This chapter provides a historical overview of the construction and renewal programmes of large housing estates in Paris and its surrounding suburbs. We examine neighbourhood level data on two large housing estates to provide insight into the processes of poverty and ethnic concentration within these sites. We also examine the impact of urban renewal programmes on demographic and physical change. We argue that while the urban form of the large housing estate is gradually disappearing from the housing landscape, poverty and ethnic concentration have not disappeared, and micro-fragmentation between different social levels has become more pronounced. By including individual residential trajectories and mobilities in our analysis-and going beyond the traditional gentrification/ displacement nexus-we demonstrate that current renewal policies are at risk of creating new peripheries of exclusion and segregation at a regional level. At the same time, examination of the two case studies allows for a more nuanced perspective, which suggests that housing estates continue to play an important role in providing affordable housing and residential opportunities for local residents.

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In France, an urban renewal programme was launched in 2003 with the aim of boosting social mix by diversifying housing in disadvantaged neighbourhoods known as 'Sensitive Urban Zones'. Drawing on 121 qualitative interviews conducted in seven neighbourhoods in the Paris region, this article focuses on relocation processes triggered by the demolition of social housing. How are these socio-residential changes experienced by those actually being relocated? To answer this question, the paper shows how an analysis of long-term residential trajectories can highlight and nuance the experiences of relocatees. Three broad types of trajectories are defined as an analytical framework for a comprehensive approach of the meaning of relocation and opportunity held by households. It shows how forced relocation can either be a positive step in residential trajectories or merely an adaptation in terms of housing, whether or not the inhabitants actually stay in their neighbourhood or leave it.

Résumé La mixité est un objectif central des programmes de rénovation urbaine lancés en France et en Europe dans les années 2000, la diversification de l’habitat en étant l’instrument. L’article, après avoir présenté les enjeux de la mixité dans la rénovation, associée à l’idée de parcours résidentiel, met en évidence les effets paradoxaux de la démolition et des relogements dans une dizaine d’opérations franciliennes. D’une part, à l’inverse des effets de la rénovation des années 1960, la tendance est plutôt à la re-concentration des familles les plus pauvres dans la zus qu’à la dispersion, et au départ de petits ménages plus « aisés » vers des secteurs plus valorisés, dans et hors de la zus . D’autre part, les recompositions sociales et urbaines, perceptibles à travers ces mobilités et le vécu des habitants, vont plutôt dans le sens d’une fragmentation des « grands ensembles » et/ou de la commune en petites unités résidentielles, homogènes, mais différenciées entre elles. Elles posent la question des échelles de la mixité, tout en reposant celles de la cohabitation et des inégalités dans le choix de ces proximités spatiales et sociales.

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