This year, the Paris ring road celebrates its 50th anniversary! This great urban freewaythat circles the capital has not always been a road, and has a rather sad history, closely linked to the evolution of Parisian society and its urbanization. Created as boundaries to protect the city, the lines of today's ring road were home to the poorest section of the population for several decades, those who could neither find housing in Paris nor in the adjacent suburbs, where prices were already too high.
Fortifications dating back to 1850, 250m wide and stretching for almost 35 kilometers, demarcated a military zone to keep the city safe. At the same time, the city began to change and modernize, thanks to the work of Haussmann, to whom we owe this distinctive architecture. Housing prices rose accordingly, and the working classes moved to the suburbs. But the poorest workers couldn't afford to live there either, and found themselves forced to live in what was then known as the"Zone".
These include ragpickers, garbage collectors, street vendors and grinders. Considered insalubrious and rather dangerous, the Zone is not very pleasant to live in, and many criminals, such as the Apaches, are active there. Although regulations were called for to deal with the situation, the authorities opted instead to redevelop the area after the First World War.
The first idea, to turn the ring road into a nature zone to help Paris breathe, failed, and it was only after the Second World War that the urban freeway gained ground in people's minds, in an attempt to ease traffic congestion. A major construction project got underway in the 1960s, and the Zone gradually disappeared, until 1973, when Pierre Messmer, Pompidou's Prime Minister, inaugurated the ring road.
But this story left its mark on the era, and the term"zonards" is still part of the vocabulary, sometimes used in songs, implying a generally contemptuous attitude towards the suburbs.
