Paris To Build Affordable Houses In Tony Neighbourhoods

The Paris Habitat Commissioner, Ian Brossat, plans to build affordable houses in wealthier neighbourhoods of the city. The French authorities plan to build 7,000 houses in Paris every year from 2016 to 2020. Of these, 5,000 houses will be built in central areas of the city, while the rest will be built in relatively less expensive areas. The move is intended as part of a strategy of class warfare. The commissioner argues that this is because of space constraints, but he also added that rich and poor should live together, even if building houses for the poor in the centre of the city is more expensive.

Many commentators, however, responded to this saying that this will lower real estate prices in the heart of Paris. They also expect that this to lead to a rise in crime and a decline in living standards. This much is true. Cities tend to attract low-income households in larger numbers. Crime is usually greater in areas of cities where there are more low-income households. This explains why educational standards are higher in suburbs. This also explains why crime is lower in suburbs.  This is expected to raise the cost of building affordable houses in Paris. Authorities may need to build far more houses in these areas.

One of the arguments that Borrrat made was that they do not want two Parises. This is a common argument made about cities throughout the world. It is often made when referring to India---that there are two India, one of the rich, and the other for the poor. But, even thousands of years ago, the argument that wealthy and the poor coexist in major cities was common.

In the late 20^th century, Paris had built affordable houses in the periphery. This isolated the poor from the central areas of the city. This is inevitable, because central areas of a city are better served by good infrastructure. Poor households often cluster together in the heart of cities because they want to share the benefits of such infrastructure without commuting too much. Low income households cannot afford to commute much, but informal housing and low-rent areas in cities allow them to live near the centre. In Indian cities, idle government land, infrastructure like drainages and bridges, and private land that was kept idle because of Urban land ceiling act were encroached over by slum dwellers.

In India, attempts to build affordable houses for the poor rarely succeeded because they were built in the periphery. Authorities in Paris are more worried about social segregation, and the less egalitarian connnotations of wealthy and poor living too far from each other. But, this is not the real problem, though it is true that less segregation leads to children from poor households having a better peer group. Building affordable houses in the periphery will increase the commute time, separating jobs from residences. Not many jobs will be accessible from the periphery of a city. This will make labour markets fragmented, making people less productive and hence, poor. Especially in a country like India where faster transportation is nor available, and where economic activity is concentrated in the centre of cities, this is not feasible.

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