The 2024 Paris Olympics have brought massive investment to the City of Light, including the construction of new housing, sports facilities, and public transportation.
Yet we shouldn’t let that obscure a more sinister phenomenon: gentrification, which has rapidly transformed many of the city’s former immigrant and working-class strongholds into expensive quarters for the newly affluent.
On this episode, Commonweal senior editor Matt Boudway speaks with journalist Cole Stangler, author of Paris Is Not Dead: Surviving Hypergentrification in the City of Light.
Stangler, who lives in France, explains Paris’s historical transformation, as well as more recent developments in French politics.
For further reading:
- Cole Stangler’s writing for Commonweal
- Fran Quigley on social housing
- Max Holleran on gentrification and the YIMBYs