Grand Paris, Part 2

Soup in the 77: Torcy and Lognes

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Grand Paris is a new column about the changing relationship between Paris and its suburbs, told through architecture and the food of its various diaspora communities and neighbourhoods.

You can read Part 1: Les Olympiades here.

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Grand Paris, Part 2: Soup in the 77

The fundamental difference between London and Paris is not in its food, or the number of bakeries where it’s possible to get a passable croissant. It is not in the beauty of its buildings, or the rudeness of its inhabitants – which are roughly the same despite the protestations of both. No, the fundamental difference between London and Paris, the thing which makes each city feel so alien to the other, is in how and where they decide to house their working-class.

I first became aware of this years ago when talking to my Parisian friend Cecile, who told me that her French friends would react in horror when she described her daily walks through council housing estates in Camden and Marylebone. For them, the idea was not just unusual but wrong. ‘How could you put yourself in danger in that way?’ I was fascinated to hear their reasoning, this Parisian mentality of treating the housing estates as not a part of the walkable city even though they share the same space.

For Cecile, these walks were just the easiest way of getting between two points because, in London, estates are everywhere. The indiscriminate spread of post-war council housing in London has much to thank the equally indiscriminate Luftwaffe for, as they provided bombed out tabulae rasae for architects to impose their vision around the centres of London. The working class stayed in the centre, while suburbia and Metroland were for the aspirational middle-classes linked to the centre by the tube; eventually Greater London was instituted to include the suburban boroughs within the concept of London.