Lolive that she still had not been rehoused and wrote, ‘my husband and I ask you to come and observe for yourselves the state of dampness that we’ve lived in for several years’. 54 This complained was forwarded by the Mayor of Pantin to the HLM office with an accompanying letter that claimed ‘we have noted a high level of dampness in her home’ and called for the director’s ‘benevolent attention so that a favourable outcome can be delivered to this issue’.55 It is clear from Le Painteur’s letter that while residents had a number of institutions to whom they could register grievances
(the municipality, the HLM office and the prefecture), they were unsure of precisely who actually had the power to address their problems.
On the surface, the case study of the cité d’urgence could indicate a failure of the local state to achieve hegemonic control over certain areas of banlieue life. Yet, the PCF’s practice of blaming the HLM office suggested that areas of squalor had a strategic use to the local mairie . Indeed, the central-state administered cité d’urgence served an as area of conspicuous poverty that accentuated the adjacent grand ensemble as a humanitarian achievement on the part of the municipality. While the anthropologist William Bissell
53 Doutre, ‘Construire des logements’. 54 Letter from Madame Le Painteur to Mayor of Pantin, 8 th January 1963, AMP/AMQ010. 55 Letter from Mayor of Pantin to Seine HLM Office, 12 th February 1963, AMP/AMQ010. 161
highlights colonisers’ use of slum clearances to create a cordon sanitaire around European settlements, the cité d’urgence served the opposite purpose, providing a testament to the inefficacy of the SEMIDEP and the HLM office.56 Thus, while the cité d’urgence illustrated the fractured, limited nature of state power in Pantin, it is also possible that the
PCF made a conscious decision not to extend its powers in certain directions.
The everyday governance of Les Courtillières suggests the lack of a single hegemonic power structure in Pantin, yet also indicates key areas of consensus in terms of how specific issues of destitution and allocation were handled. On occasions where the
PCF had the ability to oppose power structures such as the HLM office it frequently chose not to do so. The SEMIDEP’s power to influence grand ensemble residents through propaganda and the ongoing plight of the cité d’urgence suggested that Pantin was a place of power struggle rather than domination by one institution. Furthermore, these issues served to illustrate that PCF influence was often symbolic and relied on the mere projection of power. Yet, this section has also suggested that this arterial power model and a limited involvement in certain issues (such as the cité d’urgence ), were of strategic use to the party. Overall it seems that there were significant areas of banlieue life in which ‘the state’ either did not exist or did not seek to govern.
56 William Cunningham Bissell, Urban Design, Chaos, and Colonial Power in Zanzibar (Bloomington, 2011), p. 149. 162
2. Governing La Courneuve and the 4000 logements, 1960-1964
For the La Courneuve PCF, the 4000 logements provided a means of concentrating on a set of political objectives that were increasingly narrow in terms of their scope. The PCF created a culture that was politically active on one level but also limited to a narrow range of ‘bread and butter’ housing issues such as rental prices. On one hand, this limited focus served as a means of controlling a diverse estate population but on the other hand this agenda was largely shaped by residents themselves and was deliberately unambitious to avoid alienating residents who did not support the PCF. This section will suggest that while the PCF sought to promote the estate as a space of consensus, resident testimonies from the 4000 logements highlight a more fractured social and cultural reality that undercut any PCF claims to political hegemony.
Unlike Pantin, where Les Courtillières was partly designed to house an extant population, the 4000 logements was built to manage a new population that was politically, ethnically and social diverse. This new population included a significant number of pieds- noirs (around 3000 people or 1 in 8 new arrivals) who were traditionally right-leaning. 57 In the five years following the opening of the 4000 logements, La Courneuve’s population almost doubled in size, with just under 24,000 new arrivals to the town, 15,000 of whom were housed on the estate. 58 These arrivals represented a significant set of challenges to the
57 In 1969, the municipality published more detailed statistics on the residents rehoused on the estate between 1962 and 1968, although all overseas arrivals were grouped together regardless of origin and categorised as either ‘immigrants’ or ‘repatriates’. According to municipal statistics, these overseas arrivals accounted for just under a quarter of new residents, with the vast majority coming from other départements of Ile-de-France, excluding Seine-Saint-Denis. However these statistics do not allow for the fact that some of these arrivals were overseas migrants who were moving from provisional housing elsewhere. See Mairie de la Courneuve, ‘À la Découverte de votre ville, « sa population »’ (La Courneuve, 1968). 58 ‘Notice communal’, (1999) [online source]. http://cassini.ehess.fr/cassini/fr/html/fiche.php?select_resultat=10719 accessed on 10th May 2012. 163
communist municipality, and while the La Courneuve PCF pursued the party-wide programme of ‘citadels of republican defence’, it did so in a more opportunistic, location- specific way. The La Courneuve communists were visibly more militant on issues such as the Algerian conflict, compared to the previous administration, led by the SFIO Mayor
Alphonse Rollin. While Rollin’s speeches had expressed ambiguous support for a ceasefire, the incoming PCF council under Jean Houdremont was more explicit in its support for the
Paix en Algérie movement, a coalition of the French left that supported Algerian independence. 59 From 1960 onwards, the party went further still, in rebranding the 11 th of
November wartime commemorations as a ‘grand day of protest’. Houdremont’s speech attacked the presence of the the ‘new Wehrmacht’ on training camps in France and called for greater welfare benefits to veterans. 60 In 1961, this event was moved to the mairie and
Houdremont’s speech called for negotiations with the Algerian Provisional Government
(GPRA), despite the fact that the Algerian Republic was only officially recognised by a handful of sympathetic states. This appeal for diplomacy with Algeria may have signified an attempt to re-connect with disillusioned left-wingers by subtly appealing to their increasing hagiography of Algeria as a Marxist revolution. 61 Meanwhile, ongoing references to veterans’ rights represented a direct appeal to white, working-class voters who were the party’s traditional support base. However, the completion of the 4000 logements signalled a significant change in the principal issues that municipal campaigning chose to focus upon.
59 Alphonse Rollin, Mayoral speech, Fêtes Communales, 11 th November 1955, AMLC/4R9. 60 Jean Houdremont, Mayoral speech, Fêtes Communales, 11 th November 1960, AMLC/4R9. 61 On the international reception of the Algerian revolution among French communists and Marxists more generally see David Ottaway, Marina Ottaway, Algeria: The Politics of a Socialist Revolution (London, 1970), pp. 25-26. 164
In March 1962, a ceasefire between French forces and the FLN brought the
Algerian War to an end but, interestingly, Houdremont’s annual mayoral address dropped all reference to the FLN or the issue of war veterans, whether of Algeria or otherwise.
Instead, Houdremont focused on more neutral and localised issues such as social infrastructure. To an extent Houdremont’s change of emphasis represented the PCF’s increasing focus on ‘bread and butter’ demands in calling for ‘a democracy…where schools, sports centres, swimming pools, housing will be the dominant concern of state institutions’. 62 The issue of fascism also disappeared from the PCF’s campaigning in La
Courneuve. Whereas the party in Pantin had been vocal in its criticism of far-right activity
(notably extremist attacks on a socialist meeting in Paris and an assassination attempt on
François Mitterrand in 1959, which was initially blamed on Algérie Française), the La
Courneuve municipality appeared less willing to wade into the debate on Algeria and risk alienating pieds-noirs with right-wing sympathies. 63 Key events regarding the far-right were omitted from party campaigns at La Courneuve, notably the Charonne massacre of
February 1962 and assassination attempts on President de Gaulle by extreme-right groups. 64 Thus, while the PCF were nominally the dominant political force on the estate, residents constituted a significant power structure that prompted the communists to mediate their activist discourse. This conscious ‘editing’ of PCF policy was accompanied by a party desire to mobilise residents around a series of core issues that were rooted in the bricks and mortar of the grand ensemble rather than wider international concerns.
62 Jean Houdremont, Mayoral speech, Fêtes Communales, 11th November 1963, AMLC/4R9. 63 ‘Pantin Council Minutes’ 12 th October 1959, AMP/AM716. Mitterrand was later accused of faking the assassination attempt himself in order to further his political career. See chapter two of Ronald Tiersky, François Mitterrand: A Very French President (Oxford, 2003). This is not to say that pieds-noirs were uniquely right wing. For a nuanced analysis of the political persuasion of the pieds-noirs see Todd Shepard, ‘Pieds-Noirs, Bêtes Noires. Anti-“European of Algeria” Racism and the Close of the French Empire’ in Patricia M. E. Lorcin (ed.), Algeria & France, 1800-2000: Identity, Memory, Nostalgia (New York, 2006). 64 Shields, The Extreme Right , p. 5. On the Charonne massacre see Jean-Paul Brunet, Charonne. Lumières sur une tragédie (Paris, 2003). On the failed OAS plot to assassinate de Gaulle see Jean-Pax Méfret, Bastien- Thiry: Jusqu'au bout de l'Algérie française (Paris, 2010). 165
With the opening of the 4000 logements in the autumn of 1963, the PCF posted out a welcome message to every resident of the new estate in which the party tried to establish a clear power structure between the benevolent local state and the grateful resident:
A quarter of you come from slums or cramped housing within our town. It’s thanks to the actions of our municipality. Others -the vast majority- you come from unsanitary blocks or for migrants from Algeria, camps or overcrowded housing of friends and relatives of the metropole . For all, the municipality will do its best to solve your problems. 65
Houdremont also attacked the actions of ‘a government bent on the destruction of local structures, of municipal democracy which is a discomfort for its politics’. 66 However, aside from this reference to the national government, Houdremont’s message mirrored that of the
SEMIDEP at Les Courtillières in attempting to gain credit for the rehousing of slum inhabitants and to depict the grand ensemble as a space of order and shared solidarity. As with Les Courtillières, the PCF at La Courneuve had no say over housing allocation on the
4000 logements. Perhaps more significantly, the La Courneuve estate was constructed and administered by the city of Paris, meaning that it was effectively an exclave of the French capital. This meant that problems with the estate could be more easily blamed on the national government, and the PCF took several early opportunities to instil a sense of anti- government feeling.
During the inauguration of the estate by the Minister of Construction, Jacques
Maziol in December 1963, the pro-PCF Journal d’Aubervilliers reported 500 protesters greeting the minister, including residents and construction workers who shouted slogans such as ‘schools not guns’ and ‘money not guns’. 67 According the newspaper, this all took place ‘under the approving and amused gaze of residents in their windows’. The article equally claimed, ‘it was truly a beautiful sight to see a Gaullist minister facing up to his
65 Jean Houdremont, ‘Bienvenue’, Journal de La Courneuve , (December, 1963). 66 Houdemont, ‘Bienvenue’. 67 ‘Inauguration mouvementée des 4000 logements’, Journal d’Aubervilliers , (December, 1963). 166
responsibilities. The building’s workers and occupants have clearly shown him their disagreement with government policy’. 68 While one could interpret the PCF’s use of housing and education issues as a means of camouflaging its more militant beliefs, it equally served to limit the scope of the protest. The ambiguous slogan ‘schools not guns’ appeared to unite those who had been opposed to the Algerian conflict and equally, those who were opposed to the topical issue of nuclear testing. Therefore, while the SEMIDEP at
Les Courtillières used the language of housing and community to undermine the PCF, the communists employed a similar approach to criticise the national government, but in a way that was sufficiently ambiguous to avoid alienating residents. In Weber’s notion of nonlegitimate domination, the ruler is compelled to negotiate with his urban subjects due to their financial strength and the ruler’s lack of bureaucratic control over them. 69 There are notable parallels with the PCF at La Courneuve, which had no say over who was allocated housing on the 4000 logements and thus lacked control of an important element of the
‘administrative machine’. The party thus adjusted its political discourse accordingly, and in doing so, conceded some level of power to residents.
Due to the 4000 logements’ status as a Parisian exclave in the banlieue , the local
PCF was keen to promote the estate as the locus of anti-government campaigning, albeit in a limited, localised form. A testimony from Maurice Bernard, a PCF councillor and president of a local tenants’ association, describes the mood of the time with a liberal dose of nostalgia. Bernard’s testimony was given in 2002 at a study day of the Délégation
Interministérielle de la Ville (DIV) entitled ‘Les Grands ensembles entre histoire et mémoire’ and appeared alongside that of historians, planners and sociologists, as part of a
68 ‘Inauguration’, Journal d’Aubervilliers , p. 6. 69 Swedberg, Max Weber , p. 73. 167
wider debate on how the grands ensembles should be remembered. 70 Bernard’s testimony is important as it was presented as an ‘authentic citizen voice’ and thus may have shaped
France’s recent academic and political perceptions of the grand ensemble . Bernard presented a harmonious view of early life on the grand ensemble , claiming that ‘…the population of the 4000 was vibrant. Of course, some residents were very poor, but others were relatively well-off and everyone lived in harmony.’ He addresses the issue of press stigma directly, citing the example of a brawl between local youths and some from Saint-
Denis, which ‘the press used to stigmatise the estate by calling it “the estate of terror” [ la cité de la peur ]. Despite everything, it was a neighbourhood that was always pleasant to live in’. 71 While Bernard acknowledged the improved living conditions in claiming that
‘we loved the brightness and size of the rooms and the presence of a bathroom’, he also touched upon the militant action of certain inhabitants. 72 For example, he describes the joyful destruction of the hated sentry boxes and parking barriers; ‘One fine day, on the initiative of Algerian repatriates, the boxes were smashed, along with the barriers to the car parks, which haven’t charged us since’. 73 Bernard’s testimony mirrors the protests against the Minister of Construction depicted in the Journal d’Aubervilliers article from 1963 as it describes the estate as a space of shared grievances with the national government. Yet, while the newspaper sought credit for the PCF for mobilising peaceful protest, Bernard attributes this more violent act to an ethnic group; the pieds-noirs rather than a political group, thus disavowing the PCF from any official responsibility for the action.
70 The DIV was created in 1988 to oversee state urban policy and to allow officials from various state ministries to share information and research. For more on the DIV see http://www.vie- publique.fr/documents-vp/div.pdf [online source] accessed on 21 st May 2012. 71 Maurice Bernard, ‘Témoignage’, Les Grands ensembles entre histoire et mémoire, Délégation Interministérielle à la Ville (2002). 72 Bernard, ‘Témoignage’ (2002). 73 Bernard, ‘Témoignage’, (2002). 168
However, testimonies from some of the Algerians that Bernard describes raise questions about the extent of PCF control on the estate and suggest a more socially fractured community. While there is no official history of the 4000 logements, the
Laboratoire Architecture Anthropologie has conducted some oral history research of the estate’s early years. One such testimony from Monsieur Gonzales, a Spanish-speaking pied-noir who came to France from Oran in the northwest of Algeria, hints at an atmosphere of racial prejudice and divisions between European and Arab Algerians.
Gonzales praised the range of amenities on the estate, claiming, ‘We had a large shower…a shopping centre nearby, a vegetable market at Petit Balzac, a dairy seller, on the corner we had a bar, facing us was the pharmacy. We had everything just there’. 74 Yet, when asked to describe his social experiences of the 4000 logements, Gonzales described a series of underlying anxieties about his new home:
Algeria emptied between March 62 and March 63. The French didn’t expect this. At the time I was already working there for the army and I did everything to keep my job in France. And at La Courneuve, they told me I had a flat and everything, but when we arrived here…you don’t want to know! …[The French] abused the Arabs…we told them “ don’t do it, you don’t know them, we’ve lived with them”. We got on very well with the Arabs, better than the French. 75
Gonzales thus hints at a level of national solidarity between European Algerians and their pro-French Arab compatriots. Gonzales’ claim would seem to contradict attempts by the
French New Left during this time to condemn the ‘Europeans of Algeria’ as neofascist and anti-French. 76 Yet, when asked to elaborate on this solidarity in greater depth, Gonzales downplays it in claiming of one Arab family: ‘No. We were from Oran but them, family
B., they had lived far away, 100km from there. They hadn’t lived through the same things.
74 M. Gonzales, ‘Interview given to Laboratoire Architecture Anthropologie’ (undated) [online source]. http://www.laa-courneuve.net/annee1965.html accessed on 12 th September 2012. 75 Gonzales, Interview. 76 Shepard, ‘Pieds-Noirs, Bêtes Noires’. 169
We never spoke about the country, never’.77 This testimony hints at the enduring legacy of racial and socio-cultural differences within French Algeria that were simply transferred to metropolitan France. It is also notable that Gonzales gives no mention of the PCF in any capacity, perhaps indicating that he did not differentiate between different elements of the
French state when describing institutionalised racism against North African immigrants.
While one should be cautious about overemphasising the significance of this testimony, it nonetheless suggests that PCF attempts to unite the residents of the 4000 logements through activism did not always reflect actual lived experiences and this projection of power did not permeate all aspects of estate life.
Gonzales’s testimony also raises important questions about the level of public participation in the civic events arranged by the La Courneuve PCF. Nevertheless, the party continued to pursue broad multi-party issues, most notably that of nuclear disarmament which was the focus of a ‘Grand Peace Ball’ organised at La Courneuve’s town hall in 1964 by the Mouvement de la Paix. 78 Publicity for the ball called for a
‘politics of peace’ and an end to nuclear energy and atomic weapons with the funding being allocated to social infrastructure instead. The Mouvement de la Paix had been founded in 1947 by Charles Tillon, a leading communist. Although the PCF tried to portray the movement as an apolitical organisation and despite the fact that it had
Christians and intellectuals within its ranks, non-communists suspected that it functioned as an organ of pro-Soviet propaganda. 79 In general terms the early 1960s was a period
77 Gonzales, Interview. 78 It is important to note that not all municipal events were explicitly centred on political activism. La Courneuve’s annual 14th of July celebrations included a bicycle race and a parade, while the annual Fête des Quatre Routes in September was mainly based around amusements and circus acts. 79 Ariane Chebel d'Appollonia, Histoire politique des intellectuels en France (1944-1954), (Brussels, 1988), pp. 176-177. For a more detailed discussion of the Mouvement de la Paix see Nicole Gnesotto, ‘All Quiet on the French Front ?’ in Walter Laqueur, Robert Edwards Hunter (eds.), European Peace Mouvements and the Future of the Western Alliance (Washington, 1985), pp. 245-260. 170
during which PCF leader Waldeck Rochet sought to broaden its political appeal, and the
La Courneuve party’s political discourse of the time demonstrated a clear desire to downplay a revolutionary agenda and seek power via democratic means. 80
This more moderate agenda was also reflected in Houdremont’s mayoral address of
1965 which outlined the party’s commitment to social democracy. His address called for nuclear disarmament and a downscaling of the French military in favour of constructing
‘schools and universities, housing and hospitals’. Houdremont also recommended ‘…the democratisation of institutions, to create a government accountable to a truly effective parliament, with the aim of establishing a true democracy in our country’. 81 According to
George Ross, the PCF’s moderate stance on issues such as Vietnam was a major reason why the party fell out of favour with radical students who gradually left the party (or were expelled) during the mid-1960s. 82 Yet at a local banlieue level the strategic use of this moderate stance was clear as it reflected the social reality of governing a culturally and diverse population.
80 Waldeck Rochet (1905-1983) was general secretary of the PCF between 1964 and 1972. Rochet favoured a coalition of the left and famously supported François Mitterrand’s 1965 presidental campaign. For an overview of Rochet’s leadership of the PCF see Tiersky, French Communism , pp. 243-255. For a more comprehensive biography of Rochet see Jean Vigreux, Waldeck Rochet. Une biographie politique (Paris, 2000). 81 Jean Houdremont, Mayoral speech, Fêtes Communales, 11th November 1965, AMLC/4R9. 82 Ross, Workers and Communists , p. 173. 171
Figure 3.1: Publicity for Grand Bal de la Paix, 14 th November 1964. PCF events at La Courneuve were often a complex fusion of populist events and political action. AMLC/4R9.
During this period, the PCF adopted a flexible, moderate agenda that was shaped to fit the ‘typical’ estate resident. Rather than acting merely as a mouthpiece for the top-level of the party, the La Courneuve PCF agenda was shaped by local concerns, most notably the need to appeal to a highly politically diverse community. In this regard the grand ensemble was a useful political tool for the communist party, as it limited the focus and scope of protest to less contentious issues. Equally, the grand ensemble provided a 172
camouflage for more concerted anti-government campaigning that employed the prosaic language of neighbourhood and community. While the party tried to homogenise these concerns into a general shared opposition to national government policy, resident testimonies from the time suggest that there was a greater political and racial complexity to the estate than the party recognised. The next section will incorporate further resident testimonies in order to more comprehensively explore the role of the PCF in the everyday life of estate inhabitants.
3. Assessing the grand ensemble community, 1969-1973
Between 1969 and 1973, the governance of the grands ensembles of Les Courtillières and the 4000 logements shifted towards the management of specific ‘crisis groups’. In particular, the emergence of the ‘youth question’ betrayed the inherent limitations to the
PCF’s policy of ‘limited involvement’ in certain grand ensemble issues. Whereas the party’s arterial power had previously allowed it to construct a limited but workable sphere of responsibility, social problems on the grands ensembles that emerged during this period could not be so easily bypassed. Linking to the theme of ‘fantasies of state power’, this section will argue that in both La Courneuve and Pantin, the PCF was unable to address the issues that youth delinquency presented and instead pursued the more achievable aims of appealing to more ‘compliant’ young people and more destitute residents.
Evidence from the late 1960s and early 1970s points to a level of social decline at
Les Courtillières during this period, although sources disagree over its nature and extent.
While residents such as Madeleine Bouchard had ‘pulled strings’ to obtain housing in the late 1950s, there was a relative abundance of free apartments by the early 1970s. 173
Mohammed Hamdani, a railway worker who applied for housing in 1970 reported that a housing officer responded by saying ‘Do you want Bondy-Nord, Stains, or Les
Courtillières? Choose anywhere you want’. 83 Evidence also suggests that the estate was becoming increasingly stretched in terms of its social infrastructure. As mentioned in chapter one, the PCF had commissioned an architectural and sociological study of the estate in 1969, and part of the report detailed the use of its youth club and crèche facilities.
According to the report, the crèche was used relatively little by residents, due to a falling birth rate that was symptomatic of grands ensembles , which meant that it had begun to attract custom from the nearby suburbs of Aubervilliers, Bobigny and Le Bourget. 84 The youth club in contrast, was stretched beyond capacity as one in eight youths on the estate made use of the club, meaning that it had around a hundred regular visitors. 85 For this reason the youth club was praised in comparison with a similar development in the banlieues of the eastern city of Mulhouse, where ‘contact between youths and the youth club has been difficult to establish’. 86 Despite this praise, the youth club served to indicate that within the grand ensemble (as within the banlieue more generally) PCF control was largely limited to symbolic sites of power. A testimony in the municipal history Aux
Courtillières from Guy Michel, who ran the estate’s youth club from 1969 to 1974, hints at a divide between different types of youth on the estate:
In ’68 there was a fair amount of organised disorder by youths. At a given moment, disturbances degenerated and the youth club became a refuge for them…There was a vibrant life at Les Courtillières, sometimes possibly a little too much. There were a few pockets of tension, with the part of Les Courtillières towards Bobigny, especially among youths. There was also some between youths…and those of the 800 in Aubervilliers, the cité Emile Dubois. 87
83 Michel, Derainne, Aux Courtillières , p. 164. 84 ORGECO, Rapport , p. 58. 85 ORGECO, Rapport , p. 85. 86 ORGECO, Rapport , p. 85. 87 Michel, Derainne, Aux Courtillières , p. 160. 174
Michel thus points to a territorialisation of space and forms of inter-estate conflict that affected how youth organisers perceived social housing and the nature of their task. Michel implies that by this time, his post had become less about encouraging mass participation and more about safeguarding those young people who sought a safer environment. While
Michel portrays delinquency as a late-1960s phenomenon, such associations were nothing new at Les Courtillières. In 1960 the investigative journalist Régine Gabbey had published a report on youth delinquency that linked the estate to the blousons noirs , a youth subculture inspired by American rock ‘n’ roll culture. Paul Landauer and Benoît Pouvreau cite Gabbey’s article as a turning point for Les Courtillières as it explicitly linked the estate with petty delinquency and youth subcultures. 88 Gabbey’s article also contained direct interviews with estate youths who described the more incendiary confrontations that occurred during some evenings. One such youth described a typical scene:
Sometimes, we hold rodeos using mopeds that we’re removed the silencers from so they make more noise. The residents are furious, saying we’re stopping their children from sleeping. They threaten us with the police, we swear at them, sometimes they come down into the square and we fight a little. 89
The disturbances that Michel cites were thus a recurrence of a long-standing issue, although he does not attempt to attach delinquents to a national discourse on delinquency as Gabbey had done. Indeed, Michel consciously sought to address a number of stereotypical assumptions surrounding banlieue youths in presenting a non-ethnicised vision of delinquency and emphasising the ‘silent majority’ for whom the youth club was a vital service. Michel accompanied his testimony with a letter he had written in 1971 to
Michel Berthelot (the president of the youth club) in which he described how he had been able to recover stolen property with the help of club members who had provided
88 Paul Landauer, Benoît Pouvreau, ‘Les Courtillières, cité ordinaire, histoire singulière?’, Espaces et sociétés 3 : 130 (2007), p. 71-85. 89 Régine Gabbey, ‘Les Jeunes des Courtillières à Pantin se défendent d’être des blousons noirs’, Parisien Libéré , 30th November 1960. 175
information as to its whereabouts. Michel claimed in his letter that ‘their attitude has positive elements, particularly a concern for collective property and its safety. This action marks a step in the educational strategy employed since our centre opened’. 90 Yet, there were also a series of additional motives to Michel’s letter, most notably a desire to argue that the youth club was helping rather than hindering the struggle against youth delinquency and was thus worthy of state investment. Moreover, Michel sought to imply that the youth club was creating the ‘right kind’ of youth who would be socially responsible, conscientious and respectful of private property, yet also acknowledged that a more problematic group existed who were beyond the reaches of the club. In Weber’s terms, Michel’s testimony points to a divide between youths who accepted the moral validity of the youth club and its norms and those who did not. 91 The purpose here is not to condemn youth clubs for failing to appeal to such groups, but rather to point to a conscious concern that such establishments were failing: concerns that officials like Michel felt the need to address in an increasingly conspicuous fashion.
The divide between disenfranchised and more socially-involved residents is further illustrated by a testimony from Geneviève Legrand, a shop worker at Galéries Lafayette in
Paris and one of the earliest arrivals at Les Courtillières. Legrand describes a highly active social scene on the estate during the early 1970s:
I would go three times a week to the youth club. I did gymnastics, yoga and pottery. On Tuesdays, my husband and I went there for photography and my daughter came for chess…There were an enormous number of activities , canoeing…football and screen printing…If there was a fête at Les Courtillières, we’d do a pottery or glassblowing demonstration on the marketplace. 92
90 Letter from Guy Michel to Michel Berthelot, 1 st October 1971, reprinted in Michel, Derraine, Aux Courtillières , p. 163. 91 Max Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Organisation (Oxford, 1947), p. 124. For examples of application of Weber’s theories of legitimacy in the study of youth delinquency see chapter one of Richard A. Cloward, L.E. Ohlin, Delinquency and Opportunity: A Study of Delinquent Gangs (New York, 1960). 92 Michel, Derainne, Aux Courtillières , p. 89. 176
Legrand’s testimony suggests that the youth club had a wider role not just as a facility for young people but also for older residents, which may help to further explain the centre’s overstretched capacity. Legrand also hinted at solidarity between different socio-economic groups in claiming that ‘one could go horse-riding on Sunday mornings at Vémars in the
Val-d’Oise. Those with a car gave others a lift’. 93 Yet, she also acknowledged that many activities were only undertaken by a minority. For example she described the weekly meetings of the school parents association (of which her husband was the president as ‘a small group, seven to eight people but if there was a football match on television, we wouldn’t have a meeting on that day’! 94 Legrand’s testimony invites several conclusions about life on Les Courtillières during the 1970s. Despite the ORGECO’s study’s emphasis on the ‘youth question’, the issue is largely absent from Legrand’s testimony despite the amount of time she spent at the youth club. She described a vibrant social scene but one that perhaps appealed more to either children or adults rather than the teenagers for whom the youth club was built. Although this testimony only reflects the view of one particularly socially-engaged resident, when read in conjunction with the ORGECO study, one can infer that a growing divide was emerging between active residents and those at the margins.
While it is outside of the chronology of this study, it is important to note that the economic and social divide between different residents of Les Courtillières became increasingly apparent during the course of the 1970s. The estate newsletter, Amis des
Courtillières which appeared sporadically during the late 1970s and early 1980s was at times used to criticise activist residents who monopolised the residents’ association. In one example from March 1980, Amédé Débonaire described his experiences at his first
93 Michel, Derraine, Aux Courtillières , p. 89. 94 Michel, Derraine, Aux Courtillières , p. 91. 177
residents’ meeting, and attacked what he saw as a petty-minded committee of ‘intellectuals’ and ‘pontiffs’ who were more concerned with minutiae than key issues such as rent increases. 95 The head of the SEMIDEP was mentioned by name and criticised for reneging on promises to recreate the architectural feel of Paris’s 16th arrondissement at Les
Courtillières, while instead allegedly siphoning off money for projects elsewhere. 96 The historian Alison Ravetz describes a similar issue at the Quarry Hill estate in Leeds during the early 1970s, where she argues that ‘in trying to arouse support for something different, or simply in exercising their own leadership functions, the active members of the committee were isolated and, they felt, unpopular’.97 At times the Amis des Courtillières newsletter featured impassioned pleas for contributions with slogans such as ‘Keep us informed. We’ll keep you informed’ and ‘Share information with us about life in our neighbourhood’. 98 There is a notable parallel here with the Quarry Hill newsletter The
Sentinel which appeared between 1947 and 1954 and eventually featured an editorial with a cry for ‘Help’ and a friendly reminder that it was ‘one for all and all for one’. 99 This evidence is important as it suggests that the nascent social divisions of the early 1970s would become more significant in the years that followed. It also indicates that the PCF’s policy of limited involvement was less a strategic decision and more an admission that certain aspects of estate life were beyond its political reach.
At the 4000 logements, the PCF underwent a similar narrowing in its field of involvement in the everyday life of the estate. A well-publicised murder at the 4000 logements in 1971 deepened the estate’s negative reputation within the French print media.
95 Amédé Débonaire, ‘L’Amicale des locataires’, Amis des Courtillières (March, 1980) AMP Reference Library. 96 Débonaire, ‘L’Amicale’. 97 Alison Ravetz, Model Estate: Planned Housing at Quarry Hill, Leeds, (London, 1974), p. 128. 98 Amis des Courtillières (March, 1980). 99 Ravetz, Model Estate , p. 128. 178
In March of that year, a seventeen year-old youth was shot dead by the manager of one of the estate’s cafes following an altercation. While journalists blamed a combination of youth delinquency and failed state planning policy, the (PCF-controlled) conseil général of
Seine-Saint-Denis began to discuss the youth question in more depth. One meeting from
June 1971 expressed the following concerns:
Let us not delude ourselves. The gangs in question…just because there will be more cinemas and fewer cafes…and just because there will be youth centres does not mean that the problem with be solved. You know very well, as well as me…that it is not the same people that use the youth clubs as those who misbehave in the street. 100
The council were explicit in stating that the problem could no longer be solved by conventional paradigms of governance. Moreover, it appears that councillors were aware of the ‘youth divide’ that Guy Michel had described at Les Courtillières. This evidence is significant as it suggests a move away from a paternalist running of the estate towards a more crisis-driven management of the estate as the locus of disorder. While other councillors expressed cynicism over whether the 4000 logements was any more dangerous than some areas of Paris, the PCF gave its support to police plans to survey the area more closely. 101 Yet, residents themselves were not unanimous in their condemnation of the estate. One resident, interviewed by the LAA and referred to simply as ‘Monique’ arrived at the 4000 logements in 1972 via the Aude département and a pavillon in Montreuil and described the estate in glowing terms:
We had everything here. Everything, everything, everything: the fishmonger, a general store, the furniture dealer, an ice-cream seller, even a florist!...And contact with people was easy! First it was “Hello!”, then “How are you”, and there you are! Even if we didn’t know each other, even at the start, from the very first week that I was there. 102
100 ‘Conseil Général Minutes’ 16 th May 1971 [online source]. http://www.laa-courneuve.net/annee1971 .html accessed on 14th August 2013. 101 PCF views on the policing of the banlieues will be discussed in more depth in chapter four.
102 ‘Monique interview given to Laboratoire Architecture Anthropologie’ (undated) [online source]. http://www.laa-courneuve.net/annee1972.html accessed on 14th August 2013. 179
In contrast to Genevieve Legrand at Les Courtillières, Monique was of relatively modest means as a single parent who had been allocated a flat at La Courneuve by the social welfare centre at Montreuil. While Monique later grew to dislike the estate, she maintained that she had appreciated her surroundings in the early years of her tenancy. Monique’s testimony was evidently influenced by a sense of nostalgia coupled with the difficult domestic circumstances she had left behind, yet she describes a neighbourly environment and one of adequate commercial facilities. However, Monique’s testimony also echoes that of Monsieur Gonzales as it describes the grand ensemble as a space defined by individual interactions rather than unifying solidarity. The everyday interactions that she describes undermines journalistic depictions of the grand ensemble as a ‘counter-society’ but also calls into question PCF attempts to portray the estate as a space of shared grievances and militancy. Moreover, the absence of the PCF from resident testimonies for the period covered in this chapter suggests that the party’s ongoing presence in inhabitants’ lives was relatively limited.
While delinquency began to represent a significant area of PCF ‘limited involvement’, the inaugural La Courneuve summer festival of 1973 demonstrated the areas of estate life in which the party was prepared to intervene. The festival was a collaboration of residents’ associations and the local PCF and featured a highly varied social and cultural programme. The centrepiece of the summer festival was the opening of the Langevin-
Wallon sports centre at the 4000 logements, which was completed just in time for the event, and played host to events involving singing, dancing, poetry, gymnastics and volleyball. The sports centre was described as ‘a construction much awaited by
Courneuviens’, and its construction was long overdue as it had featured in the original plans for the 4000 logements development. It was not coincidental that the PCF should 180
choose to push through the construction of the sports centre, as sport offered a stabilising force in an increasingly politically-charged nation. According to the cultural analyst
William J. Morgan, sport in France had largely survived the uprisings of 1968 and furthermore served as ‘a protective shield for other embattled social institutions, thereby stabilising an otherwise tenuous situation’. 103 In addition, the sports centre provided limited ‘completion’ of the original grand ensemble plan, and was heralded as ‘a concrete example that elected officials keep their promises’. 104 While the objective of the festival programme was ostensibly to inform local residents of the upcoming events, the municipality also used it to explicitly criticise the French state for its inaction during the centre’s construction. The section of the programme devoted to the sports centre attacked the government for contributing ‘just 15 million francs’ out of a total spend of 830 million francs. 105 There were thus significant parallels with the annual mayoral address, which advocated political activism within a limited sphere that focused on domestic economic affairs. The fact that the summer festival and sports centre opening took on additional significance was emblematic of the close interest that the PCF took in such campaigns.
As well as ‘official’ events such as sports demonstrations, poetry recitals and a pétanque tournament, the festival also featured a number of events organised and funded by residents associations, which were noted in the PCF’s report of the festival. The report described these events as part of an initiative to ‘make residents aware of the
103 William J. Morgan, Leftist Theories of Sport: a Critique and Reconstruction (Champaign, 1994), p. 21. Yet, sport had still been targeted by New Left critiques of physical culture as a tool of Stalinist and bourgeois states used to sublimate individuals. Articles to this end had already been published by the sociologist Jean- Marie Brohm in the journal Partisans in 1966 and 1967. See Jean-Marie Brohm,‘Forger des âmes en forgeant des corps’, Partisans 15 (1966); Jean-Marie Brohm, ‘Sociologie politique du sport’, Partisans 28 (1967). PCF attempts to depoliticise the grand ensemble in the wake of May 1968 will be discussed in chapter four. 104 ‘Programme fête d’été’ (1973) AMLC/4R32. 105 ‘Programme fête d’été’ (1973). 181
neighbourhood organisations and all the possibilities of entertainment at their disposal’. 106
On the same day that a mass ball was organised by the Association des Locataires, the
PCF-affiliated residents’ association, the social centre (run by the CAF: the social security office) began a three-day ‘open house’ event. 107 Such evidence suggests that festival organisers made some effort not just to promote community on the estate but also to specifically reach out to ‘crisis groups’. While the festival signified an attempt to inform residents of the extent of available welfare provisions and to extend the estate’s reach beyond economically active residents, the ‘youth question’ was conspicuously absent.
Children were given priority use of the Langevin-Wallon sports centre, which the festival programme argued was ‘the opposite of government measures that are abolishing PE teachers in primary schools’. 108 In this way the municipality portrayed sport as an act of defiance in itself, a way of resisting state cutbacks and overcoming the paucity of its service provisions. Yet, teenagers were conspicuously absent from municipal social planning, which supports the notion that the PCF viewed them as a more problematic
‘ungoverneable’ group. The party’s relative silence on the youth question further illustrates the largely institution-based, often symbolic reach of the PCF in the grands ensembles .
106 ‘PCF report of fête d’été’, (1973), AMLC/4R32. 107 The activities of residents’ associations at La Courneuve will be discussed in more detail in chapter four. On the history of the CAF see Claire Duchen, Women's Rights and Women's Lives in France 1944-1968 (London, 1994), pp. 30-31. 108 ‘Programme fête d’été’ (1973). 182
Figure 3.2: Page from summer festival programme, 1973. AMLC/4R32.
This section has argued that an increasing rift emerged during the early 1970s between different residents of social housing. In particular, an ambiguous group of
‘problem youths’ were conspicuously absent from resident discourse yet featured prominently in political discourse surrounding estates. Through youth clubs and events such as the La Courneuve summer festival, the local state focused its efforts on groups where it had the most influence, children, the destitute and the socially engaged. The case 183
studies analysed in this section do not suggest a particular ‘crisis point’ for the estates concerned but rather a subtle shift towards a form of grand ensemble culture that focused on more ‘governeable’ elements. In other words, in a similar way to sociologists, the local state focused on the notions of grand ensemble that it understood and could influence, while leaving more complex issues unaddressed. For residents themselves the grand ensemble could still provide a vibrant social community, although they may have been the short-term beneficiaries of PCF policy that at this stage prioritised straightforward issues over more complex ones.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this chapter has demonstrated that the lived experience of state power and the methods of governing these spaces were far from universal. Just as the central state used methods such as sociological research and urban planning to construct a narrative of order, the local state employed a similar practice through the specific way in which it interacted with its citizens. This practice involved something more significant that merely an uneven, context-based form of governance: it involved an ongoing process of negotiation between state and citizen that brings the all-encompassing nature of French state power into question. Section one for instance, argued that residents of Les
Courtillières faced the oppositional ideological messages of the PCF and the planning firm responsible for the estate. This section also suggested that housing allocation and requisition requests were handled in a way that allowed certain individuals to subvert the system and to bend the rules in order to enjoy a more flexible grand ensemble experience.
Those without these privileges on the other hand, either encountered a more regulated environment or were unable to obtain housing in the first place. The plight of residents of 184
temporary housing further illustrates the complex governing practices of a state that appeared to be limited in its capacity to address issues of housing and sanitation.
Section two argued that the municipal culture of La Courneuve evolved with the development of the 4000 logements, to become more ‘acceptable’ to a diverse population of Algerian immigrants, repatriates and migrants from within France. The PCF did not impose its will on its citizens but rather had its message shaped and at times neutralised by a desire to appeal to these residents. These malleable ideological messages were part of a wider ‘charm offensive’ that sought to homogenise residents through a narrow range of shared concerns. Section three argued that the situation on the grands ensembles during the early 1970s was not one of outright crisis but that the local state had differentiated between the straightforward, compliant estate that it could govern and more problematic elements that it could not. As a result, the PCF pursued a policy of ‘conspicuous community’ in which a vibrant cultural calendar served as a means of rendering elements of crisis less visible. Socially engaged residents were the beneficiaries of such activities but it was equally evident that as with the sociologists discussed in chapter one, the ‘unknown grand ensemble ’ was becoming a more significant issue for the state to address.
This chapter has thus argued that the local state adopted a flexible and strategic approach to governing the grand ensemble whereby few policies were ‘set in stone’. Yet, it is also evident that this chapter has identified a significant group whose voices are most often absent from archives or oral testimonies: notably those who did not regularly participate in estate activities. It is also evident that the PCF often held a monopoly over estate activism and cultural events on the grand ensemble (and often its portrayal in the media or indeed, in archives) that further complicates any attempts to characterise the lived 185
experience of banlieue estates. Nevertheless, despite these methodological issues, this chapter has been able to highlight crucial limitations in local and central state power within these areas. This chapter has been able to demonstrate that PCF power amounted to
‘dominance without hegemony’ not due to a tangible force of resistance but due to the social contract that the party itself created. In other words, the PCF was able to govern the grands ensembles but only by privately sacrificing any claims to be ordering or omniscient.
186
Chapter Four: Confrontation in the banlieue
Seine-Saint-Denis is the most crime-ridden département in France and the atmosphere here is explosive…The reality is as harsh as the tarmac of these estates that I survey relentlessly and as grey and miserable as the concrete barres that you end up knowing by heart... …If our mission is policing, our instincts and reflexes are almost military. For us, to arrive on an estate is to arrive in hostile territory. The enemy watches and awaits the smallest opportunity to take us down. In the 93, it’s sometimes real urban warfare. Le Figaro , 10 th December 2011 1
This chapter will focus on elements of confrontation and resistance in the banlieues between 1955 and 1973. The above testimony, taken from a police brigadier named simply as ‘Christophe D.,’ presents an extreme view of modern-day policing in Seine-Saint-Denis and describes the grand ensemble as a major centre of police operations due to its high level of criminal activity and long-standing social decline. 2 Christophe’s narrative forms part of a wider cultural image of banlieue policing as a crisis response and of the grand ensemble as the site of urban warfare, which has also infused academic study of these areas.
Yet, his testimony also invites consideration of how policing gradually imposed itself on the new suburban estates following their construction. As we have seen, there were significant limitations in the ability of various state institutions to govern technocratically, which warrant a closer analysis of how direct coercion operated within the ongoing management of suburban communities. Indeed, in the absence of a unified technocratic
1 Jean-Pierre Rey, Nadjet Cherigui, ‘Dans l'enfer du 93 : «Moi, flic de banlieue »’, Le Figaro , 10th December 2011. 2 The officer featured in the article was part of the Brigades Anti-Criminalité (BAC) who are specialised units assigned to individual départements who focus on the policing of ‘sensitive areas’. The BAC was created in 1970 and this chapter will explore some of the events that led to its creation. 187
form of governance, an analysis of issues of policing can be used to further historical understanding of how state power operated in these areas.
This chapter seeks to challenge dominant historical narratives of post-war France, which have generally overlooked the coercive elements to the post-war modernisation process. In considering more direct forms of governance (and resistance to them), this chapter will build on recent scholarship on the governance of cities by challenging scholars’ emphasis on the influence of so-called ‘technocratic professions’. 3 Major works such as
Gabriel Hecht and Michel Callon’s The Radiance of France and Ross’s Fast Cars and
Clean Bodies grant the greatest agency to the technocrats (and their role in industrial production or policy-making for example), at the expense of other actors. Hecht and
Callon’s study charts the national project behind nuclear technology as part of an emergence of a series of ‘technopolitical regimes’ in 1960s France. 4 Similarly, Ross analyses the country’s move from colonialism to a focus on the management of metropolitan everyday life, focusing notably on the role of hygienists, planners and
‘middle managers’. While previous chapters have questioned the unified and totalising nature of technocratic governance, this chapter considers the coercive side to French modernisation that studies have often overlooked.
While confrontation is not absent from scholarship of this period, it tends to form part of a separate discussion, one that principally revolves around the events of May-June
1968. Quite understandably, the events of May-June 1968 have dominated studies of protest and social unrest in post-war France, and the protests are credited with the creation
3 Ben Anderson, ‘A Liberal Countryside? The Manchester Ramblers' Federation and the “Social Readjustment” of Urban Citizens, 1929–1936’, Urban History 38 (2011), pp. 84-102 (p. 85). 4 See chapter two of Gabrielle Hecht, Michel Callon, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II , (Boston, 2009). 188
of what Donald Bloxham and Robert Gerwarth call a ‘fortified state’. 5 This chapter does not seek to disprove this notion but rather to question the primacy of 1968 as a turning point by looking at significant evolution within French policing that predated these events.
This chapter will argue that scholars have neglected significant developments to suburban policing during the immediate post-war decades and have thus overlooked the coercive side of French post-war modernisation. This chapter will argue that while policing did intensify in the banlieues after 1968 (as was the case elsewhere in France), coercion was not merely a response to this near-revolution but an intrinsic and existent feature of the modernisation process. Nevertheless, this chapter will argue that the May-June movements did have a significant impact on governance of the banlieue . In particular, this chapter will look at significant changes to how the PCF governed these areas, through an informal alliance with police that the party used as a means of self-preservation. Overall, the expansion of policing will be used to reassess the French technocracy not as a totalising force but as an uneven and limited system that relied on direct coercion to maintain its dominance.
Elsewhere, scholarly discussion of confrontation in the banlieues has often emphasised more ‘spectacular’ examples, as demonstrated by a glut of sociological scholarship immediately following the 2005 banlieue riots. Studies have tended to view the earlier riots of 1981 as the genesis of ‘the banlieue problem’ (both as a state concern and as an analytical category), and to disregard the immediate post-war decades entirely. 6 The form of crisis-driven, combative banlieue policing described by Chistophe D. in Le Figaro
5 Donald Bloxham, Robert Gerwarth (eds.), Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, 2011), p. 204. They argue that the ‘fortified state’ manifested itself through a ban on public street demonstrations for eighteen months after the May protests and an expansion of the French police force by 50% over the following six years. 6 On the 1981 rioting in Les Minguettes near Lyon, see Henri Rey, La Peur des banlieues (Paris, 1996). 189
is frequently seen as the result of the decline of suburban estates and increasing civil disorder from the mid-1970s onwards. As such, there is a conspicuous absence of studies of crime or social violence in the banlieues between the 1950s and the 1970s. General criminality studies have viewed the early 1980s as a ‘repressive turn’ in French policing and scholarship on the banlieues has largely subscribed to this narrative. 7 The sociologist
Mustafa Dikeç for example, views French ‘urban policy’ as beginning with the politique de la ville legislation of 1983, and while mention is made of the 1977 Habitat et Vie Sociale plan, there is little discussion of the wider historical context of this legislation. 8 In a similar vein, the criminal sociologist Sophie Body-Gendrot uses the Seine-Saint-Denis region as a comparative case study with social violence in the USA, but her study begins in 1980, and thus neglects the significance of earlier years where practices of policing and resistance were taking shape. Yet, Body-Gendrot’s study is receptive to the importance of local governance, particularly ‘its subtle dosage of prevention and repression’ and ‘the importance of civic cultures and repertoires for problem resolution’. 9 This chapter will build on Body-Gendrot’s emphasis on local forces but will also challenge the primacy of the early 1980s as a turning point by looking at important changes to the management and categorisation of suburban space that took place during the 1960s and 1970s.
This chapter draws on the work of Manuel Castells, who questioned the primacy of narratives of banlieue violence and explored non-violent suburban confrontation, notably
7 Adam Crawford (ed.), Crime Prevention Policies in Comparative Perspective (Cullompton, 2009), pp. 117- 118. 8 Mustafa Dikeç, Badlands of the Republic: Space, Politics and Urban Policy (London, 2008), p. 27. The politique de la ville legislation of 1983 designated specific urban areas as ‘problematic’. While it was billed as an attempt to reduce inequalities between urban areas, it has come under considerable attack from scholars who have argued that it codified in law latent prejudices about banlieue communities. Scholars often use the politique de la ville to describe a period of ‘neoliberal consensus’ surrounding banlieue policy that was showed to be flawed by the suburban violence of 2005. See for example, Sylvie Tissot, ‘Sociologie urbaine et politique de la ville: retour sur une rencontre autour des « quartiers d’exil »’, in Jean-Yves Authier (ed.), Le Quartier (Paris, 2007), pp. 65-74. 9 Sophie Body-Gendrot, The Social Control of Cities: A Comparative Perspective (London, 2008), p. xxviii. 190
through residents associations that emerged during the mid-1960s in several estates. 10 This chapter will test Castells’ argument across a wider analytical scope by bearing in mind the changing role of institutions such as the PCF, the Police Nationale and industrial trade unions. It will challenge wider historical notions of a neoliberal turn during the early 1980s, which is often viewed as a drastic sea change in how the French state approached social policy. In particular, this chapter will develop understandings of banlieue policing beyond the discursive straitjacket of the post-1980s decades by arguing that increased police presence in the banlieue was not a consequence of ‘suburban decline’, but was actually an intrinsic part of the development process. 11
The complex nature of state power in the banlieues will be understood through
Antonio Gramsci’s notion of the integral state. While scholars have tended to focus disproportionately on Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, the integral state offers a more nuanced perspective on the governance of cities, as it understands state power as
‘hegemony armoured by coercion’. 12 The concept of the integral state recognises that power can exist beyond the town hall or ministry and situates power in a variety of institutions that are both coercive and ideological. This is particularly important for understanding the complexity of local politics within banlieue communities, in which communist municipalities were often involved in an ongoing yet intricate power struggle
10 Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots: a Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements (Berkeley, 1983), p. 78. 11 Most of the available source material for this period relates to La Courneuve partly due to the greater attention that the 4000 logements attracted in the media and in state discourse. Also important was the larger sheer scale of the estate, which meant that local activism was treated more seriously and observed more closely. For this reason, the conclusions of this chapter are weighted towards La Courneuve rather than Pantin. Despite this, the large scale changes to policing, resident mobilisation and PCF activity in the banlieue that this chapter discusses are applicable to both towns. 12 Jonathan Davies, ‘Rethinking Urban Power and the Local State: Hegemony, Domination and Resistance in Neoliberal Cities’, Urban Studies (2013), pp. 1-18 (p. 2). For a fuller discussion and critique of the concept of cultural hegemony, see T. J. Jackson Lears, ‘The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities’, The American Historical Review 90:3 (1985), pp. 567-593. 191
with the centrist national government. The political theorist Bob Jessop, for instance, argues that the integral state ‘allows more weight to other apparatuses, organisations, and practices involved in exercising political power’, which is relevant in exploring the position of the PCF within the politics of banlieue resistance that serves as a central theme of this chapter. 13 The banlieue offers a means to test Gramsci’s notion that in some cases power is wielded not by hegemonic blocs but by semi-autonomous ‘para-statal institutions’ that ‘enjoyed considerable autonomy within broad limits set by coercive police powers’. 14
This chapter uses Gramsci’s theory to look for points of interaction between technocratic and coercive forms of power in the governance of banlieue communities.
This chapter does not intend to imply an arbitrary distinction between technocrats
(such as planners) and police, as policing during this period actually became ‘more technocratic’ in that it made greater use of specialist knowledge about banlieue space.
However, Patrick Joyce makes an important distinction between ‘liberal’ and ‘police’ forms of governmentality that recognises the differing rationales behind these forms of governance. Joyce uses the example of Ordnance Survey mapping to argue that while maps democratised British cities, making them accessible to the walker, their use in early- nineteenth century Ireland was to ‘fix’ geographical identities and serve as a cultural arbiter. 15 This chapter will thus not view police as extraneous to the technocratic state, but
13 Bob Jessop, ‘A Neo-Gramscian Approach to the Regulation of Urban Regimes’, in Mickey Lauria, (ed.), Reconstructing Urban Regime Theory (London, 1997), pp. 51-73 (p. 53). It is also important to note Gramsci’s wider influence on PCF politics during the 1950s and 1960s. In France, the PCF staged mass events during the 1960s known as the Semaines de la Pensée Marxiste, organised through CERM, the Centre d'Études et de Récherches Marxistes, in which they invited non-Marxist intellectuals to speak. According to Cyrille Guiat these events were Gramscian ideals at work: an attempt by PCF to develop intellectual hegemony while giving the impression that they were open to debate. See Cyrille Guiat, French and Italian Communist Parties: Comrades and Culture (Portland, 2003), pp. 77-78. 14 Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, Volume 1 (Chichester, 1992), p. 423. 15 Joyce, Rule of Freedom , p. 45. 192
will nonetheless recognise that it was distinct in its coercive powers and in its conception of urban space.
This chapter analyses state documents relating to law and order, trade union pamphlets, police reports and resident protest literature. Due to the nature of this material (which frequently refers to large administrative areas or events that had a regional scope) this chapter will also consider relevant issues (strikes, for example) that did not specifically originate from the banlieues in question. Confrontation in the banlieue during this period was characterised by two overarching trends: increasing police observation of suburban areas and attempts by the PCF to achieve hegemonic control of mechanisms of protest. The police, and by extension, the state, gradually developed new means of observing and categorising banlieue citizens, which had the consequence that police intervention in the banlieues gradually became more systemic and routine than relatively uneven forms of
‘technocratic’ governance. 16 This chapter will thus develop existing assumptions that banlieue confrontation mainly involved a dialogue between inhabitants and police, by recognising the evolving role of the PCF from instigator to mediator and auxiliary law enforcer.
Section one will consider examples of resistance and confrontation between 1955 and 1963 and will analyse how confrontation operated when police powers in the banlieues were still relatively limited and when the communes of Pantin and La Courneuve were not yet under PCF control. Section two will focus on the period between 1964 and 1967, and will explore various ways in which the state began to take an increased interest in banlieue
16 Chapter two for example argued that two grands ensembles that were ostensibly part of the same national housing programme actually harboured very different ideological objectives and assumptions about suburban life. 193
communities through police reports that displayed a growing suspicion about their inhabitants. Section three will consider events from 1968 onwards, and will argue that a two-tiered system of policing emerged whereby communist activity was permitted while autonomous resistance was more closely controlled. Overall, the period in question will be seen as a gradual negotiation between state police, local municipalities and residents surrounding the ‘acceptable’ face of confrontation, which devised highly banlieue -specific notions of criminality and transgression.
1. Cooperation and public cordiality, 1955- 1963
There was an established culture of protest and political activism in many banlieues .
During the immediate post-war years, even before mass housing had been constructed in the inner banlieues , there were important developments to the culture of popular protest in these areas. 17 Danielle Tartakowsky for instance, describes a ‘decline of specificity’, whereby protests and demonstrations in the suburbs became more diverse in ideology and less focused around specific issues. 18 According to Tartakowsky, these changes began to occur from 1953 onwards, when the French government banned demonstrations within
Paris following seven deaths in disturbances during the annual 14 th of July celebrations.
The emergence of this more generalised and coordinated form of protest also owed much to the events of the late 1950s, with PCF gains in several municipalities (including Pantin and La Courneuve) and the existence of the Algerian War as a popular focus for demonstrations. According to Benjamin Stora, the Algerian conflict changed the cultural meaning of war in France and led to a shift from a post-Vichy euphoria to a profound sense
17 The La Courneuve of 1955 was undoubtedly very different to the La Courneuve of 1963. In 1955 it was a left-leaning industrial commune of less than 20,000 people. By 1963 it was a PCF stronghold with a growing immigrant population and an industrial base that was beginning to show signs of stagnation. 18 Danielle Tartakowsky, ‘Manifestations en Banlieue 1918-1981’ in Jacques Girault (ed.), Ouvriers en Banlieue, XIXe-XXe siècle , (Paris, 1998), p. 344. 194
of unease. 19 Tartakowsky adds to the debate by arguing that the conflict also moved the spatial focus of protest changed and moved away from civic spaces and commemorative war sites. One can map this changing focus of protest onto the case discussed in the previous chapter, notably the increasing radicalisation of the 11 th of November commemorations at La Courneuve from the late 1950s onwards as part of a grande journée de protestation .
Yet, when one looks more closely at the day-to-day relationships between municipalities and various cultures of protest, the late 1950s banlieue was not the hotbed of activism that Tartakowsky claims it to be. Militant action instead tended to centre on localised conflicts, and the deeply divided nature of the French political left was not conducive to coordinated campaigning or resistance. For example, calls to strike or protest by the CGT trade union (which was headed by the prominent communist Benoît Frachon) were frequently ignored by local unions and municipalities. 20 At La Courneuve, for example, the municipality was governed the leftist Parti Socialiste Unitaire (PSU) which had communist councillors within its administration, but had also moved further away from the ‘Stalinist’ PCF following the Hungarian revolution of 1956. 21 In addition, a
19 Benjamin Stora, Algeria, 1830-2000: a Short History , (Ithaca, 2001), p. 111. 20 Historians have debated the nature of the association between the PCF and the CGT. The historian David S. Bell, sees the CGT as acting as a ‘transition belt into the masses’ for the PCF, allowing for some level of control over union activity; a system that only began to erode during the 1990s. George Ross on the other hand argues that the CGT maintained considerable autonomy and often aimed to avoid an overtly partisan position in order to reach as broad a working class audience as possible. See David S. Bell, ‘The French Communist Party within the Left and Alternative Movements’, Modern & Contemporary France 12: 1 (2004), pp. 23-34 (p. 25); George Ross, Workers and Communists in France: From Popular Front to Eurocommunism (London, 1982) , pp. xi-xii. 21 As outlined in chapter three the PSU should not be confused with the Parti Socialiste Unifié, which was a PCF splinter party formed in 1960. This PSU was a Marxist party formed by dissidents from the SFIO in 1948. As stated previously, the USSR’s invasion of Hungary to crush a revolt in 1956 resulted in many communist party members and left-wing activists turning against the PCF. On the impact of the Hungarian Revolution on French left-wing politics see David Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals 1914- 1960 (London, 1964); Michael Scott Christofferson, French Intellectuals Against the Left: The Antitotalitarian Moment of the 1970's (Oxford, 2004), pp. 37-39. 195
powerful and influential trade union in the area, Force Ouvrière (FO) was hostile to the communist party. 22 According to Gabrielle Hecht, members of the FO perceived the CGT as ‘a mammoth organisation whose dominance had to be actively resisted’. 23 With this hostility in mind, the FO opted against a CGT call to strike in 1957 and circulated its decision to every municipality in the Seine and Seine-et-Oise départements. The FO expressed significant contempt for the CGT’s alleged communist agenda in stating ‘As there was no chance of strike days being paid, numerous employees would have lost almost a week’s wages. All for nothing, except to serve the CGT’s propaganda’. 24 The FO were referring to the fact that in March of 1957, the region’s mayoral union voted unanimously against paying workers during strikes, thus presenting a clear deterrent to those engaged in industrial action. 25 Despite ongoing concerns over whether wages and welfare provisions were rising in line with France’s apparent economic growth, unions were evidently concerned about the PCF’s potential infiltration of activist politics. Trade unionism in the banlieues during this time can thus be seen as a movement that was governed by internal divisions as well as overarching ideologies. These internal divisions would appear to question overarching narratives of the banlieue rouge that scholars often apply to Paris’s inner suburbs (although more frequently in reference to the pre-war situation), notably in studies by Annie Fourcaut and Tyler Stovall. This evidence instead suggests that in some banlieue areas, the PCF was just one of several competing voices of the left.
22 The FO was formed in 1948 by dissident members of the CGT who objected to the influence of the communist party within the union. The FO became a very politically diverse union, attracting support from anarchists, socialists and even Gaullists. For a fuller discussion of the FO, see chapter three of Ross, Workers and Communists. 23 Hecht, Callon, The Radiance of France , p. 136. 24 Letter from FO Secretariat to Mayor of Pantin, 27 th July 1957, AMP/AM7W26. 25 Mayoral Communiqué, 3 rd March 1957, AMP/AMF013. 196
The fractured nature of trade unionism reflected the wider difficulties that the political left was facing during the late 1950s. De Gaulle’s return to power following the collapse of the Fourth Republic created divisions among the French left and was damaging for the PCF, which had opposed the formation of the new interim government. 26 While the communists were excluded from government, the socialist Guy Mollet (leader of the SFIO) was made one of four secretaries of state appointed by de Gaulle. 27 Even figures who might have been sympathetic to the PCF such as the CGT secretary Pierre Le Brun (a non- communist) had refused an offer join to de Gaulle’s interim government. Le Brun refused the post of Minister for Labour, which instead went to Paul Bacon of the MRP
(Mouvement Républicaine Populaire; a centre-right party), for whom ‘pragmatic interclass compromises’ would form a theme of his tenure. 28 Hard-line industrial action would thus fall foul of the government’s more conciliatory agenda. As George Ross notes, any attempts at mass industrial action were also hampered by the recession and slack labour
26 For example, Jacques Duclos, a high-ranking PCF politician, had expressed concerns over the concentration of legislative, executive and constituent powers in the hands of one man. See William George Andrews, Presidential Government in Gaullist France: A Study of Executive-Legislative Relations, 1958- 1974 (New York, 1982), p. 6. On the fall of the Fourth Republic see Odile Rudelle, Mai 1958: de Gaulle et la République (Paris, 1988); On PCF responses to the constitutional crisis of May 1958 see Ross, Workers and Communists , pp. 101-112. For balanced assessments of the Fourth Republic in power see William I. Hitchcock, ‘Crisis and Modernization in the Fourth Republic, From Suez to Rome’, in Kenneth Mouré, Martin S. Alexander (eds.), Crisis and Renewal in France, 1918-1962 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 221-242; Julian Jackson, De Gaulle (London, 2003), pp. 134-136. 27 Scholars have argued that while de Gaulle’s interim government was politically diverse and presented the image of a broad consensus, this was largely for show and was merely designed to secure a parliamentary return to power. Jackson claims for instance, that de Gaulle exaggerated his fondness for Mollet in a press conference by reminiscing about a non-existent meeting that the two had had in 1944. Berstein claims that the realities of state power lay elsewhere, in the hands of a small number of Gaullist ‘technicians’, including Olivier Guichard and Paul Delouvrier, who would both be instrumental in the planning of the banlieues. See Jackson, De Gaulle , p. 74; Serge Berstein, The Republic of de Gaulle 1958-1969 (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 4-5. 28 While Le Brun himself had growing Gaullist sympathies, he declined due to a fear of alienating pro-PCF union members who were opposed to the new government. Arthur Plaza, From Christian Militants to Republican Renovators: The Third Ralliement of Catholics in Postwar France, 1944-1965 (New York, 2008), p. 115. The MRP was a Christian democratic party formed by former members of the French Resistance and was dominated by Catholics. A frequent governing party during the 1950s, the MRP gradually declined under de Gaulle and was dissolved in 1967. See Philip Manow, Bruno Palier, ‘A Conservative Welfare State Regime without Christian Democracy? The French État Providence, 1880-1960’, in Kees van Kersbergen, Philip Manow (eds.), Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 146-176. 197
market of late 1958 and early 1959. 29 However, this was not solely a time of crisis for the
PCF, but also a time during which the party was rethinking its strategy and the nature of its role. The PCF made significant losses in the national elections of 1958 but gained a number of municipal seats in the local elections of 1959, and became more interested in how power could be exercised through the micro-politics of the banlieue .30 Yet, as subsequent sections will argue, it was the grand ensemble rather than the factory that the
PCF would concentrate its energies upon in seeking to direct and control currents of suburban protest. While mobilising in the factory compelled the PCF to engage with the complexities of the French left, mobilising on the grand ensemble presented the party with a far more ‘manageable’ environment.
In terms of how state coercion operated in the banlieues , there was very little specific ‘ banlieue policing’ during this time and suburban communes tended to be viewed as an extension of the Parisian arrondissements. 31 Suburbs were organised through several large police districts that were divided into smaller and more numerous circonscriptions .
Rob Mawby describes the internal workings of these circonscriptions as ‘a very centralised system that revolved around the central police station. All major units and squads were located here, including the district head, the investigation units, the central switchboard and most of the troops’. 32 Urban policing was certainly more coordinated than rural policing which was overseen by the Gendarmerie Nationale, who frequently administered a much larger area with comparatively few resources. La Courneuve was situated in the
29 Ross, Workers and Communists , p. 111. 30 Rosemary Wakeman attributes this loss of support to the legacy of the Soviet invasion of Hungary and to cultural changes brought about ‘mass consumer culture’ that eroded traditional proletarian identities and challenged the PCF’s counter-narrative to national unity. See Wakeman, The Heroic City , p. 130. 31 For examples of the policing of banlieue protest in the interwar period, see Fourcaut, Bobigny, Banlieue Rouge , pp. 52-54. 32 Rob I. Mawby, Richard Yarwood, Rural Policing and Policing the Rural: a Constable Countryside? (Farnham, 2011), p. 47. 198
same police district as three Parisian arrondissements, as well as communes such as Saint
Denis, Aubervilliers and Saint Ouen (see figure 4.1). During the late 1950s, La
Courneuve’s population was still relatively small at around 18,000 people, making it a relative outpost within the district; it had less than a quarter of Saint Denis’s population and less than a tenth of the population of the nearby 18 th arrondissement. Pantin shared a police district with three Parisian arrondissements and communes such as Drancy,
Montreuil and Pavillon-sous-Bois. This administrative structure made the policing of the relatively sparsely-inhabited suburbs very much secondary to the maintenance of law and order in the capital.
Whereas the ‘local state’ was moving towards the PCF during the late 1950s, the
French Police Nationale represented a prominent right-wing manifestation of state power.
The police had been purged of its more communist elements during the late 1940s, a process that involved the expulsion of adherents to the trade union CGT-Police. 33 Due to the prioritisation of anti-Communist action during the post-war years, the police was able to harbour a number of former collaborationists for whom the forces of order offered a pathway back to political respectability. Most notable among these was Maurice Papon, the
Prefect of Paris police, who was later convicted of assisting of the deportation of over 1600
33 Much of this purging of the police was orchestrated by the CIA, who as well as granting considerable funds to the anti-Communist Force Ouvrière union, also tried to promote anti-Communists to prominent police positions. On the CIA’s clandestine anti-communist activity in France, see chapter seven of Ganser Daniele , NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe (Abingdon, 2005). In spite of this purge, in March 1958 several thousand police officials marched to the French parliament to demand better wages and working conditions, a protest that escalated when supporters of Algérie Française attempted to take it over. While those on the political Left denounced the protest as a fascist event (citing for example, the influence of the Poujadist and former police official Jean Dides), others blamed the police for contributing to the uprisings of 1958 that would lead to the fall of the Fourth Republic. For example, Jules Moch, the SFIO Minister of the Interior claimed that Police Prefect Papon had ‘gone soft and was already drawn into the Gaullist orbit’. See Malcolm Anderson, In Thrall to Political Change: Police and Gendarmerie in France (Oxford, 2011), p. 125. 199
Jews in Bordeaux between 1942 and 1944. 34 While the war in Indochina between 1946 and
1954 generated widespread left-wing opposition, and solidified police opposition to pro- communist sections of French society, the conflict in Algeria conversely, reoriented the
French police in a more racial, colonial direction.35 When the Algerian FLN brought the war to the metropole , the banlieues were frequently on the front line, notably in 1957 when
Algerian nationalists in Argenteuil murdered a police officer; the first time this had occurred in mainland France. 36 The police response to Algerian nationalism was highly criticised for its violent nature and the perceived ineffectiveness of counter-measures against both the FLN and the OAS. 37 In Malcolm Anderson’s view, the granting of French citizenship to ethnic Algerians living in metropolitan France had exposed them to ‘the whole panoply of colonial police methods’ .38 Papon’s Centre d’Interrogation de Vincennes intended for the internment of North Africans and the specialised brigade of Harkis (Arab
Algerians who supported French rule), trained under his own supervision, are examples of
34 Maurice Papon (1910-2007) was a senior police official under the Vichy regime and served as a prefect of Corsica and Constantine in Algeria after the war. He was made prefect of the Paris police in 1958. On Papon’s activities during the Second World War see Gérard Boulanger, Maurice Papon: un technocrate français dans la collaboration (Paris, 1994). On Papon’s importation of colonial police methods to France in the 1950s see Emmanuel Blanchard, ‘Police judiciaire et pratiques d'exception pendant la guerre d'Algérie’, Vingtième Siècle 2:90 (2006), pp. 61-72. On Papon’s trial of 1997-98 see Richard Golsan (ed.), The Papon Affair: Memory and Justice on Trial (Abingdon, 2000). 35 On France’s war in Indochina, see Mark Atwood Lawrence, Fredrik Logevall (eds.), The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Harvard, 2007). On left-wing protests against the conflict see chapter four of Pascal Blanchard et al (eds.), Colonial Culture in France since the Revolution (Bloomington, 2014). The Algerian war only served to intensify existing police suspicions of North Africans. After the First World War, the Service de Surveillance et de Protection des Indigènes Nord-Africains was established by the Seine prefecture and according to the historian Malcolm Anderson, ‘was more concerned with surveillance than protection’. See Anderson , Political Change, p. 121-122. 36 On the violence in Argenteuil see Emmanuel Blanchard, La Police Parisienne et les Algériens , 1944-1962 (Paris, 2011). 37 The OAS or Organisation de l'Armée Secrète was a paramilitary organisation formed during the Algerian War with the goal of preventing Algerian independence. Its members carried out acts of sabotage both in France and in North Africa and were famously involved in an assassination attempt on de Gaulle in the banlieue of Clamart in August 1962. The activities of the OAS leading up to and following the peace negotiations to the Algerian war had politicised the police and led to accusations of collusion. 38 Anderson, Political Change, p. 122. On the nature of these methods, see Blanchard, ‘Police judiciaire’, pp. 61-72. 200
the initial impact of the Algerian war on French policing practices. In October 1961, acting on Papon’s orders, the police massacred around 200 Algerian protesters in Paris: an event that received only thin news coverage and was subject to a state cover-up, but was viewed internationally as a symbol of French police repression and institutionalised racism. 39 This period thus saw the expansion of two important institutions in the context of banlieue governance: a localised, isolated PCF, and a rightist, ‘colonial’ police force.
A case study from 1961 illustrates that both the PCF and the French police struggled to exert their will over banlieue space at this early stage. Much of the land surrounding Les Courtillières in Pantin was owned by the city of Paris, which had used it to construct emergency housing during the early 1950s. In December 1961, a group of residents of Pantin’s Fonds d’Eaubonne towers (part of the Les Courtillières site) contacted their General Councillor regarding a shanty settlement adjacent to their estate. It is significant that the residents should bypass the local PCF mairie in favour of the centre- right general council, as it suggests that attempts by the SEMIDEP housing association to encourage mistrust of the communist party (discussed in the previous chapter) met with some success. In their letter, the residents claimed that shanty dwellers, described as,
‘ragpickers [ chiffoniers ], men and women many of them ex-convicts well known by the
Pantin police’ engaged in ‘pillaging…as well as scandalous scenes after drinking binges’ and claimed that they ‘gain access to our buildings, threatening us and calling our gardiens and tenants lewd names’. 40 Along with a petition of 74 residents, the campaign received
39 See Daniel A. Gordon, ‘World Reactions to the Paris Pogrom’, University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History 1 (2000), pp. 1-5. For a comprehensive discussion of the Paris massacre and its aftermath, see Jim House, Neil MacMaster, Paris 1961: Algerians, State Terror and Memory (Oxford, 2008). On the historiography of the Paris massacre see Joshua H. Cole, ‘Massacres and their Historians: Recent Histories of State Violence in France and Algeria in the 20th Century’, French Politics, Culture, & Society 28:1 (2010), pp. 106-126. 40 Letter from F. Pauli to General Councillor of the Seine, 1 st December 1961, ADSSD/342W99. 201
the support of the under-prefect who described ‘the undesirable presence of occupants of
La Zone’, continuing a recurrent trend of using long-standing cultural images of banlieue stigma to describe modern suburban issues.
The Prefect of the Seine, Jean Benedetti, expressed a level of anger at the presence of these so-called ‘undesirables’ on the site, and forwarded the petition to Paris’s Prefect of
Police with the words ‘Why hasn’t it been fenced off?’ The city [of Paris] should set a good example! Let’s take this as a warning’. 41 Benedetti was evidently aware that the land was a Parisian exclave and felt that the capital had ‘lost face’ by allowing a shantytown to develop there. The Prefect of the Police replied in claiming that ‘My services have carried out surveillance which has resolved the inconvenience. However, this surveillance cannot be assured permanently… Only an eviction procedure led by the city of Paris…against these undesirable occupants would allow the problem to be solved’. In an apologetic letter written in May 1962, Benedetti informed the Pantin HLM office (the principal investor in
Les Courtillières) that ‘the inhabitants [of the shantytown] are now in prison’ and stressed that the land in fact belonged not to the city of Paris but to the state. 42 There are several reasons why this case study is important to understandings of confrontation in the banlieue .
Firstly, residents’ tendency to go straight to their regional politician brings the influence of the PCF in grand ensemble issues into doubt. The bypassing of the mairie could suggest that the SEMIDEP had succeeded in making Les Courtillières into some form of
‘quarantine space’ that resisted PCF influence. Moreover, it could also suggest that the
PCF’s slowness in dealing with hygiene complaints from residents of the cité d’urgence
(as discussed in chapter three) had damaged the party’s reputation as a problem-solving
41 Letter forwarded from Prefect of the Seine to Prefect of Police, 20 th January 1962, ADSSD/342W99. Jean Benedetti (1902-1981) was prefect of the Seine and also president of the state mining company Charbonnages de France 42 Letter from Jean Benedetti to Paris HLM office, 23rd May 1962, ADSSD/342W99. 202
institution. Secondly, the affair highlighted a lack of clear jurisdictions in the banlieues that hindered attempts to police the area. While the state sought to impose order on the banlieues and to ‘set a good example’ in Benedetti’s words, its coercive capacity was limited and police occupied a largely subsidiary role in the management of these areas.
Confrontation and protest in the banlieues during this period was characterised by the atomised nature of mechanisms of resistance and repression. While there was no lack of trade union activity, movements were divided over their objectives and echoed the wider debates occurring within the French left in the wake of the 1956 Hungarian revolution and the subsequent collapse of the Fourth Republic. Regarding policing practices, the banlieues were yet to be viewed as a criminal space in the same way as Paris and in the case of
Pantin, the grand ensemble was a site of consensus between residents and police rather than conflict. Overall, one can characterise the banlieue of this period as a series of competing agendas, but also as a space in which no one group or institution dominated.
However, as the next section will argue, when the banlieues experienced demographic growth, police forces and the PCF would develop new means to govern and manage these new communities.
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2. An atmosphere of growing mistrust, 1964- 1967
Between 1964 and 1968, an increase in police observation and management of banlieue space reflected the emergence of ‘ banlieue crime’ as an intellectual entity. Indeed, as grand ensemble communities began to take root in Pantin and La Courneuve forces of order sought to define to acceptable and unacceptable forms of resistance. The observation of specific ethnic and geographic groups and the surveillance of residents associations represented significant means by which both police and the PCF sought greater ongoing intervention in highly specific areas of banlieue life.
While the previous section viewed banlieue policing during the period 1955-1963 as a somewhat indistinct practice, increasing immigration to the Paris region led the police to more closely monitor the situation. A 1964 report published by the Préfecture de Police de la Seine entitled ‘Political Identity and Social Problems of Portuguese Immigration’ discussed the likely political activities of new arrivals from south-western Europe and expressed concern about the influence of the PCF on these groups. The report noted that
‘Communist propaganda aimed at the Portuguese is increasing in the Paris banlieues ’, and cited examples such as the the daily newspaper Avante (Forward), published by the
Portuguese communist party, and the monthly magazine O Trabalhador (The Worker), edited by the CGT. 43 It is possible that this emphasis on Portuguese immigration reflected a concern over shanty settlements such as ‘La Campa’ at La Courneuve. 44 However, the
43 Préfecture de Police de la Seine, ‘Physionomie Politique et Problèmes Sociaux de l’Immigration Portugaise dans le Département de la Seine’, 14th December 1964, p. 12. ADSSD/22W11. For a discussion of the social and political situation in Portugal around this time see Pedro Ramos Pinto, Lisbon Rising: Urban Social Movements in the Portuguese Revolution, 1974–75 (Manchester, 2013). 44 Bidonvilles remained an ongoing issue at both Pantin and La Courneuve. Government clearance programmes peaked during the imposition of the Debré plan in 1966 and the Vivien law of 1970, which aimed to facilitate the removal of shantytown settlements and provide alternative accommodation near to places of work. The French government became increasingly mistrustful of bidonville communities following 204
report also noted the lack of success at radicalising Portuguese immigrants, as only 8% had joined the CGT and only 5% were PCF members. This failure was blamed on a lack of trade unionism in Portugal and a widespread fear of the PIDE (the Portuguese secret police, which was being aided by OAS fugitives operating in Portugal). 45 Yet, it is clear from these records that the issue of immigration was still viewed through the lens of existing problems: the PCF and the rise of the ceinture rouge .
There is additional evidence that police forces were increasing their surveillance of specific socio-ethnic categories, indicating a heightened interest in banlieue space. Another police report from 1964 noted that a higher number of Algerian Muslims had been arrested compared with the previous year. 46 This report reflected an ongoing surveillance of areas associated with Algerian immigration such as the bidonvilles at Nanterre and Argenteuil, which had been described in police reports and press articles as ‘an Algerian medina’. 47
Conversely, areas of relatively demographic stability such as Pantin continued to be viewed by police as insignificant in terms of their criminal potential. Following a visit to
Pantin on the 19 th of May 1965, the local police commissioner’s report described the town as ‘essentially proletarian…and strongly industrialised’. Meanwhile under the heading of
‘problems’, the only issues covered were the logistical concerns posed by the town cemetery, and the fact that the area was at the intersection of three important police road
the social unrest of May 1968. On the connection between the bidonville and ’68 activism, see Daniel Gordon, Immigrants and Intellectuals: May ’68 and the Rise of Anti-Racism in France (London, 2012). 45 Préfecture de la Seine, Physionomie Politique, p. 12. The PIDE received considerable CIA funding and Portugal became home to a number of right-wing ‘exiles’ from France, notably the OAS office Yves Guérin- Sérac who set up an anti-Communist paramilitary organisation within Portugal. 46 Préfecture de la Seine, ‘Bilan d’Activité de la Préfecture de Police 1964’ (Paris, 1964), p. 20. ADSSD/22W11. 47 Françoise de Barros, ‘La Police et les Algériens: Continuités Coloniales et Poids de la Guerre d’Indépendance’, Métropolitiques 7th March 2012 [online source] http://www.metropolitiques.eu/The- police-and-the-Algerian.html , accessed on 17th October 2012. 205
links. 48 Subsequent reforms to banlieue policing sought to address concerns about the suburbs as a possible hotbed for immigrant crime and the more prosaic logistical concerns noted in Pantin.
In 1965, important changes to grand ensemble administration created in theory, an organised mechanism for resistance in every suburban estate. According to Manuel
Castells, activism at the Sarcelles grand ensemble during the early 1960s had created a precedent for ‘large-scale resident mobilisation to improve housing and living conditions’. 49 A national covenant signed in that year established residents’ councils in every grand ensemble , on the recommendation of the University of Paris’s Institute of
Political Science. In particular, it had been argued argued that ‘the individual relationship that, according to the law, is the only link between the landlord and the tenant, is no longer a suitable framework for the new administrative and human reality of the grands ensembles ’. 50 The institute of political science was carrying out this research for François
Bloch-Lainé, a high ranking civil servant and CEO of the state-owned Caisse des Dépots et
Consignations, a major financer of social housing. 51 W. Brian Newsome links this covenant to a more general democratisation of the planning process, whereby constructors encouraged communities to manage themselves. 52 This development signified the increasing influence of ‘radical Gaullists’ such as the former Resistant Jacques Chaban
48 ‘Visite des commissariats de police des circonscriptions de Pantin et Noisy-le-Sec’, 19th May 1965 ADDSD/7W19. The Cimitière de Pantin was a large cemetery on the northern edge of the commune and remains the largest cemetery in France, covering 260 acres of land. It contributed to the isolation of Les Courtilières by acting as a concrete separation between the estate and the rest of the town. 49 Castells, City and Grassroots , p. 78. 50 Castells, City and Grassroots, p. 82. 51 François Bloch-Lainé (1912-2002) was a high-ranking civil servant who served as director of the treasury before becoming director of the Caisse des Dépots et Consignations (CDIC) in 1952. He would later play an influential role in the development of French non-profit organisations. The CDIC is an investment fund controlled by the state legislature, which has a range of functions including overseeing regional development and long term investment in the economy. See François Bloch-Lainé, Profession, Fonctionnaire : Entretiens avec Françoise Carrière (Paris, 1976). 52 Newsome, French Urban Planning , p. 171. 206
Delmas, and the Catholic left, of which Bloch-Lainé and the sociologist Chombart de
Lauwe were a part. 53 Overall, this legislation was a dramatic break from the traditional relationship between landlord and renter that had previously existed, and like Delouvrier’s
Schéma Directeur, was a ‘concession to reality’ as it represented an attempt to manage rather than arrest the expansion of the Paris region.
Yet, the reformist move towards resident councils became a growing source of anxiety to the Seine prefecture, which was fearful of the potential for such councils to be co-opted by the far left. A prefectural communiqué from March 1966 discussed the residents’ association of the 4000 logements (the Amicale des Locataires de la Cité des 4000) in the following terms:
The association has been highly active for some time. It’s true that the grievances raised against the OPHLM and the city of Paris…seem numerous enough to give a certain consistency to its activity. 54
It is evident from this source that the La Courneuve residents’ association (which was headed at the time by Jacques Beaumantin, who would later become a PCF councillor) was regarded seriously by the prefecture, which emphasised the focussed nature of its campaigns. The source also implies that some level of surveillance of the grand ensemble was taking place, or at least that the association had been in correspondence with the prefecture for some time. Yet, the prefecture was also aware of internal divisions within resident activist groups, and the challenges faced by the Amicale des Locataires:
53 Jacques Chaban Delmas (1915-2000) was president of the Assemblée Nationale from 1959 to 1969 and later served as Prime Minister under Georges Pompidou. He is known for inventing the domaine réservé ; policy areas where the president should have exclusive control, and should not be challenged by the government.On the career of Chaban Delmas see Arthur Benz and Albrecht Frenzel, ‘The Institutional Dynamic of the Urban Region of Bordeaux: from the “Chaban System” to Alain Juppé’, in Bernard Jouve, Christian Lefevre (eds.), Local Power, Territory and Institutions in European Metropolitan Regions (Abingdon, 2002), pp. 57-82. 54 Prefectural Communiqué, 5th March 1966, ADSSD/7W26. 207
The tenants…follow its activities attentively. On the other hand, the heads of the association, communists, try to demonstrate the effectiveness of their actions and to exploit this advantage in order to supplant the rival organisation…whose members are more influential [ importants ]. 55
The ‘rival organisation’ the report referred to was the non-communist Assocation des
Locataires de la Cité des 4000, which according to the prefecture was more powerful, but less extreme in terms of political ideology. Judging by the prefecture’s knowledge of this factionalism, it is likely that growing state observation of banlieue communities also extended to the grands ensembles and ‘grassroots’ movements.
Yet, the 1965 covenant also posed problems for the local PCF in La Courneuve and other suburbs as it pluralised banlieue resistance and allowed residents to form ‘para- political’ institutions of their own. Resident councils created additional forms of bureaucratic, ‘legal authority’, in the words of Max Weber, that challenged PCF authority. 56 Indeed, while resident councils encouraged a level of activism, the PCF rarely dominated proceedings: at Sarcelles for example, the main council (the Association
Sarcelloise) was headed by an apolitical moderate and had socialists, communists and
Gaullists among its 800 members. 57 At La Courneuve, the covenant brought about a proliferation of resident activism that mirrored the apolitical situation at Sarcelles and was largely outside of PCF control. In reference to one protest from September 1965 against the privatisation of parking charges, even the pro-PCF newspaper L’Humanité acknowledged that residents had been the driving force behind the action and gave only passing mention to the municipal administration. 58 The newspaper quoted directly from
55 Prefectural Communiqué. 56 Weber, Gerth, ‘The Three Types of Legitimate Rule’, p. 1. 57 Castells, City and Grassroots , p. 81. 58 Sources such as these would appear to suggest that the pro-communist press did not always seek to exaggerate the role of the party in local events and activism. L’Humanité was 40% owned by the PCF, and 208
residents, who complained ‘They [the city of Paris] want to turn our estate into a ghetto’ and thus placed agency in the hands of inhabitants rather than associations. 59 The article placed agency firmly with the residents by claiming that:
They decided to actively campaign against this move and for the satisfaction of their legitimate concerns. Then they demonstrated…several hundreds of them, in the streets of the estate shouting ‘No parking charges!’, ‘Liberate our streets!’, ‘No rental rises!’, and ‘Down with tollbooths [ guèrites ]!’ 60
This demonstration may be the same event later recalled by PCF activist Maurice Bernard in which the booths were ‘smashed’ by ‘Algerian repatriates’. 61 If this is the case, there is a notable divergence between the non-racialised, peaceful mass-participation event described by L’Humanité and the incident described by Bernard in which a few violent North
Africans dominated proceedings. Bernard may have sought to portray the protest as a minority event rather than a broadly-supported campaign that had circumvented the control of the PCF. L’Humanité also reported on another resident-led campaign relating to the shortage of classroom space on the 4000 logements. In September 1965, the newspaper reported ‘250 angry parents at La Courneuve’ and claimed that the commune needed to provide 58 further primary education classes to meet the growing need. While the leader of the PCF, Waldeck Rochet was mentioned as being involved in the campaign in an administrative capacity, the article went on the state ‘let us be clear that the parents led a general meeting and organised three delegations’. 62 The newspaper thus gave the
the party may have been conscious of portraying itself as overly imperious. Conversely newspapers that supported the PCF but were not PCF-owned may have at times been more brazen in their praise of the party. For example, the pro-PCF Journal d’Aubervilliers reported a visit to the 4000 logements by the minister of construction in December 1963 and claimed that local protests were solely orchestrated by the local PCF cell and the CGT. 59 Anonymous author, ‘Les Locataires des 4000 à La Courneuve Manifestent’, L’Humanité , 6th September 1965. 60 Anonymous ‘Les Locataires’. 61 Maurice Bernard, ‘Témoignage’, (paper presented at the Délégation Interministérielle à la Ville Conference: Les grands ensembles entre histoire et mémoire , 14th April 2001). 62 Anonymous author, ‘250 Parents en Colère à La Courneuve’, L’Humanité , 28th September 1965 . 209
impression of a grassroots campaign led by local residents acting autonomously rather than a solely ‘top-down’ initiative led by the PCF. To a large extent, L’Humanité had a vested interest in portraying estates as hotbeds of anti-government action, even if this activism was not sanctioned by the communists. However, the belief that any kind of activism was good activism was not shared by PCF officials, who subsequently sought to mediate these currents of resident protest.
On the 12 th of November 1965, the PCF and the Comité d’Action Laïque (CAL) organised a meeting centred on the issue of classroom allocation, which echoed the
September protest. The meeting drew attention to the fact that the number of classroom places was not increasing along with demographic growth on the estate. Speakers warned that ‘by spring of 1966, 3600 apartments of the grand ensemble will be occupied. We need four schools to welcome all the children of this huge estate. At present, only two will be finished’. 63 In the pamphlet produced for the meeting, the PCF adopted the moral, pedagogical voice and implied that parents were as yet unaware of the key issues in stating
‘Parents of the grand ensemble, what will become of our children?’ and ‘the population of
La Courneuve needs to show its discontent and its desire to end this deplorable situation’.
While this could be read as an attempt to broaden the movement, it was also clear that the
PCF was explicitly seeking to concretise the ‘acceptable’ channels of protest and to imply that it had initiated the movement. For instance, the PCF instructed parents to act ‘With your parents’ associations, your unions and democratic organisations combine your efforts so that the future of your children, the future workers of this country, is not compromised’. 64 The party were thus calling for resistance that was carried out through its institutions, actively involving the unions and the municipality. In addition, the pamphlet
63 Meeting of Comité d’Action Laïque, 12 th November 1965, ADSSD/7W26. 64 Meeting of Comité d’Action Laïque. 210
promoted campaigning based around a broad consensus which leaves little room for any form of ‘unofficial’ action. This is a key example of how ‘grassroots’ movements may have been co-opted and changed in their message by institutions such as the PCF, and made to fit the party’s agenda of ‘limited activism’.
The growing role of the PCF as form of internal policing within the grand ensemble was evidently not picked up on by the Gaullist-controlled regional prefecture at this stage, which remained wary of the party, particularly its tendency to intervene in industrial action.
The PCF’s ability to influence union matters was enlarged following an accord signed by the CGT and the politically-broader CFDT on the 10 th of January 1966, which meant that
France’s two largest unions could issue united calls to action. 65 Negotiations between the two unions had been well-publicised during the autumn of 1965, and even before the accord was signed the Préfecture de la Seine had feared that it would lead to a ‘domino effect’ of strikes across the region. The day after this accord was signed, the communist newspaper L’Humanité used the opportunity to question government narratives of economic progress by claiming that ‘since 1960…almost 5000 jobs have been lost in La
Courneuve through factory closure’. 66 In 1966, there had been a dramatic upturn in strike action in La Courneuve, due to a combination of wage cuts and redundancies. 67 Yet, strikes were generally sporadic and the prefecture was evidently less concerned about the number of workers involved and more about who was orchestrating the action.
65 The CFDT (Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail) was formed in 1964 and became increasingly radical, supporting collective ownership of means of production, and supporting leftist activism during the events of May 1968. Its membership was more diverse than that of the CGT and included white- collar workers and anticommunists. 66 Anonymous author, ‘Les Sections Socialistes et Communistes de La Courneuve’, L’Humanité , 11th January 1966. 67 ‘Prefectoral Communiqué’, 11 th February 1966, ADSSD/7W26. For example, on the 21st of January 1966, workers at the Rateau gas turbine factory had downed tools for half an hour to protest against plans to change contracts from permanent to fixed term. On the 5th of February, 854 workers (out of a total workforce of 2100) staged a thirty-minute stoppage and while the level of participation was high, subsequent stoppages received the support of fewer and fewer workers. 211
While the prefecture kept general records of strike action, strikes that involved the
PCF or CGT received far greater coverage. 68 In early February of 1966 for example, 600 workers of La Courneuve from several different firms staged a protest at Avenue Paul
Vaillant; a thoroughfare that linked the town’s industrial areas to the commercial zone of the Quatre Routes. While the protest focused on traffic safety rather than working conditions or wages, the event was recorded in a special prefectural communiqué that noted the presence of two representatives of the CGT and a PCF member of La
Courneuve’s conseil municipal .69 Conversely, a larger stoppage at the nearby Rateau factory on the 21 st of January 1966 (involving over 850 workers) had only received a brief mention, largely because trade union power was more split between the CGT and non- communist unions such as the CGC and FO. Similarly, a communique from May of that year noted a strike at the power generation firm Babcock & Wilcox in La Courneuve and emphasised that ‘the CGT union, very active in this company did not miss the chance to take advantage of the situation. 70 Thus, the PCF was still seen as a largely antagonistic institution by other elements of the French state, and as a divisive influence within trade unions and social housing.
While the PCF treaded an ambiguous path between acting as an auxiliary police force for banlieue unrest and inciting it (albeit in a highly controlled form), the police were developing a new, modernised view of banlieue space and its criminal potential. Historians have tended to link changes in the French police to the impact of the May 1968 uprisings
68 Politicians and industrialists alike were aware of the CGT’s influence on worker activism. George Ross argues that Renault’s decision to build a new plant at Cléon in Haute-Normandie was a conscious effort to escape the CGT’s influence across Paris’s ceinture rouge . See Ross, Workers and Communists , p. 179. 69 ‘Prefectural Communiqué’, 9 th February 1966, ADSSD/7W26. 70 ‘Prefectural Communiqué’, 17th May 1966, ADSSD/7W26. 212
and thus to tie new policing practices to nationwide changes in the management of disorder.
Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Klaus Weinhauer for example, attribute a move towards ‘reform and intensified prevention’ to the work of Raymond Marcellin, who was appointed as
Minister of the Interior when the 1968 disturbances were at their height. 71 Marcellin is credited with creating a ‘fortified state’ in France by increasing the number of police within Paris and by rendering the police presence less identifiable through the use of student informers and surveillance (practices that had been used since the mid-1950s, just not necessarily against the white French population). Yet, regarding policing of the banlieue , it was administrative changes passed in 1967 that signalled an increased ability to isolate and manage suburban crime in an unprecedented manner.
Reforms to policing the banlieues were a response to state anxieties about banlieue development and a profound image crisis for the police itself. As discussed in chapter two,
Paul Delouvrier’s Schéma Directeur planning policy of 1965 (a year that significantly, the population of the banlieue surpassed that of Paris for the first time) expressed deep uncertainties about banlieue communities and their menacing potential. 72 The reforms were also part of a ‘rebranding of the Police Nationale following the highly-damaging Ben
Barka Affair of 1965 during which the police had been linked to the kidnapping of Medhi
Ben Barka: the Moroccan revolutionary and head of the country’s UNFP (Union Nationale
71 Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Klaus Weinhauer, ‘Terrorism and the state’ in Donald Bloxham, Robert Gerwarth (eds.), Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 176-210 (p. 204). This reshaping of policing practices stemmed from Marcellin’s personal study of thousands of documents, journals and texts relating to the May uprising, a move that led the historian Kristin Ross to describe him as ‘the first of the sociologists of May ’68, and perhaps the most thorough’. See Kristin Ross, May ’68 and its Afterlives (London, 2002), p. 61. 72 ‘Bulletin du syndicat indépendant des commissaires adjoints de la préfecture de police’, (January 1965), ADSSD/22W11. As discussed previously, Delouvrier denounced the ‘urban magma’ of the banlieue , describing it as a menacing entity that had spread across multiple départements. See Delouvrier, Schéma Directeur , p. 47. 213
des Forces Populaires) party. 73 The American Life magazine for example, argued that the event had revealed ‘a steamy bouillabaisse concocted of police officers, government spies, underworld thugs, adventurers, gangster flesh peddlers and maybe even an Interior
Minister’. 74 It was later alleged that Ben Barka had been abducted by two officers of the
Préfecture de Police, a revelation that led de Gaulle to curb police autonomy for good. 75
Among de Gaulle’s reforms was the assimilation of the Paris municipal police into the national police, the forced resignation of Maurice Papon and within the banlieues, important changes in terms of manpower and how criminal activity was recorded.
The 1967 reforms redrew the boundaries of policing districts to create an increased separation between police activity in Paris and in the banlieue , as well as an increased specialisation in the management of suburban crime. As mentioned in section one, prior to the reforms, the police brigades responsible for Pantin (as well as other inner suburbs such as Drancy and Montreuil) had also administered three Parisian arrondissements (see figure
4.1). Following the reform, Pantin was placed in a smaller administrative area which also included the communes of Bobigny and Noisy-le-Sec, but only contained one arrondissement of Paris, the 20 th (see figure 4.2) While these changes were ostensibly designed to reduce response times to emergencies, it also grouped Pantin alongside other
PCF-controlled areas of recent mass housing construction and thus by extension, immigration. Bobigny was already home to Émile Aillaud’s first grand ensemble project, the Cité de l’Abreuvoir and was undergoing further housing expansion in line with its new
73 The UNFP was a socialist party formed in 1959 by progressive members of the nationalist Istiqlal party. On the formation and activities of the UNFP see chapter one of Lise Storm, Democratization in Morocco: The Political Elite and Struggles for Power in the Post-Independence State (Abingdon, 2007). 74 Anonymous author, ‘Secret Agents, Doubles Agents “Barbouzes” and Brothel Owners’, Life Magazine 4th February 1966. The evocation of ‘bouillabaisse’ was likely a reference to Charles Pasqua, a prominent Gaullist of Corsican descent. Pasqua was a founder member of the Service d'Action Civique (SAC); a Gaullist militia with links to organised crime. On Pasqua see Sophie Coignard, Marie-Thérèse Guichard, French Connections: Networks of Influence (New York, 2000). 75 Anderson, Political Change , p. 125. 214
administrative status as the chef-lieu of Seine-Saint-Denis. Grands ensembles were equally a common feature in Noisy-le-Sec and the 20 th arrondissement, where large scale regeneration programmes had been carried out, particularly around the Couronnes area.
This may have indicated an emergence of ‘ grand ensemble policing’, or at least a growing tendency to categorise these areas as the home to a similar set of social and criminal issues.
The adoption of a specific command hierarchy within the banlieues would support this view.
Similarly, La Courneuve’s policing district was redrawn so that it now only included two Parisian arrondissements rather than three. There were also key changes in the composition of police during the late 1960s whereby entry requirements were raised.
The gardiens de la paix (equivalent to a British constable) began to shed their proletarian identity , and were increasingly drawn from the provinces rather than the local area. 76 This meant that over time, the banlieues were less frequently policed by those with local knowledge or those with a sense of attachment to the area. These changes took some time to take effect, as records for 1967 suggest that a sizeable proportion of police and new recruits were still being drawn from the banlieues , particularly Drancy and Saint Denis. 77
However, recruitment records for officer cadets point to an increasingly large proportion of new personnel being drawn from outside of the Paris region, notably the Nord Pas-de-
Calais region and Algeria (almost certainly European pieds-noirs ). One can thus see the beginning of a shift that Anderson identifies from the local officer engaged in ‘dialogue, personal contact and continuing presence’ to the specialist officer who was ‘exposed to
76 Anderson, Political Change , p. 41 . 77 Préfecture de Police, Rapport d’Activité 1968 , ADSSD/7W15. The largest proportion of enforcement officers were registered to addresses in Paris (over 600 personnel), and there were very few from Pantin or La Courneuve. 215
78 urban violence and looking for good cases’. Banlieue policing was thus evolving from being disparate and Paris-centric to being systematic and specialised.
Figure 4.1: Pantin and La Courneuve within pre-1967 policing districts (Pantin’s disrict in pink, La Courneuve’s district in blue). Source: zeemaps.com, author’s rendering.
78 Anderson, Political Change , p. 203. 216
Figure 4.2: Pantin and La Courneuve within their post-1967 policing districts (Pantin’s disrict in pink, La Courneuve’s district in blue). Source: zeemaps.com, author’s rendering.
As well as creating new zones that were largely composed of mass housing estates, the reforms also created a distinct command structure for banlieue policing. 79 If one compares police dispersal in Pantin and La Courneuve with two arrondissements of Paris, a vast difference in concentration and command structure is evident (see figure 4.3) with a higher police concentration in the banlieue territories compared to the French capital. La
Courneuve appears to have been the most intensely policed with almost one police officer for every 70 inhabitants, a far greater concentration than the French average for the late
1960s. George Browder, for example, puts the average figure for the whole of France at
79 The police kept accurate records of the various ranks assigned to a given area. Most junior of all were the gardiens de la paix who were roughly equivalent to the British constable. The level above was composed of gradés ; supervisory ranks that included brigadier and major de police (roughly equivalent to police sergeants in Britain or non-commissioned officers in the military). More senior still were the officiers de la paix ; a command role similar to British inspectors, who were subordinate to the officier de la paix principale , similar to a British chief inspector. 217
one officer for every 400 inhabitants. 80 The contrast between Pantin and the 20 th arrondissement (less than two miles away) is notable, as Pantin had around ten times more police per inhabitant, which suggests that the new system concentrated resources in perceived ‘trouble spots’.
Officiers Officiers Gradés Gardiens Population Ratio of de la paix de la de la (approx) police to principales paix paix inhabitants (OPP) (OP) (GP) Pantin 1 9 74 367 47,600 1:105
La Courneuve 1 10 100 485 43,300 1:72 20 th 2 3 31 146 189,000 1:1038 arrondissement 9th 5 6 56 279 85,000 1:245 81 arrondissement Figure 4.3: Police dispersal in Pantin and La Courneuve compared with two Parisian arrondissements. Préfecture de Police, Rapport d’Activité 1968 , ADSSD/ 7W15.
The above table also illustrates a distinct command structure that was adopted by police forces operating in the banlieues . At a command level, Pantin and La Courneuve had only one OPP, while Paris’s 20 th arrondissement had two and the 9 th arrondissement had five. At the lowest level, the trends were reversed with more rank-and-file police in banlieue districts, and more supervisory ranks ( brigadiers and majors de police ). For example,
Pantin had 367 registered GPs and La Courneuve had 485, whereas the 20 th arrondissement had just 146 and the 9 th arrondissement had 279. This disparity suggests a more autocratic system in the banlieue , with only one commanding officer overseeing a relatively large number of junior officers. The banlieues also contained a higher number of supervisory
80 George C. Browder, Foundations of the Nazi Police State: the Formation of Sipo and SD (Lexington, 1990), p. 37. As a point of comparison, the ratio in the United States today, which Browder describes as ‘law- enforcement conscious’, is 1:550. 81 Préfecture de Police de Paris, Rapport d’Activité 1968 (Paris, 1969). ADSSD/7W15. 218
ranks ( gradés ) who would also have been involved in day-to-day policing and OPs who would have overseen such operations. While power in Paris tended to be shared among several OPPs, the banlieues in question followed more of a centralised structure with power stemming from a single commanding officer down to a large number of the rank- and-file. Viewed in this way, the banlieues were at the sharp end of an increasingly centralised approach to the policing of French cities that emphasised overarching policies rather than individual discretion.
In the case of La Courneuve, crime statistics for 1967 may have fed into new state policing practices that emerged in the wake of May 1968. La Courneuve’s share of criminal infractions crime was revealed to be among the lowest in district 8, with just 1360 incidents, compared with over 15,000 in the similarly-sized town of Saint-Ouen. 82 In neighbouring district 9, the crime rate was far higher in more moderately-policed areas such as Pantin (3836 incidents) and Les Lilas (2121 incidents) despite their smaller population. This dispersal of police manpower could illustrate heightened anxiety over the criminal potential of specific banlieues but it is important to consider other possible reasons for these differences. The police may have sought to allocate resources away from
Paris (where the population of many arrondissements was gradually falling) and towards areas of demographic growth. Pantin’s population had grown by over ten thousand since the Second World War, while La Courneuve’s population had almost tripled due to the construction of mass social housing and successive waves of migration, particularly from
Algeria. 83 However, despite its large population, and proliferation of mass housing, Paris’s
20 th arrondissement seems particularly lightly policed, with roughly one officer per 1000
82 This particular report did not differentiate between different types of crime and instead simply considered the overall number of infractions . 83 Notice communal’, (1999) [online source]. http://cassini.ehess.fr/cassini/fr/html/fiche.php?select_resultat=10719 accessed on 10th May 2012. 219
inhabitants, which may indicate that it had a lower perceived criminal potential. This conclusion is supported by further evidence from police reports of 1967 and 1968, which indicate an increased tendency towards racial and geographical profiling of crime.
Racial profiling during this period took the form of detailed statistics on Algerian criminal activity became increasingly prominent in prefectural discourse from 1967 onwards. The prefectural report for 1967 devoted an entire section to ‘North African delinquency’ and attributed a fall in Algerian arrests to ‘the clean-up operation of Algerian areas [ milieux ] undertaken through the expulsion of ex-offenders and the repatriation of those lacking sufficient means’. 84 The euphemistically-described ‘Algerian areas’ could refer to bidonvilles in areas such as Argenteuil and Nanterre that were known areas of
Algerian settlement had been cleared following the 1964 Loi Debré. 85 Elsewhere, the report categorised crime according to the race of the perpetrator using the four categories
French, North African, Black African and a remainder group simply defined as ‘foreigners’
[étrangers ]. While the greatest level of crime was recorded for the ‘French’ category, it is nevertheless significant that the police were viewing crime in this way, and attempting to correlate race with criminal activity. This trend is particularly significant given the scholarly metanarrative that since the Revolution, the French state has been reluctant to acknowledge ethnic difference other than by differentiating between ‘French’ citizens and
‘aliens’. 86 The criminologists Renée Zaubermann and René Levy argue that ‘research of the kind developed by the Home Office in Great Britain about ethnic discrimination in police stops and searches, asking officers to categorise controlled persons by ethnic
84 Préfecture de Police, Rapport d’Activité 1968, annex 19. 85 Robert Franc, ‘Les Bulldozers Attaquent à l’Aube’, L’Express , 28th February 1966, p. 23. 86 Renée Zaubermann and René Lévy, ‘Police, Minorities and the French Republican Ideal’, Criminology 41:4 (2006), pp. 1065-1100 (p. 1065). 220
category…would be unconceivable in France’. 87 Contrary to this view, the evidence of data gathering by the French police suggests that the forces of order made use of racial statistics when recording crimes and planning future strategies: a trend that subtly depicted the banlieues as the new frontier of crime. Yet, there was also a trend towards ‘geographic profiling’ that made police interest in the banlieues somewhat more explicit.
The 1968 police report featured a direct comparison of crime statistics in Paris and
Seine-Saint-Denis, including voluntary homicide, the carrying of firearms, and disruptions to public order. Recorded incidences of crime in the capital far outstripped those in the suburban département , even bearing in mind that Paris’s 1968 population was double that of Seine-Saint-Denis. For example, 1967 saw over ten times more disruptions to public order and five times more attacks on police officers in Paris than in Seine-Saint-Denis. 88
However, the banlieue département did compare with Paris on a few categories including voluntary homicide (23 incidents in Paris compared with 8 in Seine-Saint-Denis) and the possession of firearms (72 in Paris, 29 in Seine-Saint-Denis). This desire to compare statistics has echoes of Paul Clerc’s 1967 sociological study of grand ensemble life, which in similar terms, amounted to a conspicuous search for evidence of suburban crisis. It also illustrated the banlieue ’s new status as a space in which coercive forms of power were expanding their influence.
This period saw a drastic evolution in the status of the banlieue as a site of confrontation. Police came to view the banlieue as a specialist site for maintaining order that required a specific set of practices and a detailed knowledge on the nature of its inhabitants. While police interest in the banlieue was initially focused on controlling the
87 Zaubermann and Levy, ‘Police, Minorities’, p. 1065. 88 Préfecture de Police, Rapport d’Activité 1968 , annex 19. 221
PCF’s influence within the suburbs, the reforms of 1967 were an acknowledgement that the banlieues presented a more extensive range of challenges. Police became increasingly systematic in terms of the command structure, and in their surveillance of suburban populations. Significantly, the PCF emerged as a form of auxiliary policing during this period, as the party felt threatened by resident activism and sought to mediate the activist potential of these institutions by using them as a mouthpiece for its own agenda. The extent of the 1967 reforms suggests that while May 1968 would permanently change the policing of French cities, law and order was also affected by ongoing concerns regarding the management of suburban space.
3. Banlieue protest and the ‘fortified state’, 1968-1973
This section will explore incidences of conflict and confrontation that occurred in the banlieues between the late 1960s and the early 1970s. Given that this period was characterised by social unrest and upheaval in France, a close examination of banlieue confrontation will enable an analysis of how receptive these communities were to such events. This section will also interrogate the changing role of the PCF during this period in order to assess how the relationship between residents, police and the local state operated.
In particular, this section will argue that the major impact of the May 1968 movements within the banlieues was to encourage greater PCF mistrust of autonomous protest. The
PCF thus entered into an informal alliance with the police that was central to its ability to maintain its influence within banlieue communities.
Despite the PCF’s attempt to promote its own brand of resident activism at La
Courneuve, the party had limited success at attaining political leverage through these 222
‘approved’ groups. In June 1967, the pro-PCF Association des Locataires (the activities of which the prefecture had been monitoring) addressed a petition to Henri Bouret, the Prefect of the Seine département and a member of the centrist MRP party. 89 The petition outlined a series of concerns about high parking charges and in an attached letter the group’s president Jacques Colmar expressed deep anxiety about the issue of delinquency:
The [HLM] office built in order to house citizens- fine, but it’s planned absolutely nothing for young people. The cultural centre remains a vast empty cube and there are no playing fields. Instead of being engaged, these youths wander around on an estate that isn’t made for them…A solution is urgently needed, but we know we can’t rely on the OPHLM [the Paris HLM office]. 90
Colmar raised an issue that the Police Nationale and many government ministers were already aware of, that the grands ensembles had alleviated the housing crisis in the short term but still lacked the social and cultural facilities that planners had promised. Yet, in condemning the HLM office, Colmar was perhaps too conspicuous in displaying his pro-
PCF allegiance, which prompted the prefect to largely ignore its demands. Prefect Bouret forwarded the letter to Aimée Batier, the president of the Paris HLM office with an attached letter that outlined his deep ambivalence towards the residents’ association.
Bouret emphasised: ‘you will appreciate that I in no way share the view of the signatories, especially where they claim that they can’t rely on the [HLM] office to solve their problems.’ 91 Both the prefect’s letter and Batier’s reply entirely ignored the issue of youth and focussed instead on the parking problem, merely restating the importance of the existing charges and agreeing to take no further action. This evidence suggests that PCF intervention could be a great hindrance to resident councils as it encouraged state officials to ‘close ranks’ and dismiss the activity as merely serving communist interests. On this
89 Rather than being elected, prefects were nominated by presidential decree and so in the case of the banlieues a Gaullist could administer a largely PCF-held territory. 90 Letter from Association des Locataires des HLM de Paris à La Courneuve to Prefect of the Seine, 1st June 1967, ADSSD/7W26. 91 Letter from Aimée Batier to Henri Bouret, 2 nd June 1967, ADSSD/7W26. 223
occasion, in attempting to circumvent the HLM office, the residents’ association actually brought the Gaullist Batier and the centrist Bouret closer together. Thus, while the PCF set the boundaries for ‘acceptable’ banlieue activism, it seems that when campaigns carried the communist party name , municipal officials were suspicious about their underlying objectives.
The mixed success of PCF local activism would suggest a deep rift between the local state and other sites of banlieue power such as the Paris HLM office and the prefecture. In theory, the events of May 1968, during which protests and strikes paralysed several French cities could have deepened this rift. Indeed, at the height of the protests the
PCF supported a motion calling for the government to step down and the National
Assembly to be dissolved, and the party used the events to promote goals such as nationalisation and industrial wage increases. 92 During the events, strike action erupted in
La Courneuve at Babcock & Wilcox, Sud Aviation, Norton and Rateau, while in Pantin
16,000 workers downed tools in 30 factories. 93 Yet, on a national scale and on a local level, the events of May-June actually brought the PCF closer into line with the national government. When the anti-government motion was voted down in the Assemblée
Nationale, the PCF was forced to support the Gaullist regime’s rules and announce its
‘availability to take government responsibly’. 94
92 See for example Waldeck Rochet’s declaration to the French people published in L'Humanité on May 25th, 1968. 93 The larger Sud Aviation factory in Nantes was the first to be occupied by workers during the May 1968 uprisings. The CEO of Sud Aviation at the time was Maurice Papon, the former Paris police prefect who had been helped into the post by de Gaulle in 1965. 94 Maud Anne Bracke, ‘The Parti Communiste in May 1968: The Impossible Revolution?’ in Martin Klimke, Jacco Pekelder, Joachim Scharloth (eds.), Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960-1980 (London, 2011), pp. 64-84 (p. 73). 224
Elsewhere, while the PCF initially supported industrial strikes, student activism proceeded beyond its control and became increasingly leftist and anti-communist in nature. 95 The gauchiste movement had expanded in scope during the mid-1960s and incorporated Situationist and anarchist strands that shared a mutual distrust of ‘Stalinist’ organisations such as the PCF. 96 As a consequence, there was little coordination between activism in the cities and in the suburbs, and in cases the CGT’s efforts were devoted towards avoiding any contact between gauchiste students and industrial workers. 97 The most famous example of this enforced separation was the cordon sanitaire imposed by the
CGT around Renault’s Billancourt plant to prevent a march from the Sorbonne reaching the workers. 98 Similarly, in Pantin the CGT had planned a ‘National Festival for Working
Youth’ to take place between the 17 th and 19 th of May but later cancelled the event to avoid a potentially uncontrollable protest. 99 While the CGT sought to reinforce the division between working youth and ‘idle’ gauchiste youths, there was evidently a fear of infiltration by the kind of ‘troublemakers’ that the union wanted to combat. 100 As mentioned in chapter two, it was not unusual for PCF officials in the banlieues to ignore the May-June protests entirely in speeches given during the events. 101 The PCF was thus caught between the need to pay lip service to currents of activist sentiment and the need to
95 Ross, Workers and Communists, p. 179. For more on the PCF response to May 1968 see Bracke, ‘The Parti Communiste’. 96 Seidman, The Imaginary Revolution , p. 76. 97 There were however, notable exceptions and Police Prefect Maurice Grimaud noted (albeit some years later) the intervention of ‘ banlieue thugs [ loulous ]’ who had joined with anarchists and extremists in a new form of ‘insurrectional rioting’ from barricades constructed in the Latin Quarter. See Maurice Grimaud, En Mai, Fait ce qu’il te Plaît (Paris, 1977), p. 218. 98 Ross, Workers and Communists, p. 190. 99 Seidman, The Imaginary Revolution, p. 170. For an overview of the PCF response to the New Left after May 1968 see Gordon, Immigrants and Intellectuals , pp. 174-194. For an example of the PCF response to gauchiste demonstrations see Georges Marchais, ‘De Faux Revolutionnaires à Démasquer!’, L’Humanité , 3rd May 1968. 100 For an example of the CGT critique of gauchism see ‘CGT national council meeting resolution’, La Vie Ouvrière , 19th June 1968, translated in Tyler Stovall, France Since the Second World War (Harlow, 2002), pp. 130-131. 101 Unknown author, ‘1500 Personnes avec Jean Houdremont au Meeting des 4000 logements. 54 Adhésions au Parti Communiste Français’, Journal d’Aubervilliers , 24 th May 1968. 225
avoid ‘the wrong kind’ of activism that would embrace gauchisme and erode workers’ historic allegiance to the party.
Faced with the threat of gauchiste activism, the PCF in the banlieues renewed its efforts to create what post-Gramscian scholars might term ‘a pro-status quo civil society’ in order to protect itself from external threats. 102 As mentioned in chapter three, the La
Courneuve PCF had already practised a form of ‘limited activism’ since the inauguration of the 4000 logements that focused solely on estate issues in order to avoid alienating new residents. This practice intensified in the wake the May 1968 movements, while the party simultaneously strengthened its control of banlieue protest. The La Courneuve PCF did not ignore the leftist protests entirely, but instead waited until July to carry out ‘miniature’
événements that re-cast the language of protest to more closely fit the party’s aims. This
‘suburban ‘68’ consisted of a protest rally organised by Mayor Houdremont at the Mail
Maurice de Fontenay, a prominent location overlooked by several barres of the 4000 logements. Houdremont took to the stage and spoke of the strike action, social malaise and the ongoing inaction of the Paris HLM office without directly referring to the events in the capital. This event echoed what Bracke describes as a general trend within the PCF to
‘[respond] to outside shocks with a delay, and in a gradual and highly-controlled manner which minimise the dangers of secession and avert sudden identity shifts’. 103 The subsequent debate surrounding this event supports the notion that this was ‘pseudo- activism’ rather than an attempt to draw on the revolutionary fervour of the May-June protests.
102 Hasret Dikici Bilgin, ‘Civil Society and State in Turkey, a Gramscian Perspective’, in Mark McNally, John Schwarzmantel (eds.), Gramsci and Global Politics: Hegemony and Resistance (London, 2009). 103 Bracke, The Parti Communiste , p. 76. 226
In response to Houdremont’s rally, Aimée Batier (the president of the HLM office) spoke out against the PCF once more in a letter of complaint to Prefect Bouret. Batier accused the mayor of breaking political decorum and subtly linked the event to the recent social unrest in the capital. Batier mentioned the use of ‘loudspeakers and flags’, the presence of over a thousand people at the rally and the mayor’s repeated references to strike action, in an apparent effort to provoke disquiet in the prefecture. Batier also sought to downplay Houdremont’s position as a political leader, accusing him of petty point- scoring through ‘criticisms of the Paris HLM office, its president, its management, its building inspectors and its gardiens ’. Batier continued ‘I would like…for you to advise
Monsieur Houdremont to show a little more courtesy towards the Paris HLM office, which after all has the distinction of bringing a certain richness [ richesse ] to La Courneuve’. 104
Houdremont was evidently concerned about being portrayed as too much of a firebrand and sought to downplay the event in his response to the prefect, by reiterating his party’s economic concerns about the grand ensemble . The mayor’s letter returned to the ‘bread and butter’ demands for which the PCF had become known in stating:
The construction of these buildings may have allowed hundreds of La Courneuve’s families to be rehoused, but has not, as Madame Batier claims, enriched the commune. Quite the opposite. It’s one of the causes of the falling spending power and vital sources of investment (notably in education) and thus the considerable rise in charges for La Courneuve’s taxpayers. 105
It is clear that Houdremont sought to underline his political role as mayor and to downplay any parallels with leftist militancy. It is also apparent that while Houdremont was prepared to criticise the local housing associations, he was wary of alienating governmental officials and try to portray himself as a politician rather than a ‘citizen activist’. This Janus-faced approach to banlieue governance suggests that while the PCF gave the outward impression
104 Letter from Aimée Batier to Henri Bouret, 11 th July 1968, ADSSD/7W26. 105 Letter from Jean Houdremont to Henri Bouret, 29 th August 1968, ADSSD/7W26. 227
of being an activist institution, it only challenged wider authority to a limited extent.
Subsequent PCF campaigns would reveal that the party was becoming less interested in agitating on the grands ensembles and more interested in seeking to control and in effect, police them.
PCF action within the grands ensembles was a drastic contrast to its actions elsewhere. George Ross points to an atmosphere of optimism within the PCF leadership after 1968 and argues that the turbulent and polarised political environment only served to reinforce the party’s belief that a united front of the political left could be achieved. 106
However, when one looks at a local level, a more complex picture emerges that suggests an atmosphere of anxiety within the PCF regarding the governance of banlieue communities and a growing desire to ally with the central state. A party tract circulated to suburban municipalities in January 1969 called for the party to play a more active role in the lives of banlieue citizens, but also to survey and control their activities. The tract claimed:
We need to attach particular importance to propaganda in our municipalities…public information and activism shouldn’t be intermittent, it needs to form part of a tireless struggle, led with perseverance…Every project should help officials to lead the population…Obviously this necessitates continuous and accurate information. 107
Beneath this rhetoric of a shared struggle was a desire to control banlieue activism like never before and prevent residents from acting on their own initiative too frequently. While
Bracke talks of a softening of PCF attitudes towards the student activists from the late
106 Ross, Workers and Communists , p. 220. The PCF’s official line that it had behaved correctly during the events of May-June contrasted with many leftist groups, who entered a period of deep introspection and self- reinvention. See Paul Berman, A Tale of Two Utopias: the Political Journey of the Generation of 1968 (London, 1996); Ron Haas, ‘Guy Hocquenghem and the cultural revolution in France after May 1968’ in Julian Bourg (ed.), After the Deluge (London, 2004), pp. 175-199. 107 Parti Communiste Français, Directive sur le Travail Municipal et les Finances Locales (Paris, 1969). ADSSD/307J. This memorandum echoed the party’s wider strategy and was released only weeks after the PCF’s Manifeste du Parti Communiste Français , in which it reaffirmed its key objectives and outlined that it would seek power through democratic means. 228
summer of 1968 onwards, these sources suggest that at a local level, officials were still deeply concerned about the potential for insurrection and wanted to lower the probability of spontaneous movements. The PCF’s subsequent stance towards banlieue policing underlined its belief that the politics of the grand ensemble should restrict resistance rather than foster it.
While the PCF sought to restate and reinforce its agenda on a local level, the party also began to lend its support to increased policing of banlieue communities, which reflected its wider anxieties about spontaneous activism. A general council meeting from 1971 outlined regional plans for policing in the Seine-Saint-Denis département and on the subject of law and order, one (unnamed) PCF councillor gave the following assessment: 108
In terms of police surveillance...I do not have a clear plan in my head to deal with all problems of this kind but, of course, in the case of the grands ensembles – I’m thinking of the Clos Saint-Lazare in Stains…La Courneuve…Les Courtillières and others [...] I will ensure that the establishment of public security forces can…accomplish the reforms stated by the Prefecture of Police, in promoting the notion of public safety. That is the heart of the issue: firstly, that people are not afraid to walk the streets of our département at night. I would argue that there are no more attacks in the streets of our département , at night, than in many streets of Paris…But it seems that everyone is convinced that the risk here is highest! It is up to us to ensure that, despite the impression that some have, that people, women, boys and girls can go out at night in the streets without fear of meeting murderers or attackers at every crossroads. 109
This speech appeared to both support and oppose the prefecture’s call for more intensive policing of the banlieue . Indeed, the anonymous councillor disagrees with the view that the banlieues were a significant criminal problem, but nevertheless commits to addressing the issue of public fear. Furthermore, the evocation of three well-known estates suggests that the PCF acknowledged and to some extent agreed with the negative reputation of cerain
108 General councils existed for each département and were formed of representatives elected by universal suffrage. The general council of Seine-Saint-Denis was chaired by Georges Valbon, who was also the communist mayor of Bobigny. 109 ‘Conseil Général Minutes’, 16 th June 1971 [online source]. http://www.laa-courneuve.net/annee1971.html, accessed on 19 th January 2013. 229
grands ensembles .110 What the councillor did not acknowledge that the state’s emphasis on
‘public safety’ was part of a wider expansion of policing powers that would target not just violent crime but protests and strike action. A key feature of this new programme was the inauguration of the Brigades Anti-Criminalité (BAC), a specialist police unit trained to intervene in specific areas of delinquency and assigned to Val-de-Marne and Seine-Saint-
Denis. The Seine-Saint-Denis BAC unit had a similar command structure to the municipal police, with just one OPP and 40 gradés (there were no rank-and-file officers, as the unit outranked the ‘ordinary’ police). Although this early manifestation of the BAC was in many ways a ‘false start’ (it later re-emerged in a more durable form in 1994), it is nevertheless significant that the police were expanding the definition and scope of
‘banlieue crime’. Furthermore, these specialist units would also work to the PCF’s advantage by targeting autonomous protests.
While the 1971 reforms would expand police control over suburban areas, residents were equally aware of the growing influence of the PCF in restricting the culture of protest in banlieue communities. The Maoist newspaper Le Quotidien du Peuple (the French edition of the People’s Daily ; the daily newspaper produced by the Communist Party of
China) reported resident grievances about the PCF’s tendency to assimilate grassroots campaigns and criticised a recent article in L’Humanité in which:
The PCF…was presented as the head of the fight against rental increases- where is the truth in this? Firstly, if rental campaigns are promoted at the 4000 logements, it’s because the estate is dependent on the regional HLM office in the hands of the right-wing bourgeoisie. For all the neighbouring estates that depend on municipal HLM offices, the PCF is far less vocal…The people have also had enough of seeing resident committees seized [ confisqué ] by the PCF, so that no democracy is possible. 111
110 The Clos Saint-Lazaire was built in Stains between 1966 and 1970 and overseen by Clément Tambuté, one of the principal architects behind the 4000 logements. For more on the estate, see Monique Selim, Rapports Sociaux dans un Cité HLM de la Banlieue Nord de Paris: le Clos Saint-Lazaire à Stains (Paris, 1979). 111 Anonymous author, ‘Les Habitants des 4000 en ont Assez’, Le Quotidien du Peuple , 16 th November 1972. 230
As discussed in section two, L’Humanité did not always ignore the role of residents in local activism but Le Quotidien du Peuple noted growing popular frustration with the party’s attempts to portray itself as the sole voice of dissent in local politics. This article presents an interesting counterpoint to scholarly notions of the PCF as a form of social glue in deprived areas. The sociologist Robert Castel for example, explored the PCF as a ‘social safety net’ that bound banlieue communities together and partially compensated for
‘unplanned urbanisation…economic stagnation…and the collapse of trade unionist and political values’. 112 The article also contradicts a later claim by L’Humanité in 1978 that the PCF was keen to develop the non-communist Amicale des Locataires residents association ‘to help people become more involved in the management of the estate’. 113
Residents may have been aware of the contrasting events in other grands ensembles in which left-wing political organisations encouraged rather than stifled the atmosphere of spontaneous protest. For instance in 1972 there was a much-reported protest campaign orchestrated at Mantes-la-Jolie (a centrist municipality) by local residents and members of the Gauche Proletarienne: the most significant Maoist organisation to emerge after May
1968. 114 Writing in the political journal Les Temps Modernes (nominally edited at the time by Jean-Paul Sartre), the lawyer and activist Tiennot Grumbach described the scene:
Recently in Mantes we have, alongside the people of Val-Fourré, carried out a struggle over housing. In the first case, one of our evicted comrades erected a tent in front of the biggest shopping centre in the region. The repressive apparatus didn’t know how to use its violence against us. It thought that we wouldn’t be able to resist the cold. The tent stayed
112 Robert Castel, ‘The Roads to Disaffiliation: Insecure Work and Vulnerable Relationships’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24:3 (2000), pp. 519-535 (p. 530). 113 J.G, ‘Vivre Entassés. Les Luttes des Locataires de la Cité des 4000 ont Modifié les Rapports Humains’, L’Humanité , 11th July 1978). 114 The Gauche Proletarienne may have represented a more glamorous, dynamic image of citizen activism. In 1970 gained a reputation for ‘Robin Hood’ style activity when it carried a raid on a high-level delicatessen. The GP transported their bounty of champagne and caviar to the deprived banlieue of Ivry and distributed the food to local inhabitants. Activists also informed newspaper reporters and attracted a large amount of media attention to their cause. 231
there for twenty-eight days, and every night, in rotation, comrades from the region slept alongside our pals. 115
Grumbach goes on to describe a sit-in at the local police commissariat staged by twenty residents who had been evicted as squatters from the Val-Fourré estate. While he does not specify the role of the GP in this confrontation, Grumbach claims that it was the protesters’ use of ‘primitive ideological violence’ that caused the forces of order to lose the initiative.
While Grumbach may have embellished his account of the events at Val-Fourré in order to accentuate the solidarity between residents and GP activists, it is important to note that alternative models of banlieue protest were visible to those inhabiting more ‘controlled’ environments such as Pantin and La Courneuve. 116
While the scope of this thesis does not stretch beyond 1973 (the end of the grand ensemble planning consensus), it is important to consider how this new PCF-police relationship would function in the longer term. 117 The communists evidently hoped to gain concessions from police in return for their broad compliance, notably in 1974, when the
PCF deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis asked for special treatment for striking workers at the
Rateau gas turbine factory in La Courneuve. The deputy, Jack Ralite, wrote personally to the prime minister to say ‘I ask you to use your power firstly so that the police forces do not intervene and secondly so that negotiations open up immediately without the threat of redundancies’. 118 There is further evidence that some level of internal cooperation was
115 Tiennot Grumbach, ‘En Cherchant l’Unité de la Politique at la Vie’, Les Temps Modernes 307 (1972). 116 The PCF would gradually borrow some of the GP’s methods, notably by organising the occupation of apartments who inhabitants faced eviction. One protest in 1976 involved the occupation of three apartments and the new mayor of La Courneuve, James Marson was among the direct participants. See ‘Dossier information Logement’, February 1976 [online source]. http://www.laa- courneuve.net/IMG/jpg/img_Deci_76c.jpg , accessed on 7th April 2012. 117 For a comprehensive discussion of PCF and CGT activity up to 1990, see Joël Biard, Un Engagement Ouvrier: Syndicaliste CGT en Seine-Saint-Denis (1968-1990) , (Paris, 2013). 118 Letter from Jacques Duclos and Jack Ralite to the Prime Minister, Minister for Labour and Minister of Industrial Development, 25 th February 1974, ADSSD/205/J5. For more on the Rateau strike see Claude 232
occurring, as protests that were anti-PCF (although rare) received a particularly heavy- handed police response. A march against municipal tax in Pantin in February 1975, involved between 100 and 150 people, and was policed by four police vans and a specialist unit of the CDI riot police (Compagnie Départementale d’Intervention). 119 Other
‘unofficial’ protests were governed by strict rules surrounding their propagation: a request from residents of St Denis to protest against a lack of education provision on the 25 th of
February 1975 was accepted on the condition that participants agreed to walk only on pavements, shout no slogans that featured government or administrative figures and carried no banners or offensive placards. The regional director of police also requested 2 police sections, a motorcycle detachment, a radio van and several unmarked vehicles to supervise the protest. 120 The BAC would be deployed for example, during a 1976 protest by parents in Pantin surrounding education provision, which the local police commissioner claimed was ‘in case of uncontrollable elements’. The CDI, another specialist group were also present. 121 .A more comprehensive sample is required to assess the nature of the police-PCF relationship, but this evidence suggests that the PCF’s attempts to mediate resident activism during the 1960s had met with only limited success, but that it had nevertheless engineered some level of cooperation with police.
This section has argued that the late 1960s onwards saw an intermeshing of PCF and police power that in theory, created an overarching system for the management of
Willard, La France Ouvrière: de 1968 à Nos Jours (Paris, 1995), and Christian Chevandier, ‘Années Soixante-dix : les Mouvements Sociaux des Enseignants Parmi Ceux du Secteur Public’ in Françoise Bosman, Laurent Frajerman, Jean-François Chanet, Jacques Tartakowsky (eds.), La Fédération de l’Education (1928-1992) Histoire et Archives en Débat (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2010). 119 Municipal tax was set by the local commune rather than the national government, so this is one of few recorded examples of an anti-PCF protest during this period. 120 In a military context, a section in France refers to around 40 personnel. 121 Letter from Pantin police commissioner to regional director of urban policing, 26th April 1976, ADSSD/1801/W82. 233
suburban activism and resistance. While the reforms of 1967 were more significant in terms of the state’s ability to ‘know’ the banlieue , the events of May 1968 were also significant as they prompted the PCF to pursue alliances with its supposed rivals within the
French state. While the communist party ‘took government seriously’ on a local and national level, it also gave the outward impression of being at the vanguard of banlieue activism. Despite the prevailing notion that the PCF favoured compromise and consensus during the period, at a local level the party expressed its broad support for the Gaullist agenda. This is significant in terms of how this thesis understands state power in the banlieues , as it suggests that while the ‘suburban state’ was realtively disparate and basic in the late 1950s, a hybrid ‘coercive-ideological state’ had emerged by the early 1970s.
With regards to confrontation, this meant that the PCF, one of the key organs of activism gradually became a target for protest in itself and underwent a drastic shift in its position within estate life.
Conclusion
The evolving mechanisms of resistance and repression discussed in this chapter suggest a number of conclusions about the nature of confrontation in the banlieues . Overall, the banlieue served as an environment in which frequently uncontested concepts: conflict, police and the state, took on a series of additional, counterintuitive meanings. This chapter argued that conflict in the banlieue did not always stem from a binary antagonism between residents and forces of order. Indeed, the informal alliance between the PCF and the police is an example of a local consensus that repressed grassroots activism and rendered direct confrontation more difficult. From a resident point of view, confrontation with the state was complicated by the fact that there was no single hegemonic site of power within these banlieues . Indeed, if one seeks to understand the nature of ‘the police’ in this context, it is 234
impossible to separate the influence of the PCF in acting as perhaps the most frequently- encountered force of order. Yet, this is not to say that confrontation and resistance were not possible within these banlieues : just as chapter three pointed to the prevalence of everyday,
‘mundane’ forms of resistance, this chapter has suggested that autonomous resident activism was an ongoing presence in these communities. Instead, it appears that PCF power was largely arterial in nature, as it could assimilate or mediate ‘threatening’ currents of activism but relied on the police to directly supress them.
The struggles of the PCF to comprehensively manage banlieue activism could suggest further conclusions about the nature of banlieue confrontation. While chapter one argued that elements of the French state (sociologists in this case) gradually invisibilised aspects of grand ensemble life that were ‘unexplainable’, one could apply a similar argument to the PCF. On one hand the PCF developed a means of governing the banlieue that was outwardly paternalist but inwardly authoritarian, but it is possible that this paternalism was actually intended to detract from the more problematic reality. Just as chapter two argued that France’s national housing project made implicit concessions to its inhabitants, the PCF may have sought to portray the banlieue as a politically homogeneous environment. However, it would be imprudent to make such a bold claim based on the evidence presented here and while PCF control over activism may have been limited, the party has certainly been effective at monopolising popular memory and portraying itself as the dominant force in estate politics. For this reason, a wider discussion of banlieue micro- politics to include municipalities that were not PCF-governed, would be a useful starting point for understanding how confrontation operated within banlieues in which other prominent institutions competed for hegemony. 235
Conclusion
The new Balzac has arrived ‘Balzac is dead, long live Balzac! At twenty-five years old, the block has been given a new youth. With its three urban windows [fenêtres urbaines ], the work of the architect Laurent Israël, the block now helps to raise the profile of the 4000 logements.1
Regards , November 1989
Figure C.1: Fenêtres urbaines at the barre Balzac, 4000 logements [online source]. http://revue.prefigurations.com/31beton/31_godinCourneuve.htm accessed 15th October 2013.
In the autumn of 1989, the 4000 logements underwent a rehabilitation programme, which introducted the idea of fenêtres urbaines to the estate: the demolition of individual flats within the barre in order to create three ‘windows’. 2 The architect in charge of the project
Laurent Israël, claimed that the fenêtres urbaines would open up the estate to the sunlight
1 ‘Fenêtre sur l’urbain. Le Balzac nouveau est arrivé’, Regard s 38 (1989), p. 26. 2 By this time, the 4000 logements was no longer a Parisian exclave as the estate had been ceded back to the La Courneuve mairie in 1984. This event was celebrated with a ‘Festival of Devolution’ in that year and a municipal newsletter compared the devolution to the French victory at the Battle of Marignano and the storming of the Bastille. See ‘1984, le nouveau départ d’un quartier courneuvien’ , La Courneuve 61 (1984), p. 2. 236
and that ‘the “mass” feel of the building will dissolve within these windows’.3 While the news magazine Regards praised the development for bringing ‘a new youth’ to the building, residents interviewed on Ile-de-France regional news did not share the same enthusiasm. Whereas one resident denounced the sombre nature of the towers blocks and noted the need for more sunlight, another greeted the modifications with a Gallic shrug, simply stating ‘We still don’t know what it will achieve’. 4 The fenêtres urbaines project offers a poignant example of the French state struggling with the unyielding nature of the banlieue both as a built reality and as a cultural image. Israël’s plan envisaged a simplified vision of the banlieue in which complex sociological problems could be quite literally erased by a well-directed sledgehammer.5 For those living at the 4000 logements, the situation was somewhat more complex and while the aesthetic form of the estate changed, the nature of their problems did not.6 In this sense, the fenêtre urbaines project illustrated, as much of this thesis has done, that the ordering principles of the grand ensemble offered only a limited window through which to govern the modern city.
This thesis began by citing a L’Humanité editorial, which claimed that ‘the banlieue is France’ and that these areas offer an important test case for the French social model. 7 As has been argued, the focus can also be projected backwards in time, in order to interrogate the means through which French modernity has been constructed and the various metanarratives that have been applied to this process. Grands ensembles have been used to interrogate three principal questions regarding the post-war modernisation process.
3 ‘Actualités régionales Ile de France, Observatoire banlieues : réhabilitation de La Courneuve’, France Régions 3 Paris , 17 th February 1989. 4 Actualités régionales Ile-de-France. 5 This was particularly relevant to statistics relating to inoccupancy. Around 450 flats were empty in 1989 but of course, demolished flats no longer counted as vacant. 6 For an analysis of the 4000 logements during the past two decades see chapter five of Wacquant, Urban Outcasts . 7 Laurent, ‘La Banlieue ’. 237
Firstly, this thesis addressed the question: how modern was French post-war modernisation?
Kristin Ross for instance has described the modernisation process as ‘extraordinarily concerted and the desire of a new way of living after the war widespread’. 8 It has been argued on the other hand that the demands and repercussions of the modernisation process prompted ‘experts’ such as sociologists and planners to retrench themselves within existing paradigms of how the city should function. This thesis has presented a view of French modernisation in which bold aspirations were often subordinate to pragmatism and restraint. For example, the planning debates analysed at Les Courtillières in chapter two depicted the estate as an uneasy compromise between different perceived ‘obligations’ of the state. The nature of the housing produced displayed some desire to focus on ‘easier’, more governable elements to modernisation that focused on middle-class aspiration rather than destitution. While elements of modernisation may have been in Ross’s words,
‘headlong, dramatic and breathless’, it did not always operate in this way and at times discourses of modernity were used to preserve the status quo or to reverse elements of change. 9
Frequently, modernisers’ overarching objective of modernisers was not to enact change but to project a deliberately ambiguous image of modernity that secured their position as ‘experts’. The desire for self-preservation was evident in chapter one’s analysis of the shifting analytical emphasis of sociologists, whereas chapter three explored the importance that both the PCF and private housing associations placed on gaining credit for the grands ensembles project and securing the support of ‘grateful citizens’. Chapter two on the other hand, explored the private grievances that municipal councillors harboured about a housing project that threatened to make them seem indifferent to issues of
8 Ross, Fast Cars , p. 4. 9 Ross, Fast Cars , p. 4. 238
homelessness and poor housing. Above all, the grand ensemble was one of considerable restraint rather than a wholesale remodelling of the existing order. Although the grands ensembles provided the French state with vast potential to govern and mobilise its inhabitants, it was highly selective in terms of how it used this influence. Chapter four argued that even PCF campaigns that were ostensibly militant in nature, were actually an attempt to mediate the more activist elements of estate residents and to preserve the banlieue as a stable bastion of communist local governance. The case study of the grands ensembles thus suggests that French modernisation was a two-tiered process that sought progress on one level but also sought to impose limits upon what ‘progress’ might entail.
Secondly, this thesis sought to address the question: did the grands ensembles embody a singular ideological project? By extension, this thesis used the experience of constructing social housing to question whether one can speak of a single, uniform modernising project in the post-war decades. Rudolph argues for instance that in the aftermath of the Second World War, ‘state actors conceived of domestic space as a national social space, one in which relationships of class and gender could be organised for the nation’s benefit’. 10 Yet, it is equally evident that very often, state actors responded not to national narratives but to private, localised concerns about how suburban life should be organised. Chapter two’s analysis of grand ensemble design suggested both deep ideological divisions and significant chronological evolution in the type of housing space that modernisers wanted to produce. While Les Courtillières was a move towards gentrification and embourgeoisement , the more flexible design of the 4000 logements reflected a downscaling of such aspirations and a desire to appease inhabitants rather than condition them. In looking at the planning and re-planning of the grands ensembles , this
10 Rudolph, ‘Who Should Be the Author of a Dwelling?’, p. 541. 239
thesis has challenged the notion that the oil crisis and economic downturn of 1973 constituted a significant watershed in French history. Academic studies of the banlieue have tended to associate these events with a sudden and irreversible decline of mass housing, and their increasing stigmatisation in French culture. Yet, this thesis has explored
‘failure’ and ‘decline’ as more mobile terms that could actually be applied to any point in the ‘ grand ensemble era’. Rather than a gradual drift towards failure, it has been argued that there were continuous attempts to ‘destroy’ mass housing semiotically by emphasising its inherent inadequacy. In the short term, this took the form of frustrated councillors or engineers who saw the grands ensembles as a flawed project from the outset. In the long term, a range of state officials began to imagine competing futures for suburban space, which often entailed a drastic re-imaging of these perceived outmoded developments.
Therefore, one should consider the grands ensembles not as a planning consensus but as a foreground to an ongoing set of conflicts and debates centred upon the nature of ‘modern’ urban life.
The actions of the ‘local state’ with regards to mass housing were also highly divergent and changeable, contrary to scholarly narratives that have homogenised PCF action in the post-war banlieues. The historian Jacques Girault for example views the PCF- controlled banlieues as a ‘place of conquest’ and ongoing intervention into everyday life, to the extent that local parties provided the reformist wing to a party that was often averse to sweeping reform. 11 While this thesis has largely supported Girault’s notion that local
PCF often operated independently from the central party, it has challenged the notion of the banlieue as a space of autocratic municipal control. As argued in chapters three and four, municipal power was often confined to symbolic displays of civic unity enacted from
11 Jacques Girault, ‘La Banlieue dans la politique municipale du parti communiste’ in Bellanger, Villes de banlieues , p. 40. 240
the mairie and attempts by the PCF construct estates as homogenous activist communities were often undermined. Furthmermore, PCF hegemony at Les Courtillières was challenged by the SEMIDEP planning association, while at La Courneuve, the party compromised on its ideological agenda to avoid alienating new residents. This notion of state power as highly localised and arterial is also supported by arguments in chapter four that while the police and the PCF expanded their control of the banlieues during the mid-1960s, only specific elements of resistance were targeted. While the PCF and the forces of order policed autonomous protest movements systematically, issues of delinquency or small- scale resistance were largely ignored. As a result, significant areas of banlieue life persisted with little or no ongoing state intervention. Thus, the local state did not seek to establish an extensive power structure in the banlieues but rather to establish the minimum level of intervention required to project a vision of overarching order. Ultimately, the banlieues provided the PCF not with bastions of hegemonic power but profoundly unstable and complex communities over which they maintained only tokenistic control.
Thirdly, this thesis sought to address the question: how was state power produced in the banlieues ? Historical narratives of post-war modernisation have tended to depict an all-encompassing technocratic power structure that ‘dominated’ its inhabitants. The historian Jeanne Haffner for example describes the work of Chombart de Lauwe as helping
‘to make the banlieues -and its residents- into an object of investigation that could be studied, theorised, analysed and ideally transformed by “experts”’. 12 Yet, this thesis has argued that historians who have emphasised the all-encompassing nature of state knowledge have conflated the theory of modernisation with its practical application. It is true to say that urban experts were involved in a process of transforming and reshaping
12 Jeanne Haffner, The View from Above: The Science of Social Space (Cambridge MA, 2013), p. 4. 241
banlieue life, but this was largely a figurative exercise done for their own benefit. Indeed, while sociologists constructed a working ‘theoretical banlieue ’, it was limited in terms of its scope and practical use. As argued in chapter one, this involved shifting unknowable problems to a sphere of ‘unknowability’ that depicted residents as irrational agents.
Similarly, PCF power in the grands ensembles often relied on engineering a ‘forced consensus’ by assimilating autonomous protest movements into official channels that could then be ‘neutralised’. Rather than governing through knowing, state actors governed by limiting their knowledge to the more ‘conventional’ and governeable base elements.
Viewed in this way, the grand ensemble was not an expansion of the state’s bureaucratic, governing machinery into new areas but rather a means of compensating for inherent limitations to state power.
In discussing state responses to protest and crime in the banlieue , this thesis has highlighted several key areas in the French state struggled to govern through technocratic means alone. The conspicuous ignoring of youth delinquency and other social issues has been used as evidence that the state was more concerned with delimiting a narrow arena of
‘governable banlieue space’ than in expanding its scope. In the face of this limited, often symbolic form of technocratic governance this thesis has argued that coercion was an essential facet that ‘propped up’ state power in these areas. As argued in chapter four, by the late 1960s, residents began to resent the PCF for co-opting autonomous resident campaigns on issues such as schooling. The PCF was thus compelled to work with police to maintain their dominance over banlieue politics by ensuring that ‘unofficial’ forms of militancy were suppressed. In exploring French state power as a fantasy that relied on coercive power, one advances a vision of post-war governance that neither enacted modernisation, nor intended to do so. One could therefore speculate that while French 242
post-war modernisation operated within a discursive sphere of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’ it quickly became a strategy of managing and in some cases reversing change.
Looking at the policing of disorder during the trente glorieuses offers a corrective to scholarship that portrays ‘ banlieue crime’ as something ‘invented’ during the banlieue unrest of the early 1980s. 13 Indeed, this thesis has argued that just as the state enlarged its ability to administer large populations so too did it feel the need to survey and police them.
Furthermore, this rise in police power did not pivot around the events of May 1968 as existing narratives of French law and order often suggest, but emerged several years earlier, as a specifically ‘ banlieue ’ issue. Chapter four argued that during the mid-1960s, there was a simultaneous rise in police power and PCF control over avenues of protest in banlieue areas, which suggests that as modernisation advanced, so too did the need for direct coercion. One could thus argue that the social planning of the grand ensemble also lent upon emerging practices of racial profiling, surveillance and the suppression of protest, which meant that technocratic state power was subordinate to a more far-reaching coercive apparatus. Modernisation was thus a process that was enforced rather than instilled, and was largely achieved not through ‘the liberal art of government’ but through force. 14
Several key elements to state power in the banlieues have been highlighted, namely the limited involvement in everyday issues, the self-preservation of ‘experts’ and a reliance on direct coercion. It has equally been demonstrated that such concerns tended to override those of modernisation itself, which meant that notions of a French ‘technocratic revolution’ are somewhat misleading. Instead, the image of totalising state power was reproduced by modernisers in order to claim ownership over specific aspects of urban life.
Rather than totalising governance, state action in the banlieue could be seen as to
13 See for example, Dikeç, Badlands of the Republic , p. 27. 14 William Walters, Governmentality: Critical Encounters (Abingdon, 2012), p. 20. 243
paraphrase the novelist Lynne Reid Banks, ‘the pinning-up of faith across the ugly vista of logic and reality, to fulfil a need’. 15 The ‘ugly vista’ of mass housing contained a variety of issues and phenomena that the state struggled to govern or understand, and state knowledge was constructed strategically to suggest control where it did not always exist.
Both of the estates analysed in this thesis were governed as an idealised vision of banlieue life that sidestepped the more complex issues. While Les Courtillières offered a fantastical vision of banlieue life that was shorn of its political and socio-economic extremes, the
4000 logements presented a manifestation of banlieue that could be continually re- imagined in terms of its precise purpose and could be reshaped to suit the planning vogue.
The grands ensembles thus present a vision of post-war modernisation that was characterised not by dramatic, headlong progress but by illusions of progress that belied the state’s more limited ambitions.
In analysing the banlieues , it is important to bridge the historical gap between the banlieue of the trente glorieuses and the stigmatised banlieue of the post-1980s period, and this thesis has made a small start in this respect. Historians have largely accepted the convenient narrative of a totalising post-war state that failed spectacularly with the economic downturn of the mid-1970s and the suburban unrest of the early 1980s. However, the fact that this thesis has highlighted significant absences and limitations to state power during a time of supposed paternalism invites scholars to rethink the dichotomy between the French interventionist and neo-liberal state. This thesis has suggested that the second half of the twentieth century was largely a period of continuity, with an ongoing system of
‘loose governance’ of the banlieues . Yet, it is equally important that the end-point of this thesis (the early 1970s) coincided with the demise of a number of paradigms relating to
15 Lynne Reid Banks, The L-Shaped Room (London, 2004), p. 160. 244
urban sociology, planning and governance of the banlieues . Further research could be conducted into the post-1973 period, (which some historians have dubbed the vingt rugueuses ), in order to explore how new practices of governing banlieue space and notions of French modernity evolved in the ‘post-grand ensemble ’ years. 16
It is perhaps understandable that scholars should view the grands ensembles as a symbol of the overarching power of the post-war French state and more specifically the centralised, authoritarian Fifth Republic. Modernisers were after all able to house one sixth of the population of the Paris region, and to employ a range of sociologists, engineers and other urban ‘experts’ in their project. They were also able to establish an administrative framework for the ongoing management of large suburban populations, albeit in only a limited range of spheres. Yet, if the grand ensemble is to be considered a symbol of a technocratic revolution then the arguments of this thesis seem to undermine this. By looking at how the French state was able to construct, govern and problematise urban space, this thesis has argued that modernisers were highly limited in terms of what they could actually achieve. Moreover, these limitations were self-imposed, as experts chose to focus on areas of urban life that were more easily governed and explained. Overall, the grand ensemble project was as much about imposing boundaries on French modernity as it was about ‘moving things forward’. It was in constructing and managing the banlieue that post-war France betrayed its Janus-faced character, as a nation that simultaneously embraced and rejected the future, and ultimately used the coherent narrative of modernisation to mask a more complex reality.
16 Jean-Louis Missika, Valérie Santerelli, ‘30 glorieuses, 20 rugueuses 50 ans d’économie racontés par la pub’, France 3 (1997). On the notion of the vingt rugueuses see Ory Pascal, ‘Trente Glorieuses, Trente Critiques : et maintenant ?’, Le Débat 3: 160 (2010), pp. 64-70.; Nicolas Baverez, Les Trente piteuses (Paris, 1997). 245
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