France: Why is their geographical socioeconomic stratification so different?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Actually there has been substantial white flight in parts of France (beyond the Paris banlieues on all sides lie vast tracts of (white) lower middle class commuter towns), just not from the haute-bourgeois west ends.

But the issue here is one of prestige; an address in the 16th arrondissement or in Neuilly (which is outside the commune of Paris but is not a suburb in any meaningful sense) is more prestigious than a huge house far out in suburbia (though France has a lot of these as well). This isn't totally alien from the American urban experience actually; consider the Upper East Side.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This is a map of The Great City Babylon (within official city limits only) rather than Paris, but is a nice illustration of the beautiful social complexity of a really big European city:



_{The stats are experimental and from 2009 so don't treat as Gospel, but the patterns are not inaccurate.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That's just the commune of Paris. All of the 'suburbs' in the surrounding three departments are not suburbs in the sense the term is used in North American English.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I just randomly clicked on the wiki page for St Denis and laughed out loud at its twin towning arrangements: basically all current or former strongholds of municipal commies/fellow travellers.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But, anyway, a typical view in the Paris 'suburbs', Aubervilliers in this instance: