Paris Bulletin 2 2008

Alicia, my 4 year-old grand-daughter and I are beginning to establish a Wednesday afternoon routine. I collect her from the Reine Blanche theatre just over the road, where she goes for an hour's jumping-about, theatre session. I have the football in my bag and we set off for the Jardin d'Eole (literally 'garden of the wind), which is also à deux pas de chez nous.

The Jardin d'Eole is part of an ambitious project to redevelop the slum areas around here with new social housing and other amenities. It was a huge marshalling yard for trains to and from the Gare de l'Est before it began to be turned into a park. The French don't really do curves in gardens so everything is a bit too straight up and down for my liking but it's a great space and has all sorts of good possibilities for children needing to let off steam.

So we do. Alicia capers around kicking the ball and scoring goals in a whole number of different directions. Granny keeps up pretty well and is certainly much the most active of the older women who bring their kids out for an airing.

We were there today again, in the sun which continues to shine benificently on Paris, day after glorious day. I am struck again by the inventiveness of children and their persistence in adapting the adult-designed environment to their own uses. Today it was to throw pebbles from the gravelled area into the long pond which later this spring will begin to sprout water lilies and other aquatic plants. Throwing gravel into the pond is strictly not allowed of course. Last week there was a gardien who was shooing off the miscreants. This week however he wasn't about so the gravel-throwing went on at a great rate. The water itself gets carried away in old bottles to the sand pit where huge pits are dug and filled again and again, often by much older children.

When we've had enough of the footie we take ourselves off to one of the many basket ball hoops and we practise bouncing the ball and getting it through the hoop. It's way too high for Alicia to manage but it's part of our routine and the big boys - very big boys - don't seem to mind if we join them.

I've been reading up on the question of logements sociaux this past week, thanks to our excellent local paper, 'le 18ème du mois'. The local elections are approaching and the issue of social housing is high on every candidate's agenda. By law every town in France is required to provide 20% of the housing stock as social housing, which is divided into 3 categories of 'need' from the most dispossessed to the working poor and those on moderate incomes.
Recognising the challenge to most local authorities to achieve that 20%, some considerable time has been given within which the target has to be reached. But it's largely because of this policy that the streets round the Jadin d'Eole are gradually getting a complete make-over, or as we say these days, 'un relooking en profondeur'.

I quite often walk down one of the streets in question - la rue Caillie. It has three hotels on it but you won't find them listed in any travel brochure. These are hotels for working men, with washing hanging at the windows and a concierge taking his ease on a rickety chair outside rather than a uniformed clerk at the reception desk. They will be a relic of the time when France brought men in their thousands from their North African colonies to rebuild the country after World War 2. Men weren't allowed to bring dependents over until much later in the 60/70s and these sorts of hotels were what they used, living in incredibly crowded and insanitary conditions while they built the roads, houses (!) and factories to get France moving again.

One of the side effects of the demolition of all this grot is that it actually increases the demand for social housing. The density of people per square metre in the 18th arrondissement is among the highest in Paris. Pulling down the bad old stock and replacing it with more spacious housing tackles the density problem but inevitably means some of those who previously lived cramped together in such tiny spaces have to be found housing elsewhere. So despite the strenuous efforts of Bernard Delanoë, Paris' socialist Mayor, to reach his 20% target the lists of applicants just keep on getting longer and waiting times, for some, stretch into years.