The Zone: An Alternative History of Paris

(Hardback)

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If you want to understand Paris today you need to go beyond the palaces and boulevards and discover the Perif. In The Zone, Justinien Tribillon takes the reader on a walk around the Parisian edgelands. He shows how the city should be read from the outside inwards. How can the history of a ring road tell the history of a city Post-war Paris is the story of the Periferique, constructed in the aftermath of Word War Two to modernise the city. The ring road started as a dream of a new modern metropolis but soon became a dividing line: between inner and outer cities; between the bourgeois centre and the immigrant outskirts. Here the dividing line of the city, and of the nation, soon found their form within the liminal banlieu. The Zone is a subject for urbanists everywhere who are interested in social housing, social engineering, the consequences of immigration and riots. This book is The City of Quartz for Parisians. The site of dreams as well as the realities of La Haine, the Zone so often misunderstood, is show to be the best way to understand modern Paris, and even France itself.

Author Bio

Justinien Tribillon is an urbanist, freelance writer and editor. He co-founded, edited and published Migrant Journal (20162019), and Concrete and Ink: Storytelling and the Future of Architecture (2021, nai010). He has also contributed to Flaneur, Algae Review, The Architectural Review, The Guardian, MONU, and Magnum among others. He gained his doctorate at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London and is also a tutor in urban studies at UCL and have been a guest critic in architecture at Central Saint Martins, the Cardiff School of Architecture, Columbia University, HEAD Geneve, and the Bartlett School of Architecture.