Humanities 254: Modern Cities (McCole)
Week 6: Inhabiting the Metropolis
NEIGHBORHOOD LIFE IN CONTEMPORARY PARIS
The great boulevards [planned by Haussmann] create a very special spatial structure
which is more than physical, it is also social and psychological…The
boulevards are not everyday streets; they are theatrical spaces, designed for
display. The
ordinary streets behind them are quite different: places of everyday life,
with all its cheerfulness and anarchic disorder.
•Sir
Peter
Hall, Cities
in Civilization,
721
The question for this week is: how does one inhabit the city, especially the
metropolis?
The problem, as defined by Louis Wirth, “Urbanism as a Way of Life”:
anomie.
The film: Cédric Klapisch, "When the Cat's Away"/"Chacun
cherche son chat" (1996). A better translation: “Each one is looking
for his/her cat.”
The setting:
1. the Bastille neighborhood (“quartier”) in Paris. The local character
of life in Paris: twenty arrondisements, twenty town halls, twenty mayors. A
quick history: the Bastille (prison) in the French Revolution; the Bastille quarter
as a working-class neighborhood; Haussmann’s great East-West conduit
is built through the area (Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine); the building of
a new
Opera House in the 1990s.
2. gentrification: the discovery and transformation of the quarter by various
groups.
Viewing questions
1. What kind of neighborhood is this? What things define its character?
2. What groups are found here? How are they related?
3. We see two cafés. Who goes to each? What role do they play?
4. What is Chloé’s position with respect to these social worlds?
5. What sorts of changes do you see happening in the neighborhood?
6. How does this neighborhood work?