Grand Paris and Electronic Dance Music: Nightlife Policies, Neoliberal Urban Planning, and the Gentrification of the Banlieues

Paris, late 2000s. Rumor has it that the city has become the “European capital of sleep.” A petition titled “Paris: when the night dies in silence,” draws an undeniable conclusion echoed from Le Monde to The New York Times.[1] Its authors are alarmed by the agony of Parisian nightlife, stifled by legislation considered too strict. Realizing that its reputation as a sleeping beauty is tarnishing its tourist appeal, the City of Paris finally reacts: in November 2010, it joins forces with the Police Department and the Île-de-France Region to organize the first États généraux de la nuit (General Assembly of the Night) at City Hall. This event marks a turning point. Nightlife had been subjected to repressive politics aimed at containing its activity, but then started benefitting from an unprecedented reinvestment (Gwiazdzinski 2014).  Even a Night Council is created in 2014, in order to achieve the proposals and projects discussed.[2] The City of Paris therefore not only acknowledges its nightlife crisis, it is reacting by implementing public funding and policies. But what does such a turnaround underlie? The City of Paris reconsiders its attractiveness and development by investing in nightlife as an activity to capitalize on.[3] Nearly twelve million euros are made available to develop policies focusing on three main areas: mediation, the stimulation of Parisian nightlife, and its international promotion.[4] Integrated to these policies, the festive event-cultures of electronic dance music (St John 2017) have benefited from this investment: experiencing an incredible growth, they redeployed in the capital and its banlieues (suburbs of the periphery, generally lower-class). The new festive cartography they outline became part of the territorial planning project of Grand Paris. Involved in processes of instrumentalization of culture, they have contributed to the discursive reinvention of the banlieues and to their gentrification.

Between Revival and Institutionalization

In the early 2010s, a new generation of collectives, events, record labels and artists came to life around electronic dance music in Paris. Like Surpr!ze, the agency behind the Concrete venue since 2011 and the Weather Festival since 2013; We Love Art, which runs the Peacock Society and We Love Green festivals; or Sonotown, in charge of artist booking at the Machine du Moulin Rouge venue among others. Many collectives flourished, often collaborating with each other, such as La Mamie’s, Die Nacht, Berlinons Paris or Alter Paname. Whilst electronic dance music resonates in its full diversity, techno and house music prevail in clubs, on barges, during festivals, in squats, cultural institutions and in ephemeral and “atypical” spaces. Discreet events, attracting a public of connoisseurs, and other ones, gathering huge crowds, happen day and night, both inside and outside the limits of the city.

Born from the collaboration between record labels, artists, record shops, collectives, clubs, partygoers and music connoisseurs, this network quickly leads to the development of a dynamic local scene. Relayed by independent online media and by the specialized press, in particular Trax and Tsugi magazines, an intense discursive activity accompanies the scene and takes part in its organization and its cohesion. Despite its infancy, this new generation displays an attachment to vinyl, record shops, the cultural imaginaries of rave/free party and Berlin warehouse (Kosmicki 2010). The return to the techno aesthetic is a way to claim a certain purism. The new Parisian techno/house impulse thus likes to define itself in relation to 1990s techno, and in opposition to the electronic dance scene immediately preceding it (Latex 2014).

Finally, if the Parisian electronic dance music scene asserts itself as a breeding ground for DJs and producers in high demand outside the capital and abroad, it also welcomes many foreign artists. It is thus strongly grounded in translocal dynamics (Bennett and Peterson 2004). Through the event and media involvement of organizations such as Boiler Room (BR), Resident Advisor (RA) and Red Bull Music Academy (RBMA), the Parisian scene has found a place in the cosmopolitan networks of the electronic dance music culture revival. As a significant example, RA’s 2012 documentary Real Scenes: Paris presents the techno scene as the sign of a festive renaissance taking place primarily in the banlieues and on the Seine quaysides, as disproving the so-called death of the Parisian nightlife.

Offering cutting-edge programming, combining concerts, exhibitions and conferences with the cream of the music world's luminaries, the RBMA organized two festivals in Paris in 2016 and 2017, with the mission of exploring and celebrating the capital’s musical cultural heritage and its rich local scenes. Benefiting from the RBMA subtle programming and communication, Paris then gained access to a space of decisive international influence. The boom of electronic dance music in Paris in the early 2010s can be linked to the public policies of reinvestment in nightlife. The scene has indeed been very well received on the institutional level. Many electronic dance music actors have regularly performed in cultural institutions such as the Palais de Tokyo, the Gaîté Lyrique, the Quai Branly Museum or the Institut du monde arabe, which have bet in this way on rejuvenating their image and their audience. The dynamics of institutionalization – in particular of heritagization and legitimization at work there – reflected the new positioning of the City with regard to these musical cultures. The exhibitions Electro-sound, from the lab to the dancefloor (2016) in the Espace de la Fondation EDF, the exhibition Rêve Électro, de Kraftwerk à Daft Punk (2019) at the Philharmonie de Paris, the awarding of the Légion d’honneur to Laurent Garnier for “thirty years of service to electronic dance music,” leave no doubt that electronic dance music has become part of the heritage of the City of Paris.[5]

The stakes are also economic: the popularization of this music seems obvious, it now reaches a large audience and the sector has largely been professionalized. Conducted in 2016, a study by SACEM estimated the annual revenue from electronic dance music in France at four hundred sixteen million euros (Braun and Pellerin 2016).[6] In 2014, Adrien Betra, director of the Weather festival and the venue Concrete, emphasized this:

Today, there is a political will to move in this direction. They say to themselves: “It’s strange, in Berlin they make a billion and a half euros in revenue from electronic dance music and it creates jobs, it keeps the city alive... while we have fewer and fewer tourists! (quoted in Les Inrockuptibles 2014).

The promotion of Paris as a festive tourist destination is indeed at play.  Electronic dance music actors are clearly taking part in this process. Active since 1996, the Technopol association has enormously contributed to the promotion and institutional recognition of electronic dance music in France, as well as to the improvement of the dialogue with public authorities. Through the Techno Parade and Paris Electronic Week, the association has played a key role in the popularization of electronic dance music and in the reorganization and professionalization of its sector. As Tommy Vaudecrane of Technopol says:

Before 2010, we had at least a dozen organizational dossiers causing problems every year [...]. This has changed thanks to the evolution of public authorities’ mindsets, the action of our association which has trained organizers, and the involvement of regular businesspeople who know their trade well. Festivals are now better recognized for their impact on the local economy and the territory’s influence (quoted in Collectif 2017).

The Media under a Spell

The institutionalization of the electronic scene accompanies a renewal of media discourses. Formerly stigmatized in the mainstream press, electronic dance music is now treated in a largely positive and enthusiastic tone in the columns of Télérama, Le Point, Le Figaro, Paris Match and many more. Journalists swoon over the awakening of the Parisian party scene, its international influence, the dynamism of the Parisian techno scene and its refined taste for cutting-edge and experimental aesthetics. They are fascinated by the electronic dance music heroes of yesterday and today, the festive spirit of freedom of rave/free party culture and discovering the intense festive activity of the banlieues. These praises often contain grateful recognition for the City of Paris, in accordance with the ambition it has cultivated to promote its festive image. Adrien Betra of the Surpr!ze collective expresses this very clearly when talking about the Weather Festival in the daily newspaper Libération: “The city council was willing to support us, because it makes Paris more dynamic, and we are seeing a return of festive tourism” (quoted in Lecarpentier 2015). By covering the electronic dance music activity, the mainstream press not only echoes this new image of the capital, it also performs it: “After years of stagnation, the city is rediscovering its techno nights and its festive energy. A success that overflows outside the borders of the capital” (Lecarpentier 2015).

To give it more substance, the scene activity is anchored in a historical continuity. This is exactly the purpose of the documentary webseries Touche Française (2016), which first traces the origins of the current electronic dance music scene in the raves of the 1990s, and then in the evolutions of the ‘French touch’. What is a better way to give cachet to the Parisian scene than associating it with the libertarian utopia of raves, and with transcontinental legends like Laurent Garnier, Daft Punk, Air or Justice? Presented in this way, the Parisian party scene is more than alive, it stems from an authentic French tradition. The media discourses dreaming up this genealogy tend to consider the “death of nightlife” associated with the end of the 2000s as a brief parenthesis, from which the revival of Parisian electronic dance music and partying naturally emerges.

Investing the Quaysides and the Banlieues

As it redeploys itself, the electronic dance music activity is outlining a new cartography of Parisian festive nightlife – utilizing parks, cultural institutions, unused buildings awaiting contracting, industrial wastelands, squats... Not surprisingly, these dynamics of change marked by the extension towards the banlieues and the quaysides, the occupation of ephemeral spaces and public spaces, were part of the proposals discussed during the États généraux de la nuit (General Assembly of the Night). Mao Peninou, the deputy mayor of Paris, during the 2010 General Assembly, said:

Some ephemeral spaces, when they are inactive, could be utilized temporarily. [...] Then, outside the capital, within the scope of Paris-métropole (Grand Paris), we encourage the establishment of new festive spaces […] We will gradually make the Seine quaysides for pedestrians only, especially on the Left Bank, so there is no doubt these spaces will open up. And then we will start to work [...] by district on which squares we can open. There are a certain number of parks [...] in which we have set up concessions, and we will develop this policy. [...] Public space is going to be more and more occupied (quoted in Le Monde 2010).

Removed from residential areas, the Seine quaysides offer an ideal position for festive activity. The 24-hour license granted to the Concrete venue in 2017 by jurisdiction has allowed the club to remain open continuously, attesting to the good relationship with the public authorities (Narlian 2017). However, it is on the edges of the périphérique (Paris’ ring road) and especially beyond it, that electronic dance parties and the numerous structures that organize them have flourished during the 2010s. Festivals are the most spectacular manifestation of this investment in the banlieues. In 2014, the Weather Festival welcomed thirty-five thousand participants over a weekend on the runways of Le Bourget airport. Others, such as the Macki Music (Carrières-sur-Seine), the Area 217 (Brétigny-sur-Orge) or the Marvellous Island (Torcy) also bet on the outdoors to offer getaways outside Paris.

The Alternative Rhetoric and Real Estate Speculation

The choice of occupying green spaces and industrial wastelands implicitly refers to the cultural imaginaries of rave/free party (O’Grady 2017) and Berlin warehouse (Leloup 2016). The so-called “atypical” cultural venues (6B, Main D’Œuvres, Station Gare des Mines, Pavillon du Docteur Pierre, Halle Papin) are presented according to a rhetoric of creativity, alternativity, self-management, conviviality, solidarity and ephemerality, which are particularly well suited to the imaginaries mobilized by electronic dance music events.

But these places do not simply position themselves on a party economy: all of them put forward a project of democratizing access to artistic creation and culture, the alternative occupation of spaces contributing to support transdisciplinary and experimental creative practices. According to the discourses they employ, these spaces would also carry out social work. Located in various neighborhoods of the banlieues, these places are defined as open to all, as providing a local cultural offering to the inhabitants of the neighborhood and as participating in promoting social mixing and solidarity.

However, the audience of atypical cultural places, just like that of electronic dance music events, remains largely homogeneous. It can be broadly characterized as young, white and Parisian. In the magazine Antidote, the journalist Maxime Retailleau reports the words of Eric Daviron of the Collectif MU, musical programmer of La Station Gare des Mines:

“We attract queers, straights, ‘hip’ but open-minded people” [...] says Eric. Although the place is poorly served by public transportation, most people who go there are Parisian. “We don’t have many people from the neighborhood who come to our parties,” admits Eric, “although we sometimes try to organize events for them.” La Station’s audience thus mixes young, penniless artists and art students, mingling with a wealthier population that has come to slum it up, bored with the chic of clubs inside the capital, considered too bland (quoted in Retailleau 2018).

Aladdin Charni, founder of the Freegan Pony, the Péripate and the Pipi Caca, also says:

There are two types of clientele, the one we would like to have and the one we have. In fact, from the beginning we had the idea of having a very heterogeneous clientele, in this case we are in a neighborhood here, Porte de la Villette, quite difficult. We really wanted to have a mix of Parisians, locals, migrants, homeless people, prostitutes. […] Unfortunately, we have more people from Paris than from the neighborhood. [...] So it’s not a heterogeneous enough population for our taste, but it’s hopefully going to be (quoted in Reportage au Freegan Pony 2016).

Therefore, we must ask ourselves: to whom are the discourses of the alternative addressed to? Who do they appeal to? To whom are these spaces and events attractive, even intended for? And above all, what do they contribute and produce? Indeed, atypical cultural spaces and electronic dance music events take part in dynamics much broader than the discourses which supposedly characterize them. The partners with whom they associate ground them in real estate projects with ambitions going far beyond supporting the development of local and alternative artistic and festive activity. The building occupied by 6B belongs to the real estate developer Brémond, in charge of the construction of the new eco-neighborhood “Néaucité” in Saint-Denis banlieue. Other partners and sponsors of 6B include the Île-de-France Region, the municipality of Saint-Denis and the corporate company Orange. The Station Gare des Mines is housed in a building belonging to the developer SNCF Immobilier and is supported by the Île-de-France Region, the SACEM, the Centre national de la musique (CNM) and the City of Paris. For the occupation of the Pavillon du Docteur Pierre, the Soukmachines collective signed an agreement with the Company of Mixed Economy for the Development and Management of the city of Nanterre (SEMNA) and the Etic property company. The backers, partners and funding that support the activity of such places, shed light on the broader dynamics in which they are embedded. On the local level, they are involved in real estate projects that aim at the urban renewal of the neighborhoods in which they are based (Correia 2018). Their activity participates in the “making of the city,” of real estate promoters who claim to be working on urban renewal concerned with the environment and social solidarity in relation to the evolution of the neighborhood, while at the same time inscribing it in the economic and cultural development of the territory. By integrating the rhetoric and activity of atypical cultural places, the promoters present their real estate projects as being in the general interest. On the Brémond Group’s website we can read:

Culture, solidarity and environmental protection are all reflections of the energies of a territory. Brémond offers genuine place to the creative world in the construction of living spaces so that the sensitive universe can participate in the identity and the spirit of the place. [...] It is the historical partner of 6B: [...] professionals, associations and passionate individuals [...] thus accompanying the urban and cultural mutation of Seine-Saint-Denis.[7]

Similarly, on the SNCF Immobilier’s website: “[SNCF Immobilier] is a leading force in the making of the mobile, connected and inclusive city in partnership with regional governments SNCF Immobilier also contributes to the national housing effort and to territorial planning.”[8] Atypical cultural spaces are not the only ones to support territorial planning by relying on electronic dance music cultures. Without necessarily relying on the alternative discourses, the festivals count several thousand participants, and are a godsend for the local economy, as well as for the attractiveness of the territory (Maggauda 2017). Their large scale and their economic as well as symbolic repercussions are the ground for a collaboration with the regional governments. The discourses of the alternative function as a means of affirming a distinctive positioning, supposedly closer to the original values of electronic dance music, and opposed to the mercantile and mass-marketing aims of festivals. Among the spectrum of collectives and structures investing in the banlieues, some collaborate openly with public authorities, others organize themselves in a more or less clandestine manner (Leloup 2016), thus claiming a form of authenticity.

In contrast to the representations of impoverished and unsafe areas associated with the banlieues, the festive investment of the latter goes hand in hand with its discursive reinvention. Indeed, for many Parisians, the banlieues begin to represent a zone of freedom, a playground full of unconventional spaces to explore, where to party in new ways. The ephemeral character of the occupied spaces gives the party an exciting edge, a hedonistic carefreeness, contrasting with the permanence of clubs inside the capital. The latter, with their small spaces, the omnipresence of security, the prohibitive entrance fees and excessive drink prices, as well as their pressure to profitability, would seem to restrict the spirit of partying. Freeing collectives from these constraints, the spaces in the banlieues give them greater autonomy, particularly in terms of artist bookings, often considered as more cutting-edge and avant-garde: “A club is nice, but [in it] you can’t really transmit your whole world. There is already the world of the place, and often a club is cold, so it’s complicated. Whilst there [in the banlieue], there’s everything we love and it’s really our world,” says Benedetta from Camion Bazar (quoted in Le Renouveau de la Fête 2016). Or Eric Labbé, in 2015, in an interview with Enlarge your Paris: “Three years ago, when you talked to a young person about Saint-Denis, they immediately thought of civil war. Today, a place like 6B has transformed the way people think about the city. It has given it a sexier image” (Boisdormant 2018). This discursive reinvention of the banlieues is widely supported by the blogosphere and the press: “Banlieue is the new cool.”

Grounding in the Grand Paris Project

As an ambitious territorial planning project, Grand Paris claims to make the Île-de-France Region “a globally competitive, ecologically responsible and creative metropolis,” while improving the living conditions of its inhabitants and levelling territorial inequalities in terms of access to culture, housing and public transport.[9] Thanks to the joint development of Paris and its banlieues, this monumental project affirms it is working towards the unity of the Parisian metropolitan area and towards the reconnection of dissociated territories on both symbolic and urbanistic levels. Until then disconnected from inner Paris, the periphery is reintegrated into its territorial planning policies. This is the rationale behind the deployment of clusters of innovation in designated areas of Île-de-France, with specific development strategies (Alternatives Économiques 2017). Among the various clusters of innovation, the Plaine Commune territory in Seine-Saint-Denis is home to the culture and creation cluster. This is why Luc Besson's Cité du Cinéma, the Cité des Humanités et des Sciences Sociales (Condorcet Campus) and many other structures are located in this territory. Artistic and cultural activities thus have a special place in the Grand Paris planning policies. Promoting them amounts to making neighborhoods of the banlieue attractive to a “creative class,” a supposedly young, qualified and innovative population, and considered as the main driver of the economic development by authors who conceptualize the creative city. In the words of urbanist Elsa Vivant:

In their choice of residential location, creative workers (executives, engineers, designers, researchers) would prefer the qualities of an urban space that values and encourages creativity, namely a high degree of tolerance and a ‘cool’, relaxed and bohemian atmosphere. The strength of the city would lie in its creative dimension, revealed by its cultural and artistic dynamism (Vivant 2009).

More likely, new artistic and cultural activity in the banlieues must be able to target populations with stronger buying potentials that can afford home ownership and can attract high value-adding companies. Popularized by Richard Florida, among others, the notion of the creative city has been embraced by city governments both rhetorically and in terms of public action as an economic development strategy (Florida 2002). And this despite the criticism that this notion receives for its vagueness, its lack of scientific backing, and its proximity to a commercial discourse (Le Corf 2013). The Grand Paris project is based on the logic of the creative city (Lebeau 2014): the stimulation of artistic and cultural activity is articulated with the expansion of public transportation, the creation of green spaces, and the construction or renovation of housing in the working-class neighborhoods of Paris banlieues. In this same logic, the call for projects Inventons la Métropole du Grand Paris (Let's invent the Grand Paris Metropolis) offers groups of companies, architects and investors, numerous sites in banlieues to develop “innovative urban and economic” projects.[10] About this Elsa Vivant writes:

Cultural activity has become an indicator of a city’s quality of life, particularly in the ranking of cities “where it’s good to live” regularly published in magazines. Improving the living environment (and making it known) is becoming a necessary condition for attracting companies [...] whose executives are looking for cultural services (Vivant 2009).

The rhetoric of Grand Paris makes extensive use of words with positive connotations such as renewal, upgrading, regeneration or revitalization to describe processes of social and urban transformations as if they pertained to the general interest (Agier and Lamotte 2017). These words conceal the social violence of these transformation processes and expel any propensity to critique them. Urban planning and the stimulation of cultural activity contribute to the urbanistic and symbolic redefinition of working-class neighborhoods of the banlieues. Opening the door to land speculation, these redefinitions displace the present populations by increasing the cost of living and weakening their access to housing (Clerval and Fleury 2009). The displacement of inhabitants isn't only economic, it is also social. These neighborhoods’ transformations have resulted in the erasure of popular memory and social life. The term gentrification is appropriate to describe these processes, which are similar to a reconfiguration of social hierarchies on an urban scale (Smith 1996). Even more important is the erasure of racial dynamics, which affect neighborhoods historically inhabited by populations from countries formerly colonized by France (Gonick 2011). Embedded in the doctrine of French republican universalism (Ndiaye 2009), these processes testify to the inability of public authorities to take into account inequalities rooted in the legacy of a past colonial domination (Ivekovic 2006). Therefore, underneath its progressive facade, claiming to aim at correcting inequalities and improving the living conditions for all inhabitants of the Parisian metropolitan area, the Grand Paris project conceals primarily neoliberal logics (Enright 2016).

In a program on national radio France Culture about the Grand Paris, the educator and president of the association Zonzon91 Aboubacar Sakanoko states:

They can write beautiful sentences, and say “Yes, Grand Paris will be open to all, it will allow this, that,” it will just displace people, it will favor others and the vehicle is money. We perceive it like that and we live here. [...] Their Grand Paris, it’s not for us, unless I start making 3500 euros and that I transition to the middle class. Then, the Grand Paris, yeah, I might feel involved. They are talking about “living together,” but we already live together in the neighborhoods, so their “living together,” their big words... (quoted in LSD: La série documentaire 2018).

And the mayor of Grigny, Philippe Rio, adds: “The narrative of Grand Paris and metropolization exclusively develops the words like ‘poles of excellence’, ‘innovative territories’ and ‘architectural competitions’. It's all very bling-bling and we don't feel part of this metropolitan project” (quoted in LSD: La série documentaire 2018).

Return to Electronic Dance Music

Whether it is through their association with real estate projects aimed at revalorizing deprived banlieue neighborhoods, through the collaboration with regional governments to stimulate the local economy and the attractiveness of outlying territories, or more generally through the discursive reinvention of the banlieues, the activity of electronic dance music in the periphery has largely been embedded in the logics of Grand Paris. The atypical cultural spaces and electronic dance music events based in Seine-Saint-Denis by collaborating with public authorities have directly participated in this logic that designates this territory as its creative cluster.

The contemporary dynamics of institutionalization of electronic dance cultures, the strong media attention they receive, the professional structuring of their milieu, as well as the frequent collaboration with regional governments or with real estate promoters, lead us to re-interrogate the filiation of the current actors of electronic dance music to their anti-establishment histories, today largely mythologized. Indeed, the contemporary dynamics in which electronic dance music is integrated sharply contrasts with its histories of cultural marginalization and political repression (Lacroix 2017). The constant reference to its pasts of illegitimacy produces a romantic imaginary from which emerges what one can call an “alternative patina” (Thornton 1995). We are witnessing a certain aestheticization of electronic dance music: if its forms are rigorously reproduced, the contemporary dynamics in which it takes part in as well as the audiences it attracts clearly distinguish it from the contexts from which it emerged. And this alternative patina functions as a resource that can transform the stigma of a neighborhood into an asset. Pascale Marie, manager at SNCF Immobilier, said in 2017:

We have many sites in Paris and the banlieues where we have urban renewal projects, and these sites are certainly often quite industrial, they are often perceived as derelict wastelands with sometimes negative connotations. And in order to turn such a site into an urban area, you have to create desire, you have to display a slightly new activity and it is a fact that transitional urbanism allows to offer a first step, a bridge to something else. On the Gare des Mines, the site is a little more difficult, a little more “trashy” even, one could say, and what was important was to have an artistic approach that was perhaps a little stronger than on other sites, therefore more innovative. That’s mainly what caught our attention about the MU Station collective, because its musical choice, a bit experimental was therefore in line with what was expected on this site (quoted in Groupe SNCF 2017).

However, it cannot be said that organizers of electronic dance music events intentionally take part in these processes. Most show a sincere attachment to the anti-establishment histories of electronic dance cultures. Even for those who work closely with public authorities, relationships remain complex, especially with French authorities and laws regarding security requirements. They have to adjust both concretely and discursively to the precarity of their occupation agreements and the impossibility of their perpetuation. This precarity and the discourses on the ephemeral that normalize it demonstrate the ways in which the activity of electronic dance music is instrumentalized with the objective of transitional urbanism. However, whether they like it or not, their activity is integrated into the logics of Grand Paris, a territorial strategy that diverts to its benefit musical cultures perceived as anti-establishment (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999). Historically linked to spaces of transgression, electronic dance music cultures are now involved in processes of institutionalization that are profoundly transforming them. And if the romantic gaze on their protest histories often prevents us from understanding these musical cultures through their contemporary dynamics, the political and marketing strategies of Grand Paris have been able to take advantage of their alternative patina and their cool potential (Frank 1997).

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Picaud, Myrtille. 2017. “Mettre la ville en musique (Paris-Berlin). Quand territoires musicaux, urbains et professionnels évoluent de concert.” Ph.D. Dissertation, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.

Retailleau, Maxime. 2018. “Pourquoi la jeunesse parisienne fait-elle la fête en banlieue?” Antidote. https://magazineantidote.com/nuit/pourquoi-jeunesse-parisienne-fait-elle-fete-banlieue/ (accessed 28 May 2018).

Smith, Neil. 1996. The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. London: Routledge.

St John, Graham. 2017. Weekend Societies, Electronic Dance Music Festivals and Event-Cultures. London: Bloomsbury.

Thornton, Sarah. 1995. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Vivant, Elsa. 2009. Qu’est-ce que la ville créative? Paris: PUF.

Filmography/Radiography

Abdi, Nidal, Malherbe de, Vincent, Decret, Leny, and Jovanovic, Ivan. 2016. Le Renouveau de la Fête. Utopie Tangible.

Boyer, Nicolas. 2016. Reportage au Freegan Pony, un restaurant pas comme les autres. Cercle des volontaires.

Fédou, Guillaume and Tatin Jean-François. 2016. Touche Française. Silex Films, Arte Creative.

Kervran, Perrine. 2018. “Le Grand Paris, quels avenirs pour les quartiers populaires?” LSD, la série documentaire. France Culture.

Nation, Patrick. 2012. Real Scenes: Paris. Clockwise Media, Resident Advisor.

Notes