Contenu du sommaire : Les crises de la banlieue au XIXe et XXe siècles : emploi et résidence (Tome 2)

The suburbs of the Paris Region offer their inhabitants multiple combinations of residence and work place. At a time when the effects of the economic crisis of the 1970s were being felt, it seems that, in the most varied social strata, the choices of installation and their stability depended less on the economic preoccupations of those concerned (threat of unemployment, necessity of work, financial constraints) than on their extreme concern about finding the type of urban and social environment which suited them. In the very varied definitions of this ideal local environment, habitat has less to do with architecture and amenities than with the images given to the individual by his «block of flats» and the close and easy neighbourhood relationships he can create. The advantage of the «old suburbs» on the outskirts of Paris is that they offer a blend of country life and working class or middle class life and offer an urban range which goes from the compartementalization of houses to the futuristic building site.

Almost a third of the municipal personnel in Saint-Denis live outside the commune : therefore dissociation of residence and employment is beginning to affect this particularly «sedentary» category of employees, especially the young and the less qualified. This exterior residence has two causes : * for the minority, departure from Saint-Denis (essentially to buy a house), * for the majority, non-settlement in Saint-Denis after recruitment . We are also witnessing, in a working class suburb, the evolution of spatial behaviour which seems to be linked both with the housing market and with job qualifications.

EMPLOYMENT AND RESIDENCE : THE CASE OF THE NEW TOWN OF MELUN-SENART The peopling of the first neighbourhood and of the industrial zones of the new town of Melun-Senart obeys the same logic of spatial expansion of people and companies, from Paris and its neighbouring suburbs and from the town of Melun. However, the new residents only rarely work in the perimeter of the new town. This increase in commuting seems lasting : the place of work of those living in the «new villages» of Cesson and Vert-Saint-Denis, which were built between ten and fifteen years before this first neighbourhood of the new town is evidence enough. The logic which commands the localization of residence and place of work seems to be more and more independent in this case.

The recent evolution of industrial .jobs in the Paris region has affected the meaning of the «red belt» (ceinture rouge) of the capital : a significant decrease in the number of workers in the neighbouring suburbs, the development of the new types of jobs around their outer fringes. However, in this new regional division of labour, the neighbouring suburbs still bear the stamp of the recent past by way of the numbers employed in production.

In order to understand the concrete modalities of disindustrialization in the northern suburbs, to elaborate an efficient replanning policy of these suburbs and more accurately, the rehabilitation of disused industrial sites, it is not enough to analyse the problem on the départemental or even on the communal scale. The study, carried out on the disindustrialization of Saint-Denis shows that, in this commune, three industrial zones must be distinguished (La Plaine, the West and the North-West) where disindustrialization and reoccupation by industry or other activities (especially warehouses, offices ans road transport) of abandoned areas, offer aspects and raise problems which are very different.

INDUSTRIALIZATION IN "ILE DE FRANCE" SINCE 1965 The industrial area of the Paris Region is characterized by the importance of research and development and also by a highly skilled workforce, especially in the south-west, on the outskirts of the metropolitan area : whereas, to the East smaller companies involved in production and services are in the dominant position. The imbalance in employment is increasingly quantitatively and qualitatively. By moving westward, industry liberates itself of previous factors of localization (exploitation of a central workforce, of varied social origin ) ; it moves closer to the grey matter which sustains its expansion. This tie to its new workforce explains its choice of recent installations.

THE LARGE FIRM AND THE SUBURBS : CITROEN IN AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS RECENT EVOLUTION OF RELATIONS BETWEEN INDUSTRY AND ITS SURROUNDINGS The restructuring and the functionning of the suburbs continue to be marked by the evolution of relations between industry and its surroundings, which are of growing complexity as they stem from the variable influence of factors affecting the industrial and urban systems in distinct, converging and contradictory ways. Although the logic which governs the urban system usually seems imperative, the strategies developed by large companies often determine the urban future of the suburbs. The recent evolution of interrelations between the Citroen plant in Aulnay-sous-Bois and its host commune is very revealing of the problems posed, in the long term, by the realization of an indispensable appropriateness.

THE PROCESS OF URBANIZATION AND URBAN PRACTICES IN THE SUBURBS WEST OF PARIS Based on the sociological componants of the processes of urbanization in the suburbs west of Paris this article tries to reconstitute a posteriori the significance of essential urban projects and strategies of the last twenty years. The crisis of the functional urban project and of its multiple reformulations, can therefore be associated with the growing spatial separation of class and social strata in the Paris Region, between working-class areas, middle-class areas and those areas inhabited by the managerial professions.

HOUSING AND EMPLOYMENT : A CONTRIBUTION TO THE ANALYSIS OF GOVERNMENT FUNDED HOUSING : THE CASE OF STAINS The detailed analysis of government funded housing in a commune allows one to reach conclusions which can be applied generally. Since the Barre reform of government housing and the worsening of the economic crisis the management of government housing (H.L.M. Moderate Rent Housing) has accentuated the role of social regulation of housing policies for the impoverished. Although the independence of the two areas of intervention is maintened (housing and social action, economic development and adult education) management procedures delay and worsen the effects of the crisis and of unemployment : patience of government housing offices with impaid rent, help from the municipalities, but also disguised evictions, rebalancing of allotements or oriented grouping in various operations which accentuate social marginalization.

THE FUTURE OF AN INCERTAIN TOWN French cities and urban areas have reached a turning point at a time when, the question of their future is evoked in various terms and according to various modalities. The slowing down of urbanization imposes a new may of thinking about the city and of forseeing its mutations. After having been done this is in the process of being redone differently less by the addition of new population and territories than by the replaning and reallocation of existing spaces. In this reconstruction of urban areas one may make the hypothesis that the modernity of neighbouring suburbs, imagined after the war, is of great importance. A place of potential confrontation or integration of culturally different social groups, it is here that the future of the city lies.