Friday, November 13, 2020

The Death of Working-Class Paris

 From The Nation:

Many low-income Parisians share the feeling, hustling to make ends meet as their city has transformed into a global magnet for financial services, tourism, tech, and high-creative industries. Worse yet, many are being erased from the cityscape entirely, decamping to the sprawling suburbs in search of affordable housing or simply leaving the metropolitan area altogether.

Between 2012 and 2017, the year with the most recent available data, around 11,000 residents departed the French capital each year, with state officials projecting the population decline to continue until at least 2024. In the meantime, the share of Parisian residents who fit the traditional census definition of working class has declined from 35 percent in 1999 to just 26 percent—a stark contrast to the 51 percent of the total labor force such workers represent nationally.

Things were challenging enough before the pandemic, but with France now in its deepest recession since World War II, the exodus could grow even larger. Without a major shift in public policy or swift reversal in macroeconomic trends, some fear today’s crisis may well be the last nail in the coffin of Paris as a place where ordinary people can afford to live. In that case, France’s capital will have nearly completed its transformation into what the French call a ville musée, or literally a “museum city”: a theme park for tourists and wealthy visitors paying eternal homage to its past. (Read more.)
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