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The Social Project: Housing in Postwar France, written by architectural historian Kenny Cupers, gives careful attention and novel analysis to the explosion of public housing projects and suburban growth in post-World War II France. The book itself, which is quite substantial and contains more than 125 pictures and 21 full-color plates, is divided into three main sections that focus on each of the decades of the trentes glorieuses, or thirty-year postwar economic expansion in France: "1950s: Projects in the Making," "1960s: Architecture Meets Social Science," and "1970s: Consuming Contradictions."
Those who are familiar with France know well the jarring juxtaposition between a city's historical center and its suburban periphery. In urban agglomerations like Paris, Lille, Marseille, and Grenoble, the cobbled lanes, monuments, and museums of the centres-villes epitomize medieval charm, while the suburbs, or banlieues, which mushroomed in the postwar era from the surrounding agricultural fields, are home to modernist structures, much concrete, and the bulk of the population.
According to the orthodox historical narrative, French technocrats and sundry "experts," intellectually formed in the crucible of war and imperial domination, forced public housing on the...