The Limits of One’s Vision
Friday October 5th, 2007
Friday October 5th, 2007
When I first visited New York in 1995 I was a young high school student, at the Monterrey Tech in Mexico City, who had been selected to participate in a United Nations simulation. The conference was held at the Sheraton Hotel next to Grand Central Station. To me, at that time, New York equaled Midtown. Times Square was the frontier, since in those days it was practically a red light district and somewhat dangerous, or more precisely, it had a particular look that Giuliani made sure to send underground.
When I moved to New York to attend graduate school in 2003, Times Square was more like an open door theme park not unlike Disneyland, in that it was mainly aimed at tourists and there were many stores to buy food, souvenirs, DVDs, etc. It was a sign of the new times, and the rise of real state value, when the New York Times newspaper, which gave the area its name, decided to move its headquarters out of Times Square a few years ago.
My mental map of New York expanded by moving north of the Upper West Side to what many view as Harlem, and what Columbia (partly with an aim towards gentrification) emphatically calls Morningside Heights. Gentrification is happening, even before the formal expansion north takes place, since in just four years the streets around W122St and Amsterdam where I lived, in many ways the former boundaries of Columbia, have been filled with new restaurants, cafes, student housing buildings, and new building for the School of Social Work.
In order to profit from cheaper groceries, food and rent, I moved to the Bronx in the summer of 2008 -thus greatly expanding what New York meant for me on a practical and day to day basis.
Paris
In the same way, my personal map of Paris has changed a lot through the years. I first came to Paris as a young college student trying to practice the French that I was learning at U.C. Berkeley. I arrived in the summer of 2001 with my backpack, ready to walk and absorb all the attractions and sights. I stayed in a bed and breakfast on the Rue Gay-Lussac in the Quartier Latin, very close to the Luxemburg Gardens and the Pantheon
which were my “local” favorites. I say local since as a first-timer, Paris for me seemed to be mainly the quarters closer to the center that included the Louvre, Notre Dame, le Centre Pompidou and the famous bridges. Being “so far south” in the Quartier Latin seemed to me like living along the border of French civilization amongst homeless, drug users and poor students like me (it almost felt like Berkeley :).
When I moved to New York to attend graduate school in 2003, Times Square was more like an open door theme park not unlike Disneyland, in that it was mainly aimed at tourists and there were many stores to buy food, souvenirs, DVDs, etc. It was a sign of the new times, and the rise of real state value, when the New York Times newspaper, which gave the area its name, decided to move its headquarters out of Times Square a few years ago.
My mental map of New York expanded by moving north of the Upper West Side to what many view as Harlem, and what Columbia (partly with an aim towards gentrification) emphatically calls Morningside Heights. Gentrification is happening, even before the formal expansion north takes place, since in just four years the streets around W122St and Amsterdam where I lived, in many ways the former boundaries of Columbia, have been filled with new restaurants, cafes, student housing buildings, and new building for the School of Social Work.
In order to profit from cheaper groceries, food and rent, I moved to the Bronx in the summer of 2008 -thus greatly expanding what New York meant for me on a practical and day to day basis.
Paris
In the same way, my personal map of Paris has changed a lot through the years. I first came to Paris as a young college student trying to practice the French that I was learning at U.C. Berkeley. I arrived in the summer of 2001 with my backpack, ready to walk and absorb all the attractions and sights. I stayed in a bed and breakfast on the Rue Gay-Lussac in the Quartier Latin, very close to the Luxemburg Gardens and the Pantheon
which were my “local” favorites. I say local since as a first-timer, Paris for me seemed to be mainly the quarters closer to the center that included the Louvre, Notre Dame, le Centre Pompidou and the famous bridges. Being “so far south” in the Quartier Latin seemed to me like living along the border of French civilization amongst homeless, drug users and poor students like me (it almost felt like Berkeley :). Le Pantheon and Rue Sufflot in the Quartier Latin, Paris. Photos Ernesto Castaneda all rights reserved.
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I came back to Paris in 2003 before going to a real U.N. meeting on nuclear disarmament at Geneva. This time I stayed with a friend who was an exchange student at Sciences-Po and lived in the north of Paris. This time I recognized how central and beautiful the southern part of the Latin Quarter was (I never had doubts about the qualities of the northern part which included the opulent boulevards de Saint Germain and Saint Michele as well as the mythical Sorbonne). What is true, to my defense, is that the old building that used to be the bed and breakfast of my first stay was closed and being demolished for what the sign in the door said were “unsafe and threatening conditions.”
In 2005, I spent one month living in the border of the 19eme and 20eme arrondissements in the street of Olivier Métra near the Metro Jourdain. The neighborhood had its charms and I loved it; it was visibly inhabited by many immigrants, therefore many of my friends who visited, and many Parisians as well, considered it “unsafe” (although it wasn’t really). No doubt it was a working class neighborhood as most of Eastern Paris used to be. That time I felt I was really living on the frontier of Paris since the first region of the city officially ends to the west on these quarters.
I visited the neighborhood in 2007 responding to a housing offer posted online at pap.fr. After what I thought was a positive and friendly call (which was unique in that the 25 previous others said that their place was already rented - “C’est déjà loue”) Even given the high demand, I wondered if they really were all already rented, or if this was the response I received partly because of my particular accent, which marked me as an outsider.
I went to see this place in Belleville. I found that there were at least six other people interested in the studio, although it was extremely small. A young Asian couple was especially competitive. They talked to the owner while in the place saying they were interested. The owner asked for a long list of papers including a letter indicating that their parents would be co-responsible for the rent but this would only be valid if they lived in France.
So, it turned out that in just a couple of years the area of La Porte des Lilas, a little further north than Metro Jourdain on the Boulevard de Belleville, had turned into what a French friend called “bobo” (meaning both bohemian and bourgeois) (for the origin of the term see David Brooks’ book of cultural commentary titled Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There for further discussion of this very term). I took my friend’s comment to mean “gentrifying” or what in French they call “embourgeoisement.” While the great immigrant-owned and managed food stores, bakeries and restaurants (as well as social housing) remained the same, many of the customers had changed, and were now students and young professionals co-habiting along with the Chinese, holding strong along with many longtime Algerians and sub-Saharan Africans.
The apartment I visited was taken immediately. For its size it had seemed too expensive but after looking at many other places in Saint Ouen and Saint Denis, it seems more like the norm. These are banlieues since they are really outside of Paris and in the working class, eastern part of the city, and yet are livable and safe according to young professionals I spoke to, though not according to older generations of French who have warned me to be careful when I go there. So is this, the next phase of gentrification, or will neighborhoods like St. Denis will become places were immigrants, and college graduate and working class French will cohabit?
On a gourmand note, I must confess that in the spirit of economization and acculturation, I had my first full baguette as dinner that day while walking through all these neighborhoods that I used to live in, and I rather enjoyed the taste of the bread alone.
In 2005, I spent one month living in the border of the 19eme and 20eme arrondissements in the street of Olivier Métra near the Metro Jourdain. The neighborhood had its charms and I loved it; it was visibly inhabited by many immigrants, therefore many of my friends who visited, and many Parisians as well, considered it “unsafe” (although it wasn’t really). No doubt it was a working class neighborhood as most of Eastern Paris used to be. That time I felt I was really living on the frontier of Paris since the first region of the city officially ends to the west on these quarters.
I visited the neighborhood in 2007 responding to a housing offer posted online at pap.fr. After what I thought was a positive and friendly call (which was unique in that the 25 previous others said that their place was already rented - “C’est déjà loue”) Even given the high demand, I wondered if they really were all already rented, or if this was the response I received partly because of my particular accent, which marked me as an outsider.
I went to see this place in Belleville. I found that there were at least six other people interested in the studio, although it was extremely small. A young Asian couple was especially competitive. They talked to the owner while in the place saying they were interested. The owner asked for a long list of papers including a letter indicating that their parents would be co-responsible for the rent but this would only be valid if they lived in France.
So, it turned out that in just a couple of years the area of La Porte des Lilas, a little further north than Metro Jourdain on the Boulevard de Belleville, had turned into what a French friend called “bobo” (meaning both bohemian and bourgeois) (for the origin of the term see David Brooks’ book of cultural commentary titled Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There for further discussion of this very term). I took my friend’s comment to mean “gentrifying” or what in French they call “embourgeoisement.” While the great immigrant-owned and managed food stores, bakeries and restaurants (as well as social housing) remained the same, many of the customers had changed, and were now students and young professionals co-habiting along with the Chinese, holding strong along with many longtime Algerians and sub-Saharan Africans.
The apartment I visited was taken immediately. For its size it had seemed too expensive but after looking at many other places in Saint Ouen and Saint Denis, it seems more like the norm. These are banlieues since they are really outside of Paris and in the working class, eastern part of the city, and yet are livable and safe according to young professionals I spoke to, though not according to older generations of French who have warned me to be careful when I go there. So is this, the next phase of gentrification, or will neighborhoods like St. Denis will become places were immigrants, and college graduate and working class French will cohabit?
On a gourmand note, I must confess that in the spirit of economization and acculturation, I had my first full baguette as dinner that day while walking through all these neighborhoods that I used to live in, and I rather enjoyed the taste of the bread alone.
Send your comments and corrections to
ec2183.at.columbia.edu
For a more sociological perspective and more information on the gentrification of Paris see:Pinçon, Michel; Monique Pinçon-Charlot.2004."Sociologie de Paris". La Decouverte.
For a more sociological perspective and more information on the gentrification of Paris see:Pinçon, Michel; Monique Pinçon-Charlot.2004."Sociologie de Paris". La Decouverte.
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