"Searching for the Grand Paris." "How has the Paris-suburbs relationship been approached in housing policy?" -The relationship between Paris and the suburbs has long been discussed, and not only from a housing policy angle. This means that, from an urban planning point of view, urban planners, since the beginning of the 20th century, so for a long time, have thought that... the relationship between Paris and the suburbs leaves a lot to be desired. Because we have a capital city that is well maintained, well thought out, with urban planning projects, but the suburbs, on the other hand, in the suburbs, it is less well planned, there are housing estates, private detached properties, which are not thought out, not planned. And so, for a long time, urban planners have been thinking about the idea of an overall plan for the Parisian region. For example, in the 1930s, in 1928, there was a planning committee in the Parisian region which was made up of elected officials, urban planners and politicians. This committee contributed to drawing up plans for the region. So, there was an idea of public policy, not only related to housing, but also urban planning. The problem is that the different towns, Paris on the one hand, and the different communes surrounding it, all had their own urban planning proposals which had been developed without consultation. From a public policy point of view, this can seem very irrational. They had been developed without considering the overall plan. So it could be decided, for example... I am thinking of the urban planning around the Porte Maillot, to connect the Porte Maillot itself with the Bois de Boulogne park and the surrounding area, but if that area had another plan, that would not work. So, that is the urban perspective. From the housing perspective, it is quite complex because each commune outside of Paris, but also Paris itself, had their own policy regarding construction of housing. Public housing, I mean. But at the same time, as it was the Seine department at that time, and not the six departments, Yvelines, etc., it was the region that was a department, at the time of urban planning projects in the slum areas in central Paris, the local council looked with a very favorable eye on the fact that people who were evicted from their slums were rehoused in the suburbs. But the suburbs said they already had a lot people to rehouse, why were Parisian people sent here too ? So, if we consider the perspective, the perspective of public policy on a regional scale, has existed for a long time, but as far as its implementation, that is another thing altogether. It was done later, in a different way, and it is not finished yet. The creation of new towns follows on from the idea of urban planning across the whole Parisian region, with this idea that we should stop with residential suburbs, everthing I just explained, and that if there was a centralized political decision to construct hubs in new towns, we would stop the chaotic suburban development and eventually, we would provide Parisians with a place where to live with everything I mentioned earlier which was lacking, facilities, jobs, et cetera. It is therefore a continuation of an idea that has existed for many years. Why was this done in 1965, 1970? It is primarily because we were at the beginning of the Fifth Republic, which had as a slogan, or at least it was their aim, to modernize France and within this modernization existed the question of urban planning and of housing. And so, in this context... It was this opportunity from a more centralized government in terms of public policy, which came from the original idea of modernization and continuity, which led to the development of the new towns.