French Suburb Thrives After Ditching Ugly Commie Architecture
Commies ruin everything, including buildings. Here’s the story of a French suburb of Paris that went from failing to thriving after getting rid of their ugly commie architecture.
“This town did the impossible! It was able to transform itself from a gloomy dispirited town, dominated by decaying concrete flats into a thriving, friendly and beautiful community.”
“That town is Le Plessis-Robinson. This municipality is home to around 30,000 inhabitants. When you walk it’s center, you might not notice what is so special about this place. It looks like a perfectly ordinary, charming French town, until you learn that everything you see is recently built.”
“After World War II, the local Communist party wins the elections. and becomes the ruling party of Le Plessis-Robinson for over 40 years. During those years, the town is further expanded with a modernist urban scheme.” Translation: Lots of ugly, Brutalist concrete.
“There’s a lot of social housing, but the concentration of marginalized groups has its toll.” In the French context, I’m guessing “marginalized groups” means unassimilated Muslims from French North Africa.
“The town becomes more sinister, filled with rubbish, petty crime and poverty. At some point, 2/3rd of the buildings are in a bad state. They are energy inefficient, vandalised and badly maintained. Companies are closing down, and problems related to poverty are rising.”
“He promptly sets out to regenerate the municipality. In doing so, he takes an unconventional method: To beautify the city, and to improve the town on all fronts. Instead of the harsh, brutal and grey blocks that dominate the city, Pemezec wants a type of architecture that people can connect with. Instead of grey concrete, there would be color.”
“The town would have a vibrant, mixed use center with lively streets, creating more jobs, by planning commercial spaces for local businesses, but also by offering the peace of beautiful parks, gardens and fountains. Le Plessis-Robinson would have a soul again.”
“François Spoerry [is the] main architect, who designs a masterplan. Spoerry is also the supervisor who tests all the designs made by other architects. In this case, only traditional and classical architects are attracted, which is rare.” In other woods, beautiful, classic designs, not ugly modern crap.
The revamp public (“social”) housing. Also: “Owner occupied homes are introduced as well, to achieve a greater, more natural mix in social- and income classes.” Funny how much better people treat things when they own it.
“A program is introduced to give social housing tenants the chance to become a homeowner, by offering them to buy a new home under favorable terms.” Shades of Jack Kemp!
“At that point, the housing supply of Le Plessis-Robinson consists of 72% social housing. These extremely high concentrations of social housing in one location are often not sustainable and have been linked to various social and economic problems.” You don’t say.
I don’t agree with every point of the video, and there are lots of lefty planning buzzwords (“new urbanism,” “gentrification” etc.), but the video makes clear that the Le Plessis-Robinson of today is clearly much more beautiful and livable than the concrete commie slum Pemezec was faced with in 1989.
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8 Responses to “French Suburb Thrives After Ditching Ugly Commie Architecture”
The video’s emphasis on the role of architectural beauty on the social fabric of an area reminds me of the broken windows theory of policing. I don’t think there can be much doubt that Giuliani’s broken window policing turned NYC around in the 90’s, but when administered by lesser talent it can turn into a gaming-the-metric tickets-for-littering quotas. I have seen BWP being blamed for fomenting popular sentiment to defund police.
The usual failure of urban planning these days is unrealistic plans to reduce automobile use. Sometimes it seems that getting rid of cars is the only objective planners care about. The result is inadequate parking, congestion, and unpatrollable multi-use paths being vectors for crime and vagrancy. The video briefly mentions “car traffic at the edges of the neighborhoods” which seems to suggest a park-at-the-edge and walk around the interior approach, much like a shopping mall or college campus.
I have doubts about the longevity of this sort of development. A similar pioneering development in Columbus, Ohio really flourished in the 80’s, but has since hollowed out.
These prefab concrete panel housing blocks were derisively called “Khrushchoba” in the USSR and were originally intended to only be temporary housing. As the Sputnik era dynamism in Soviet society faded, they became permanent.
Khrushchoba were built all over Central and Eastern Europe in the wake of WW II housing stock destruction. The brick piles from the previous housing destroyed during the war often adorned the grounds, providing a morbid sense of the past devastation.
Putin has just about razed all the Khrushchoba in Russia proper and replaced them with smart new apartment blocks. A major reason for his enduring popularity despite the war in Ukraine.
The first time I saw Boston City Hall (recently ranked among the top ten ugliest buildings in the US), I thought ‘that’s a building only an East German architect could love. There’s also a noticeable design flaw in the building; I read about it earlier this year. It seems some amount of the pipes in the building are actually embedded in the concrete structure; good luck fixing the pipes that break.
[…] French Suburb Thrives After Ditching Ugly Commie Architecture. “That town is Le Plessis-Robinson. This municipality is home to around 30,000 inhabitants. […]
I’ve often wondered why they don’t build building like the ones that go for a premium, like a brownstone in Park Slope? Here’s another example of possibly the worst modern civic art of all time.
The top commenter, M. Rad, has a point and I will get to it in a minute.
The (usually excellent and thorough) summary leaves out the most important point – the reduction of what I call “grey space” which is not public, and not private. It is space where people can break rules but there is no one who “owns” the space and so they get away with it. A lot of city projects fail because of these spaces, for example stairwells where drug users congregate, empty lots where trash is dumped. etc. Property rights protect private property, and public glare can protect public property, but grey space is left to the worst to abuse. This is also a problem with social and rental housing where the owner is not present and the resident does not care for the private space to the same degree.
What the Broken Windows approach does it is lets people know that a space is watched over and tended to. Removing graffiti and enforcing nuisance laws prevents space from becoming the grey space where people start to think the rules don’t apply.
On another note, the main problem I see with the space is that it seems to be high maintenance and the social housing he lauds is highly subsidized by the other residents. I don’t see the appeal.
(“Grey space” is my own term. I don’t know if there is a more common term.)
The video’s emphasis on the role of architectural beauty on the social fabric of an area reminds me of the broken windows theory of policing. I don’t think there can be much doubt that Giuliani’s broken window policing turned NYC around in the 90’s, but when administered by lesser talent it can turn into a gaming-the-metric tickets-for-littering quotas. I have seen BWP being blamed for fomenting popular sentiment to defund police.
The usual failure of urban planning these days is unrealistic plans to reduce automobile use. Sometimes it seems that getting rid of cars is the only objective planners care about. The result is inadequate parking, congestion, and unpatrollable multi-use paths being vectors for crime and vagrancy. The video briefly mentions “car traffic at the edges of the neighborhoods” which seems to suggest a park-at-the-edge and walk around the interior approach, much like a shopping mall or college campus.
I have doubts about the longevity of this sort of development. A similar pioneering development in Columbus, Ohio really flourished in the 80’s, but has since hollowed out.
These prefab concrete panel housing blocks were derisively called “Khrushchoba” in the USSR and were originally intended to only be temporary housing. As the Sputnik era dynamism in Soviet society faded, they became permanent.
Khrushchoba were built all over Central and Eastern Europe in the wake of WW II housing stock destruction. The brick piles from the previous housing destroyed during the war often adorned the grounds, providing a morbid sense of the past devastation.
Putin has just about razed all the Khrushchoba in Russia proper and replaced them with smart new apartment blocks. A major reason for his enduring popularity despite the war in Ukraine.
The first time I saw Boston City Hall (recently ranked among the top ten ugliest buildings in the US), I thought ‘that’s a building only an East German architect could love. There’s also a noticeable design flaw in the building; I read about it earlier this year. It seems some amount of the pipes in the building are actually embedded in the concrete structure; good luck fixing the pipes that break.
[…] French Suburb Thrives After Ditching Ugly Commie Architecture. “That town is Le Plessis-Robinson. This municipality is home to around 30,000 inhabitants. […]
I’ve often wondered why they don’t build building like the ones that go for a premium, like a brownstone in Park Slope? Here’s another example of possibly the worst modern civic art of all time.
https://twitter.com/Culture_Crit/status/1718932851461087311
To amplify for non Russian speakers: Khrushoba is an amalgamation of words Khrushov and Trushoba which is Russian word for slum.
[…] French Suburb Thrives After Ditching Ugly Commie Architecture […]
The top commenter, M. Rad, has a point and I will get to it in a minute.
The (usually excellent and thorough) summary leaves out the most important point – the reduction of what I call “grey space” which is not public, and not private. It is space where people can break rules but there is no one who “owns” the space and so they get away with it. A lot of city projects fail because of these spaces, for example stairwells where drug users congregate, empty lots where trash is dumped. etc. Property rights protect private property, and public glare can protect public property, but grey space is left to the worst to abuse. This is also a problem with social and rental housing where the owner is not present and the resident does not care for the private space to the same degree.
What the Broken Windows approach does it is lets people know that a space is watched over and tended to. Removing graffiti and enforcing nuisance laws prevents space from becoming the grey space where people start to think the rules don’t apply.
On another note, the main problem I see with the space is that it seems to be high maintenance and the social housing he lauds is highly subsidized by the other residents. I don’t see the appeal.
(“Grey space” is my own term. I don’t know if there is a more common term.)