"Searching for the Grand Paris" "What have been the changes in the relationships between Paris and its suburbs?" -It is true that the Parisian suburbs have been in the middle of a paradox during the 20th century. Both because they have a very negative image... In the way they are represented, of course. We are talking about fantasies, but very strong social fantasies. Fantasies concerning the suburbs are mostly negative. We imagined Apaches, delinquency, Red suburbs, Bolsheviks, and today, youth from social housings with their caps who set cars on fire. It is a litany of rather negative images. But at the same time, there might also be another paradox. The suburbs have been... First, these representations of the suburbs do not match reality. They give the feeling that every suburban is excluded, that they live in the suburbs because they could not find a home in Paris. This is not true. Living in the suburbs can be a choice. During the inter-war period, the people who wanted to live in a small house with a small garden chose to live in the suburbs. They chose to leave their Parisian slum to live in the suburbs. Nobody forced them to do so. So, the suburbs are not populated by excluded people. It results from very diverse residential choices. Some have been confined within very degraded social housings, but it is a minority. We have some kind of unifying negative representation that does not represent at all the diversity of all situations. This is the first point. Secondly, the suburbs have often been the place where... I have written that it is a benchmark for modernities. The place where a certain number of innovative social policies have been invented. Because new issues related to society were often raised in the suburbs. It is still true today. During the inter-war period, because of tuberculosis, because of the difficulties linked to being a worker's child, etc., we have invented what we would call today "mother and child health protection centers". Proletarian children were being taken care of. Splendid avant-garde schools have been built for them, the Karl-Marx school in Villejuif for instance. Summer camps were experimented. Communist, socialist, etc., suburban municipalities, Catholics too, have initiated the idea that urban children, proletarian children should be taken out to the sea or to the country, so that they could breathe some fresh air and avoid catching tuberculosis. Since it is the place where unprecedented social problems arise, think about jihadism, delinquency, drug-related issues today, it is also often the place where institutional and public policy answers are invented. Answers that manage, or not, to solve these new issues. "Do the historical splits within Paris extend to the Grand Paris?" There is a traditional east-west split. An east-west split which refers to the presence of the Louvre, located in the west, with rich people, aristocrats, nobility who followed the court, etc. Then, Versailles. It is also located in the west. So, aristocracy followed the royal power to the west, and it gave the west a chic and aristocratic side. But remember what I said previously, the western suburbs have nevertheless been very industrial with assembly line workers. Citroën, Renault. The working fortress. The symbol of trade unionism, of the CGT, of the Communist Party, is located on the Île Seguin. To the west. Not anymore, of course. But it has lasted a century. Working fortresses were located both in the west and in the east. So, inside Paris, there is a west-east tendency, with the west where aristocracy followed Royalty and the east with the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, workshops, artisans. Plus revolutionary reactions as of 1789. The barricades were in the east. Take a look at a map of the barricades in June 1848, it is extremely significant. There were barricades everywhere in the east of Paris. Paris was a small city. There was nothing in the west. But a series of rather complex factors progressively led the west of Paris to become more aristocratic, more residential, with higher property prices, while it did not happen so much in the east. But this is no absolute truth. Le Raincy, located in the 93 today, was a bourgeois holiday city. It is still partly true. To answer your question, the east-west splits inside Paris are indeed partly transferred to the suburbs. But with many nuances. "Will the Grand Paris help to make things change?" I believe that all these debates related to the Grand Paris, which started at the beginning of the 2000s, did help to change things. Even if these debates were chaotic, as was the birth of the Grand Paris. Elected members stood out with their ill-will and a terrible local egoism. But it did help to change things. Just take a look at the Grand Huit metro construction and the estate boom near the future metro stations. Property developers and acquirers fully understood that they could buy an apartment at a reasonable price with good transit links around one of the future metro stations of the Grand Huit. The civil society, social actors, economic actors fully understood that the Grand Paris was becoming a reality. All these "bohos" who buy slums in Saint-Denis to make lofts out of these perfectly understood that within 10, 15, 20 years, Saint-Denis will be Paris. Montreuil is the perfect example. Montreuil is already almost the 21st arrondissement. Talking about public policies. The Condorcet campus in Aubervilliers where my former university, Paris 1, should settle along with the EHESS, is the Grand Paris. It means that we admit it is possible to take exceptional establishments such as Paris 1 or the EHESS out of the Quartier Latin to settle them in Aubervilliers-Saint-Denis. It is a real mental revolution. It means that things have actually changed. It takes time. Urban transformations take time. A lot of time. Within one generation, meaning in about 30 years, part of the questions we ask ourselves today, which mostly originate from the 19th century, will seem archaic.