Paris Isn’t Dead Yet by Cole Stangler

Review by Lisa Goodrum

‘Soumia Chohra called her ground-floor apartment on the Rue Marcadet a ‘’rathole.’’’ This vivid image encapsulates the dearth of choice facing low-income Parisians as they try to stem the tide of gentrification. Rents have increased by up to 40 per cent leaving people like Soumia in cramped and often squalid conditions while buying property is an impossible dream. Yet, the sanitised luxury of the city’s super-rich is being resisted by the diverse vibrancy of areas like Belleville. In French-American journalist Cole Stangler’s compelling examination of the social and financial obstacles to making a life in the city of light, his descriptions of the neighbourhood are piquant, and its sights and smells drift off the page. It is a polyglot area where immigrant cultures swirl in a syncretic mix with French traditions to create a brave pocket of resistance that stands against the onslaught of gentrification.

Owing to a preponderance of affordable housing and cheap rents, such neighbourhoods were once common, allowing artists and writers like Chagall, Genet and Baldwin to creatively flourish. Stangler argues for the reintroduction of such housing policies to reclaim the city’s egalitarian creativity, and his call for affordable housing underpins his thesis that gentrification is not inevitable; by embodying the revolutionary spirit of groups like the Communards, Parisians can save their city. He advocates for more social housing, rent control and greater investment in the banlieue – the Parisian suburb – to reduce the division between the city and the outskirts, and eliminate the social divide between their residents. Paris is not dead then, because authorities and activists have the historical blueprint for keeping it alive.

Paris Isn’t Dead Yet is published by Saqi Press, 3rd October 2023