Paris Suburbs - les Banlieues
According to official records, the population of Paris is around 2.2 million people - making it a relatively small capital by global standards. But these figures only count Parisians living within the 20 arrondissements that make up the city proper - they don’t cover the dense web of suburbs that stretch out from the capital’s very compact heart.
In reality, of course, the city of Paris extends well beyond the ‘peripherique’, the wide ring road that has come to mark an unofficial border betwen the city centre and it’s suburbs. Indeed, in total some 12 million people live in the Paris region, making the city a similiar size to London, and revealing that a massive 80% of Parisians actually live outside the recognised city limits.
The French word for suburb is banlieue, a term which carries strong pejorative connotations to French speakers - indeed the Paris banlieues have become almost synonymous with images of social deprivation. While cities in the UK and USA tend to carry pockets of greatest poverty in city-centre and downtown areas (and in contrast, often boast quiet, leafy suburbs) the pattern of wealth in French cities is often reversed - immense wealth at the centre, offset by suburban regions of considerable social instability.
Certainly many of the Paris suburbs are incredibly desirable places to live: Versailles, St Cloud and Fontainebleu being particularly wealthy. And the city also has its fair share of middle class commuter towns, like any major conurbation. But in the tower blocks and social housing that sprawl between, and in the concrete Nouvelles Villes (’new towns’ planned and built as over-flow estates in the sixties) unemployment, poor education and crime remain serious concerns.
The suburban riots of 2005, which spread swiftly from an isolated incident in the eastern town of Clichy-Sur-Bois, illustrated yet again the volatile nature of Paris’ most deprived minorities, and the issues of immigration, policing and social ghettos in the banlieues remain political hot potatoes.
The Paris region is known administratively as the Ile De France. Alongside the 20 districts making up the central city (which together bear the postal code ‘75′), there are 7 recognised regions, listed here with their zip code and capital town:
Essonne (91, Evry); Hauts-de-Seine (92, Nanterre), Seine-St-Denis (93, Bobigny); Seine-Et-Marne (73, Melun); Val-De-Marne (94, Creteil); Val d’Oise (95, Pontoise); Yvelines (78, Versailles)
As a general rule, the smarter suburbs sit west of the central city; the most deprived banlieues are found out east. All the Paris banlieues can be relatively easily reached from the city centre on the RER overground rail system, whose seven lines, (named ABCD and E) depart from the main rail stations within the city limits - on the whole, even the most far flung outer suburbs can be reached within about 45 minutes on the RER.
