Parisian Socioeconomic Divisions

Blog no. 3

How could anyone afford to live in central Paris? Apartments with views of the Eiffel Tower means that you have money to blow. This city is the definition of decadence, but not everyone can live in luxury. Paris is a city overwhelmingly divided between the rich and the poor, but no one likes to talk about it.

I asked my coworkers one day at work how expensive it was to get an apartment around the Eiffel Tower. I was met with a look of complete shock, and hesitance to answer. In Paris, it’s very impolite to talk about money, race, or sexuality. I had known the subject would be touchy, but no one answered my question any farther than to say, “A lot more than many could ever afford”.

I had noticed drastic differences when walking around Paris. Around the Eiffel tower were luxury hotels, and high end restaurants catering to tourists. Around the 3rd Arrondisement, where most of the white collar jobs workers earn their paychecks, streets were lined with designer stores from Sandro to Celine. This was the Paris that I was used to seeing. The kind of area that I can only window shop, and pray that one day I’ll be successful enough to shop there without saving for years before I go.

One day, I ventured to a flea market. The marches aux puces de Saint Ouen. I had to take metro line four eleven stops, and when I got off, I didn’t think that I was still in Paris. This side of Paris, was obviously the side that no one talked about. Brushed it off like it wasn’t a part of the city, because the “undesireables” lived there. The streets were dirtier, lined with fast food joints and hair stores. The buildings’ architecture lacked the delicate and ornate detailing that Paris is known for, and resembled more of Philadelphia than the City of Lights.

I told my internship coordinator at the next dinner, that I had visited the Flea Market, and she told me I had gone into a “rough area”. She said that people who live in “Classic Paris” never usually go there. It was obvious from that point, that Paris doesn’t talk about their economic divide, but it surely exists just like any other large urban city. For a Parisian, admitting the fact that not all of Paris is opulent shatters the illusion of their city.