[France] The Police Station Attack.

[F2d5thCav]

@"NightskyeB4Dawn" 

I understand what you mean by the use of "suburb" in the media, but I think the context in terms of generating angst is more an American then European thing.

Partially, as you indicate, this is a translation issue, but it is also confused by differing ways of organizing living space within societies.

So, this article was in a British publication that was probably translated from a French source.

Suburb is a fine translation of banlieu, but it only applies so far as one understands a 'burb to be a physical neighborhood of a city that is situated on the outskirts of the city.

In the USA, as I understand the situation, two waves of "emigration" occurred from the cities to the suburbs.  First, after 1945, the wealth of the nation rose and a lot of people took advantage of the mobility offered by cars and decent roads to move out of the cities and build homes on plots of land -- the rise of modern suburbia in the USA.

This was followed by another wave in the 1960s -- the so-called "white flight" from the cities which were then perceived as going downhill in terms of crime and disorder.  This one is key in terms of generating angst -- with crime occurring in American suburbs, it makes one wonder, "are they as relatively safe as they once were" ?  The media etc. know the 'burbs are the refuge of the middle class, and I can easily imagine them grinding that axe as a psychological warfare measure to generate fear and division.

But in Europe, the cities never really experienced so many problems with crime, and many of the residents remained in the cities rather than trying to obtain a home in areas surrounding the cities.  One aspect is that in Europe, owning and operating a car is really expensive -- road tax, driver's school, insurance, and the cost of gasoline are significantly higher than many places in the USA.  Thus, living away from the city means either that one has the cash available to support having a car, or one's mobility is bounded by the schedules of trains and buses -- a crap shoot, since some areas are well serviced while others have only scant service.

In the last 2 to 3 decades, there has been more movement to the periphery of cities.  But not so much because of crime, but because the costs of renting and owning property in the cities have gone up quite a bit.

Now, places like London, Paris, etc. are in their own class.  As large cities, there has emerged a permanent problem with violent crime, particularly in certain neighborhoods where the social housing projects have concentrated migrants.  And those banlieu's in Paris are well known in France (and Europe, generally) as places to avoid.  Nothing to see there besides plain-jane urban structures in any case.

Cheers