Paris

 La Haine 

If we take La Haine as a chronological starting point, since then many of the poorer banlieue towns have improved, some of them substantially so (gentrification process), eg Saint-Ouen, Les Lilas, Pantin, Bagnolet and Montreuil, economically (far more companies operate there than in the 1990s), but also socially, culturally, geographically (more public transport links, new lines), urbanistically (vast renovation plans) etc.

These success stories (relative or otherwise) in the Eastern and Northern Greater Paris area, where the most deprived banlieues are generally speaking (along with some towns in the Essonne départment south of Paris,

 the more deprived towns), have mostly been those towns closer to Paris proper, for a variety of reasons.

But not always. For instance Chanteloup-les-Vignes where La Haine was shot (30 kms from Paris, pop: 11,000) is one of those success stories, notably thanks to a big effort to désenclaver (= to provide good links – in this case to central Paris, reachable in 30 minutes, and also to integrate it into a network, both road and economic), thanks to a vast construction scheme and provision of quality accommodation. Many of the run-down buildings in the film have been levelled or totally renovated (notably the Cité Noé, where part of the film was shot), and the creation or arrival of plenty of quality work (nearby: the PSA plant, Airbus, Suez, Renault etc.).
The centre of Chanteloup has a real village feel and the quality of life in the town has massively improved since the late 1980s and 1990s. It has natural assets (only 3 miles away from the big Vexin Regional Park, its location borders the Seine river on both sides – it’s nestled in a Seine meander) and has sought to capitalise on that (to, in part, stem the "white flight" and to attract professionals/middle managers, families etc.) and it’s much safer than 20 years ago, low local taxes, plenty of decent schools etc. Granted, it improved from a very low base and Chanteloup is still a relatively poor town with above-average unemployment, andther are still poradic problems, but it’s much improved and property prices reflect this.

That’s for the upside. Now, the negatives. In keeping with France in general, we’ve witnessed a worrying trend towards polarisation. In short, the situation in some of the struggling banlieue towns of the 1990s have worsened since then, and a vicious circle has been firmly established.

The reasons are complex and interconnected but gravitate around crime (drugs, and all manners of trafficking) and the State progressively moving out of these areas (“abandoning” them or writing them off, one could say), therefore widening the gap. Many of the cités (deprived estates) in some of the large banlieue towns, most of them located in the notorious 93 department, are run by drug gangs who terrorise the local population and keep the police at bay.

Up until to the three-week long 2005 riots, the police used to enter those cités and protect the locals (most of them being of course law-abiding citizens) but the 2005 riots mark a pivotal point in the state intervention strategy (basically, the police have since been under strict orders to largely stay away to avoid sparking riots and urban disturbance) and some of these cités have turned into ghettos where democracy (at local municipality level) and basic citizens' rights (safety, police protection, access to decent public services etc.) have long departed.

 largely inspired from reality, notably the attacks and torching of police stations and the corruption of some mayors who, by pandering to local leaders of associations and cultural groups, attempt to “acheter la paix sociale”. In short, they’re happy to turn a blind eye to whatever shenanigans go on (their remit includes police/law enforcement powers) as long as the town doesn't find itself in the news too often. For some, it's all about image. A not too disastrous image attracts companies (which pay a local tax called the Taxe Professionnelle, which amounts to about €50bn and which part of it goes directly into the municipality coffers - although the system is changing in this front), which attract families, workers, money to build amenities etc.
So basically, the drugs traffic and other illegal activities are given the green light to carry on, as long as it's done on the quiet.

For the State, the lucrative underground economy is a bonus too as it keeps those families afloat and generates revenue for those deprived estates. And if the honest locals, most of them poor and from immigrant background, suffer from the dystopian situation, well, the rationale is that all in all, it's worth it, it's worth sacrificing a section of the population on the altar of image and international prestige, as long as France isn't the news for yet another episode of riots that will be seized upon with gusto by the national and international media, that's what matters to gvts. It is that cynical.

The situation has been exacerbated by some mayors (of all shades) who, for electoral reasons, favour a pourrissement (stark deterioration) of the situation. Basically, the larger the economically deprived population, the better for them it becomes to activate the levers of both clientelism, rampant cronyism and communitarism and thus stay in office.

There are many ways to achieve this, eg by making sure you have a disproportionate % of social housing in yr commune. This particular feature of French political/mayoral life has been tackled well by the Hard Left writer Didier Daenincks, the writer of the banlieues par excellence (himself a native of the northern banlieues, which he's never left, well, until 2019), both in ITWs and in his novels, latterly in Artana ! Artana ! (2018) and in Banlieue naufragée (2020) where he denounces the methods used by some of these municipalities.

It’s all “fictional” of course, and Daenincks cannot name the municipalities in question but fictional doesn’t mean untrue... (in Artana ! Artana !, his fictitious “Courvilliers” sounds an awful lot like dysfunctional communist-run Aubervilliers in the 93). As a result, he has made more than a few enemies in those parts of Greater Paris and has elected to move away from the area in 2019, to the much more tranquil and pleasant Eastern banlieue of Fontenay-sous-Bois run by the Hard Left.

However, it would be disingenuous to mention the above without saying that many municipalities in Greater Paris are refusing to take their legal share of logements sociaux (social housing accommodation, in spite of the legal obligation for each commune  to have a certain % of social housing (the % depends on various factors but is mainly based on the size of the commune). Over 500 communes in France (out of 35,000), the richest basically, regularly flout that obligation and are fined for doing so, but they prefer to pay fines rather than become more socially mixed.

I have witnessed some truly hysterical scenes (during municipal public meetings) in some of the poshest parts of Paris as the district mayor, or the opposition, raised the possibility of having (slightly) more social housing as part of the legal. Crikey you’d have thought the mayor had announced that WWIII was about to start. So, often the mayor backs down, and pays the fine, makes it easier for them to be re-elected.

This naturally increases what's called “la fracture sociale”, territorial inequality, which started to become a real problem in France at the time that La Haine was released, mid-1990s. Chirac was first elected as president (1995) precisely on a manifesto that pledged to tackle this “fracture sociale”, particularly via the improvement of the banlieues (not just accommodation, but jobs, public services, transport links, road links etc.).

There’s a ministry that specifically deals with that, said ministry goes under different names depending on the government, in the current gvt it’s the Ministère de la Cohésion des Territoires de des Relations avec les Collectivités Territoriales (they're always a bit of a mouthful), it’s supposed to to reduce spatial inequality. Along side the Ministère du Logement they particularly focus on France 4,7 million social housing units – twice as many as Britain I believe, the stock since Thatcher’s Housing Act of 1980 having not been replenished.

Since La Haine time, a few “Plans Banlieues” have been implemented to de-ghettoise the more deprived banlieues.

The first one was under Mitterrand in the late 1980s, the “Plan Banlieues 89”, which was created with the rise of both overt racism (advent of the Front National) and the launch of anti-racism movements as a backdrop, most notably SOS Racisme, in part founded in the early 1980’s by the anti-racism activist Harlem Désir, who became a celebrity and opportunistically quickly chose to embrace politics rather than pursue his just militant engagement.

There have been many Banlieues “Marshall plans” since the 1970s (the main one being the “Borloo Plan” under Chirac in 2003), but you get the feeling that until the authorities decide to rescue the 200 or so most deprived cités and thus tackle egregious inequality, it will be hard to progress substantially.