By Michelle Lee
Paris has long retained its reputation as the capital of love, lights, and languishing artists. Beneath its homogenous image, however, lies a history of evolving neighborhoods, shifting populations, and rampant socio-economic change. What people see now is the result of decades of gentrification—the process in which working-class and immigrant communities are overrun, and thereby transformed, by the bourgeoisie.
The process began in the 1960s when a new class of young, wealthy, and educated people emerged in Paris: the bourgeois bohemians, otherwise known as the bobos. Armed with wealth and an innovative spirit, they migrated from the west of Paris, where the bourgeoisie was historically situated, to the east, where scores of factory workers, homeless, and immigrants lived.
There, the bobos took advantage of the cheap housing and restructured the neighborhoods from the inside out. Run-down buildings were transformed into posh apartments and office buildings. New restaurants and businesses appeared. Wealthy foreigners and families moved in. It was thus that the fabric and population of East Paris began to change drastically.
Today, bobos are characterized by their elite, private education; jobs in art, media, or technology; hip, renovated apartments; fixation with high culture and pop culture; and affinity to travel. They are romantic and ambitious, driven in turn by the arts and their careers. If one were to grossly oversimplify them, they would be labeled as one part yuppie and one part hipster.
The term bobo elicits a cold reception from most Parisians. More and more the city has become a culturally seamless fabric rather than a mishmash of distinct neighborhoods as bobos gentrify East Paris. While tourists delight in this postcard-perfect ideal, Parisians worry about what redefining the city means. Areas such as the Marais and Saint-Germain-des-Prés have lost much of their former charm, evolving from intellectual hubs to trendy shopping centers. Paris, the critics say, is becoming a characterless landscape of swanky restaurants, brand name stores, and yoga studios.
From an economic standpoint, however, gentrification is a blessing. Blighted neighborhoods have been revived through the influx of new inhabitants, businesses, and capital. Belleville, for example, has evolved into a colorful neighborhood of art studios, open markets, and a Chinatown. Property values and tax revenues have increased. As such, impoverished areas, such as Butte-aux-Cailles, have drastically improved, turning from working class neighborhoods into “quartiers tranquilles.”
So what has happened to the original inhabitants? While gentrification appears to integrate the upper and middle classes with the working class, it does not promote actual interaction. The bobos live and work among themselves; shop at bio stores and upscale boutiques; and send their children to private schools. Outside, they may cross paths with the working class, but they enter wholly different buildings. The idea that gentrification promotes inter-class solidarity is therefore an illusion. What was originally macro-segregation between neighborhoods has simply become micro-segregation between one or two street blocks. Moreover, as the bobos renovate buildings and drive rent prices up, the working class is often pushed out to the suburbs, where there are less opportunities and less housing.
Ultimately, while the effects of gentrification are questionable, one cannot deny that Paris has a unique entrepreneurial spirit. Since the nineteenth century when Baron Georges Eugene Haussmann remapped Paris by installing its iconic tree-lined boulevards, the city has pushed ahead in urban planning and development. On the one hand, these changes have signified a switch to a forward, modernist way of thinking; on the other, it has displaced thousands of working-class people and marred the authentic character of many of its neighborhoods.
And yet, no matter what happens, Paris will remain a mecca for lovers and dreamers everywhere.
