Preferred Citation: Stovall, Tyler. The Rise of the Paris Red Belt. Berkeley: University of California Press, A casual visitor to Bobigny would have noticed little that distinguished the community from any of the other villages that dotted the countryside of the Ile-de-France at the turn of the century. Our hypothetical visitorβprobably a Parisian who had come to Bobigny on a Sunday to escape briefly the oppressive urbanity of the capital [1] βwould have observed a small town center of a few blocks around the place Carnot, consisting of small, solid two-story houses separated by rutted, poorly paved streets.
Dominating the place Carnot was the church of the parish of Bobigny, an unadorned structure barely thirty years old. Extending away from the church in all directions were little more than "vast blackish-colored fields slowly worked by a silent 'gardener,' pushing his plow yoked to a Percheron.
Although Bobigny is located just ten kilometers from the towers of Notre Dame, in Paris seemed far away. Yet by the turn of the century such a view was more than a little illusory; Paris was getting closer all the time. Adjacent communities that lay nearer to Paris, such as Aubervilliers and Pantin, had already lost much of their rural character and been transformed into working-class industrial suburbs. Bobigny could no longer realistically claim to be a small provincial village.
For centuries its agriculture had been. Unfortunately for Balbynians who held this attitude, the Parisians were not so standoffish: more and more of them were coming to the small community to spend time in "the country.
And soon weekending Parisians would be followed by many others who saw in Bobigny not merely a pleasant pastoral refuge but a place to live as well.
