''Les Parisiens'', a French obsession

Selfish and contemptuous, rich and shameless: “the Parisians”, or supposedly such, crystallize a French obsession. In the time of the coronavirus, "the Parisians" were thus accused of spreading the epidemic and of imposing on the rest of the country health rules that they do not respect. But who are these “Parisians” who monopolize the attention? Are we talking about the “inhabitants of Paris” or the “inhabitants of Île-de-France”? The confusion is significant. The Ile-de-France conurbation and its 12 million inhabitants has no equivalent in France or in Europe. Its population is the first to suffer the consequences of hyperdensity, of which the high prices of real estate and the hassle of transport are only the most tangible. Poll after poll, a majority of Ile-de-France residents say they would go elsewhere if they could. To put it simply, there are too many people in the Paris region. Meanwhile, medium-sized towns are devitalizing, small towns are losing inhabitants, villages are turning into dormitories. Despite these observations, the State continues to steer “Greater Paris”, intended, according to the well-established elements of language, to reinforce the “attractiveness” of the “metropolis-world”. The rebalancing of the country and the improvement of the quality of life in Île-de-France were already essential before 2020. While the health crisis has highlighted the malaise of "Parisians", territorial reorganization has become imperative. It is not only based on the teleworking of executives, but on public choices in favor of towns and villages which are only asking for this. Published in 2016, the essay How France killed its cities had revealed the phenomenon of devitalization of medium-sized cities. Olivier Razemon denounces with this new book another territorial issue: the concentration in Paris and Ile-de-France, of the population, powers, investments and major infrastructures.