# WEAPONIZED ARCHITECTURE /// The Banlieue Archipelago: Cartographic Inventory of the Cités Around Paris

Published

The Banlieue Archipelago Lc3a9opold Lambert For The Funambulist 2014
Maps created for the purpose of this article / Download them here in high resolution (7.1 MB) (license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike 4.0)

As I recently wrote in an article about Mathieu Kassowitz’s La Haine, I will probably write a lot about Paris’s banlieues in the coming year(s), as I will be soon returning to live on that side of the Atlantic ocean. I spent the last weeks elaborating documents to illustrate what these “banlieues” really are. This is as useful to people who are not so familiar with Paris’s geography as for people who live in the center of the city, since most of the latter rarely venture in the suburbs. The maps presented above, associated with the list of illustrations below, therefore attempt to present a geographic inventory of the “Cités” and “Zones Urbaines Sensibles” (Sensitive Urban Zones) that exist in the first four zones of Paris’s region’s public transportation system. The term banlieue is abusive in the sense that it means suburb, but it is understood internationally — and to some extents in France too — as low-income neighborhoods whose architecture is characterized by “barres” (long and massive housing buildings) and “tours” (towers) that host, among others, an important population of foreign and first/second generation French (often young) North and West Africans.

The 95 cités presented both on the maps and in the inventory below, host together about 805,000 inhabitants (figures from 2006 calculated from this data bank), which makes it approximately 12% of the total population of the considered area (the first four zones of Paris’s public transportation system). The urbanism used to design these neighborhoods is strongly inspired from the modernist theories of urbanism that aimed at “liberating the ground” and creating more or less self-sufficient pieces of city. On the following illustrations one can easily realize the poor quality of the public space that has been “liberated” on the ground (parking, leftover lawns or dirt areas, etc.). Many of the commerces that were operating within the neighborhoods closed down and little activity was left available for the inhabitants, many of which are unemployed. As for the self-sufficient characteristics of these neighborhoods, they clearly created a distinction between the inside and outside of the cités, creating potentially what I have been calling “proletarian fortresses” in the past (see past articles) but, more importantly, it formed urban zones of exclusions that soon translated into social exclusion for the bodies who inhabit them. This manifests in the rest of French society by a national fear for these neighborhoods fed by daily TV news narratives that marginalize simultaneously the cités in their urbanity and the population that live in them in the otherness (racially, culturally, socially, and sometimes religiously) that they embody for the White French population — that includes the biggest part of the past and current governing elite.

The urban exclusion embodied by the cités operates at the scale of their town or city (noted for each of the following 95 illustrations), but also at the regional scale. Paris is a centralized city and a look at the public transportation network (the maps above show the main one, Metro and RER) allows one to realize, not only how crucial it is to reside within a reasonable distance from this network, but also how this network is fundamentally oriented toward the center of the city with little connection between cities of the banlieues themselves. The “Banlieue Archipelago” that gives its title to this article and these maps therefore consists in the representation of a de-centralized network generated by the cités themselves. It is a sort of cartographic manifesto that does not pre-envision what the links it introduces (in the second map) really stand for: a call for action(s) to revolutionize these pieces of urbanity from inside — the governmental policies to revolutionize them having stagnated (deliberately or not) to the statuses of discourses so far. Architecture as a discipline certainly has a role to play in it; yet, on the contrary of many attempts made from the outside these last forty years, it principally consists in a process of ‘desarchitecture,’ i.e. a deactivation of the physical/spatial mechanisms of geographical and social exclusion that characterize the banlieues’ situation as it currently is.

INVENTORY OF THE BANLIEUES IN THE RATP ZONES 2-3-4 BY ADMINISTRATIVE DEPARTMENTS: 

HAUTS DE SEINE (92) ///

AGNETTES (LES) / Gennevilliers / 7,555 inhabitants (2006) / 52 hectares

BACONNETS (LES) / Antony

BLAGIS (LES) / Bagneux / 18,343 inhabitants (2006) / 125 hectares

BUTTE ROUGE (LA) / Chatenay-Malabry / 12,025 inhabitants (2006) / 125 hectares

CARAVELLE (LA) / Villeneuve-la-Garenne / 5,137 inhabitants (2006) / 13 hectares

CHEMIN DE L’ILE / Nanterre / 8,721 inhabitants / 64 hectares

EUROPE / Colombes / 10,815 inhabitants (2006) / 65 hectares

FOSSÉS JEAN (LES) / Colombes / 14,973 inhabitants (2006) / 84 hectares

LUTH (LE) / Gennevilliers / 8,211 inhabitants (2006) / 37 hectares

NORD ASNIÈRES / Asnières-sur-Seine / 16,028 inhabitants (2006) / 73 hectares

PABLO PICASSO / Nanterre / 22,280 inhabitants (2006) / 95 hectares

PETIT COLOMBES / Colombes / 9,911 inhabitants (2006) / 63 hectares

PETIT NANTERRE / Nanterre / 8,804 inhabitants (2006) / 54 hectares

PLAINE (LA) / Clamart

PONT DE SÈVRES / Boulogne-Billancourt / 4,814 inhabitants (2006) / 10 hectares

SEINE SABLIÈRE / Villeneuve-la-Garenne / 4,382 inhabitants (2006) / 18 hectares

SEINE ST. DENIS (93) ///

4000 (LES) / La Courneuve / 15, 124 inhabitants (2006) / 79 hectares

ALLENDE / St. Denis / 2,670 inhabitants / 9 hectares

ALLENDE / Villetaneuse / 1,179 inhabitants (2006) / 4 hectares

BEAUDOTTES (LES) / Sevran / 9,058 inhabitants (2006) / 40 hectares

BEL AIR / Montreuil / 5,992 inhabitants (2006) / 40 hectares

BLANQUI / Bondy / 6,282 inhabitants (2006) / 37 hectares

BOISSIÈRE (LA) / Noisy-le-Sec / 1,188 inhabitants (2006) / 5 hectares

BOSQUETS (LES) / Clichy-sous-Bois-Montfermeil / 30,327 inhabitants (2006 / 201 hectares

CHAMPY / Noisy-le-Grand / 4,918 inhabitants (2006) / 26 hectares

CLOS ST. LAZARE (LE) / Stains / 10,533 inhabitants (2006) / 51 hectares

COURTILLÈRES (LES) / Bobigny-Pantin / 11,210 inhabitants (2006) / 93 hectares

FAUVETTES (LES) / Neuilly-sur-Marne / 11,059 inhabitants (2006) / 66 hectares

FLORÉAL / St. Denis / 5,417 inhabitants / 28 hectares

FRANCS MOISINS / St. Denis / 9,293 inhabitants (2006) / 42 hectares

LONDEAU (LE) / Noisy-le-Sec / 6,537 inhabitants (2006) / 37 hectares

MALASSIS / Bagnolet / 6,674 inhabitants (2006) / 34 hectares

MONTREAU / Montreuil / 3,930 inhabitants (2006) / 23 hectares

MOULIN NEUF / Stains / 1,276 inhabitants (2006) / 8 hectares

NORD BONDY / Bondy / 9,313 inhabitants (2006) / 57 hectares

NOUE (LA) / Montreuil / 6,117 inhabitants (2006) / 28 hectares

ORGEMONT / Épinay-sur-Seine / 10,871 inhabitants (2006) / 60 hectares

PAUL ÉLUARD / Bobigny / 6,235 inhabitants (2006) / 17 hectares

PAVÉ NEUF (LE) / Noisy-le-Grand / 7,240 inhabitants (2006) / 29 hectares

QUATRE CHEMINS (LES) / Aubervilliers / 29,223 inhabitants (2006) / 106 hectares

PONT BLANC / Sevran / 6,902 inhabitants / 29 hectares

ROSE DES VENTS (LA) / Aulnays-sous-Bois / 22,617 inhabitants (2006) / 193 hectares

ROUGEMONT / Sevran / 6,460 inhabitants (2006) / 46 hectares

SOURCE (LA) / Épinay-sur-Seine / 22,706 inhabitants / 113 hectares

SUD DUGNY / Dugny / 3,250 inhabitants (2006) / 11 hectares

TILLEULS (LES) / Dugny-Le Blanc-Mesnil / 13,098 inhabitants (2006) / 80 hectares

VAL DE MARNE (94) ///

BLEUETS (LES) / Créteil / 5,321 inhabitants (2006) / 25 hectares

BOIS L’ABBÉ (LE) / Champigny-sur-Marne / 14,408 inhabitants (2006) / 77 hectares

CURIE (PIERRE & MARIE) / Ivry-sur-Seine / 6,470 inhabitants / 39 hectares

FABIEN / Bonneuil-sur-Marne / 10,354 inhabitants (2006) / 63 hectares

GARGARINE / Ivry-sur-Seine / 5,750 inhabitants (2006) / 31 hectares

GRANDS CHAMPS (LES) / Thiais

GRAND ENSEMBLES VITRY / Vitry-sur-Seine / 24,077 inhabitants / 111 hectares

GRUISIE / Villeneuve-le-Roi / 1,615 inhabitants / 11 hectares

HABETTE / Créteil / 5,014 inhabitants (2006) / 23 hectares

HAUTES NOUES (LES) / Villiers-sur-Marne / 6,105 inhabitants (2006) / 21 hectares

HAUTS DU MONT MESLY / Créteil / 3,042 inhabitants (2006) / 16 hectares

ILE DE FRANCE / Limeil-Brévannes / 1,153 inhabitants (2006) / 8 hectares

JACQUES CARTIER / Choisy-le-Roi / 2,862 inhabitants (2006) / 10 hectares

JARDINS / Champigny-sur-Marne / 5,666 inhabitants (2006) / 35 hectares

LUTÈCE (LA) / Valenton / 1,799 inhabitants (2006) / 8 hectares

MORDACS (LES) / Champigny-sur-Marne / 4,830 inhabitants (2006) / 71 hectares

NAVIGATEURS (LES) / Choisy-le-Roi-Orly / 13,298 inhabitants (2006) / 84 hectares

NORD VILLENEUVE / Villeneuve-St.-George / 5,125 inhabitants / 22 hectares

PALAIS (LE) / Créteil / 4,942 inhabitants (2006) / 35 hectares

PARC (LE) / Limeil-Brévannes / 1,380 inhabitants (2006) / 7 hectares

PAUL BERT / Villeneuve-le-Roi / 1,562 inhabitants (2006) / 17 hectares

PLATEAU / Villeneuve-St.-Georges / 2,517 inhabitants (2006) / 16 hectares

POLOGNES (LES) / Valenton / 1,775 inhabitants (2006) / 8 hectares

SUD ALFORTVILLE / Alfortville / 7,761 inhabitants (2006) / 41 hectares

VAL DE FONTENAY / Fontenay-sous-Bois

YVELINES (78) ///

INDES (LES) / Sartrouville / 11,528 inhabitants (2006) / 60 hectares

ESSONE (91) ///

BERGERIES (LES) / Draveil / 2,995 inhabitants (2006) / 26 hectares

CILOF / Viry-Chatillon / 4,260 inhabitants (2006) / 25 hectares

CROIX BLANCHE (LA) / Vigneux-sur-Seine / 9,632 inhabitants (2006) / 59 hectares

DANTON / Draveil / 2,285 inhabitants (2006) / 27 hectares

GRAND ENSEMBLE MASSY / Antony-Massy / 15,296 inhabitants (2006) / 78 hectares

NOYER RENARD (LE) / Athis-Mons / 4,756 inhabitants (2006) / 26 hectares

VILLAINE / Massy / 7,351 inhabitants (2006) / 56 hectares

VAL D’OISE (95) ///

CARREAUX (LES) / Villiers-le-Bel / 4,313 inhabitants (2006) / 22 hectares

CARRIÈRES / Montmagny / 3,222 inhabitants (2006) / 25 hectares

CHARDONNERETTES / Sarcelles / 3,065 inhabitants (2006) / 26 hectares

DAME BLANCHE (LA) / Garges-les-Gonesse / 16,847 inhabitants (2006) / 139 hectares

DOUCETTES (LES) / Garges-les-Gonesse / 10,922 inhabitants (2006) / 45 hectares

FAUCONNIÈRE (LA) / Gonesse / 5,980 inhabitants (2006) / 30 hectares

FONTAINE BERTIN (LA) / Franconville / 1,898 inhabitants (2006) / 6 hectares

FRANCES (LES) / Montigny-les-Cormeilles / 6,980 inhabitants (2006) / 49 hectares

GALATHÉE / Deuille-la-Barre / 3,454 inhabitants (2006) / 28 hectares

JOLIOT CURIE / Argenteuil / 2,388 inhabitants (2006) / 16 hectares

LOCHÈRES (LES) / Sarcelles / 38,050 inhabitants (2006) / 168 hectares

PUITS (LES) / Villiers-le-Bel / 10,748 inhabitants (2006) / 101 hectares

RAGUENETS / St. Gratien / 5,806 inhabitants (2006) / 25 hectares

ROSIERS (LES) / Sarcelles / 5,010 inhabitants (2006) / 27 hectares

TETE DE PONT / Bezons / 2,855 inhabitants (2006) / 25 hectares

VAL D’ARGENT / Argenteuil / 26,836 inhabitants (2006) / 134 hectares

VAL NOTRE DAME / Argenteuil-Bezons / 7,538 inhabitants (2006) / 73 hectares