THE RACIAL STATE:

In the post-war period, it got worse - not the smell, but the geographical inequality. As in many other countries, the effort to build new housing was led by the state. But unlike, say, London where, social housing is spread throughout the capital, the Parisian approach was build on the outskirts.

In part this was because of where the available land was - Paris having been spared the bomb damage suffered by London. However, the scope for large scale development also gave the French planners a chance to implement the theories of modernist architects such as Le Corbusier.

In the 1920s, the Godfather of Brutalism drew up a plan to flatten a stretch of downtown Paris and replace it with a grid featuring 18 identical concrete towers. Thankfully, that never happened. After the war, however, modernism was unleashed on those powerless to resist. And thus we come to the third meaning of banlieue - a specific reference to the vast 'concretopias' constructed around the edges of Paris and other cities in the 50s, 60s and 70s .

At the heart of each of these banlieues, is the cité - an inward facing cluster of dehumanising, brutalist tower blocks. Following modernist dogma, the new neighbourhoods were heavily zoned: the residential, commercial and other functions of the community built as separate centres, instead of evolving together organically as they do in a traditional mixed-use neighbourhood. In theory - and modernism is all about the theory - the different centres were to be linked together by bus. In practice, the links were inadequate, as were those from the banlieues into central Paris.

The first inhabitants left as soon as they could and they were replaced by people with no other option. From the 1960s onwards, that has increasingly meant immigrants, especially those from France's former colonies in North Africa. Thus to the geographical, social, economic and architectural segregation of greater Paris - ethnic and religious divisions were added too.

It's hard to think of a worse physical context for the successful integration of millions of incomers. The banlieues may as well have been designed as ghettoes.

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