Paris, a ‘world tourism city’ (Maitland and Newman 2009), was the first metropolitan tourist destination in Europe. Since the nineteenth century, tourism has intrinsically formed part of the urban development of the city. Some of its most famous places are the result of major tourism events, such as the International Exhibitions of 1889 and 1901. By contrast with other major European urban tourism destinations, such as Berlin or Barcelona, mass tourism development in Paris was not a recent phenomenon of the past two decades caused by relatively recent developments such as a notable mega-event (e.g. the Barcelona Olympic Games of 1992) or political development (e.g. German reunification). Paris is certainly facing several issues related to the management of major tourism flows: the hyper-concentration of tourists in particular sites and areas such as Le Marais, Montmartre or Notre Dame; tourism gentrification, commercial mono-activity and the commodification of a number of key tourist sites; rent increases, etc. Nevertheless, we do not seem to observe in Paris the large-scale public expressions of hostility vis-à-vis tourism which have manifested themselves in recent years in cities such as Barcelona or Berlin and have been widely reported in the European media. While the residents of Paris may complain about the visible impacts of the presence of tourists in the city (e.g. noise, street congestion or concentrations in specific night spots), this does not amount to what we could identify as an organized, large-scale opposition to tourism. This chapter aims to contribute to the understanding of this paradox – that there seems to be ‘no tourism conflict’ in Paris.
How can we explain this lack of (noticeable) contestation? Is it due to the fact that tourism is considered a consensual and banal social phenomenon in a metropolis such as Paris? To what extent is tourism a component of the way broader metropolitan issues are framed? What kind of resistance to tourism can we identify in Paris? This contribution is organized in four sections. We first give an overview of the Paris ‘tourismscape’1 (van der Duim 2007) as it was historically formed and as it has been evolving more recently. The second section sketches a theoretical approach to the idea of ‘resistance’ and introduces the notions of ‘infrapolitics’ or ‘micropolitics’, which we argue are more appropriate to grasp the non-institutionalized, non-formalized forms of resistance to tourism witnessed in Paris, which are subsequently described in that section. In the third section we outline the increasing demands for the public and private regulation of (some impacts of) tourism which have emerged in recent years. Finally, the fourth section analyses examples of alternative forms of tourism as possible expressions of resistance to mainstream and mass tourism.
Old and new Paris tourismscapes
Paris is a global tourist destination and the first tourist city in Europe, attracting 29.3 million tourists in Paris intra muros in 2013 (46.8 million in the broader Paris city-region) (OTCP 2014). The main tourist areas have been identified as the Paris Central Tourist District (Duhamel and Knafou 2007), comprising the Champs-Elysées, the Marais, Île Saint-Louis, the Latin Quarter and Montmartre. According to a study carried out by the Comité Régional du Tourisme (CRT) Paris-Île-de-France and IPSOS Marketing in 2009 (CRT 2010), even repeat visitors coming back to Paris for a second or third visit tend to visit the same places: the Louvre, Montmartre or the Eiffel Tower. The Louvre welcomed 9.2 million visitors in 2013 (70 per cent of which were foreigners) and the Musée d’Orsay 3.5 million.
The density of geotagged pictures posted on social networks (Flickr, Panoramio) – largely by tourists2 – reveals the most photographed areas in Paris (Figure 2.1) and draws the contours of a polycentric tourism map. In the centre of Paris two main axes are clearly visible. The first follows the river Seine, from the Île Saint-Louis to the Eiffel Tower. Along the river we find, from East to West, most of the major tourist sights of Paris: Notre Dame, the Orsay museum, the Quai Branly Museum or the Eiffel Tower. The second axis stretches from the Louvre and the Tuileries Gardens to the Champs Elysées, up to the Arc de Triomphe. The map also shows other areas of tourist concentration south of the river Seine (i.e. the Latin Quarter, the Sorbonne University and the Panthéon) and, on the northern bank, in the historical district of the Marais. In the north of the city, Montmartre also appears as a major tourist hotspot.
Figure 2.1 Tourism hotspots in Paris: ‘heatmap’ of the highest densities of pictures posted on Flickr, 2009–13.
Source: Map realized by Gaël Chareyron, in Chareyron et al. 2014. Based on OpenStreet map. CC BY-SA © OpenStreetMap contributors.
The tourist hotspots of Paris are the result of the accumulation of tourist guides’ prescriptions and related tourist practices over a long period of time (Hancock 2003). The Baedeker guide in 1894 specifically recommended the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle and the Concorde, among others (Cohen 2000). The itinerary proposed by that guide followed the axis starting in the Louvre and ending at the Place de l’Etoile, which, to this day, is still characterized by the highest degree of tourist activity. Successive urban interventions in Paris – some of them related to major international events in the nineteenth century such as the Universal and International Exhibitions of 1855, 1867, 1878, 1889 and 1900 – resulted in the production of a consolidated tourismscape, whose expansion steadily continued throughout the twentieth century through more international events hosted in Paris (e.g. the International exhibition of 1937) but also, from the 1960s onwards, through the active enhancement of the city’s urban and architectural heritage. The Marais is a good example of the creation of a major cultural and tourism district through the recovery of the splendid classical architecture of the area. Following the creation of a protected historic district (Secteur Sauvegardé) in 1963, the Plan de Sauvegarde et de Mise en Valeur du Marais guided the refurbishment of the hôtels particuliers (aristocratic townhouses) of the area and the transformation of the former economic activities (mainly small-scale craft and manufacturing) into cultural ones (APUR 2004). Heritage restoration contributed to the gentrification of the Marais district and encouraged the development of new activities related either to creative industries (fashion, design) or to the night economy. In addition, the relocation of gay bars and venues from Les Halles to the Marais resulted in the consolidation of the latter as a hotspot of Parisian nightlife.
The analysis of tourism concentrations in Paris therefore clearly highlights a small group of consolidated tourism areas in the city (Bauder et al. 2014). But it also allows us to identify new tourism development areas which, while remaining less visited compared to the hotspots mentioned before, have experienced a new tourism demand which we could describe as ‘off the beaten tracks’ (Maitland 2010, 2013). A new geography of tourism in Paris has indeed slowly emerged since the 1990s (Freytag 2008; Gravari-Barbas and Fagnoni 2013). This is in part related to the urban planning policies developed during the last decades of the twentieth century in the Eastern part of Paris, which aimed at rebalancing the historical disparity between the wealthy Western part of the city and the poorer neighbourhoods in the East. New large-scale redevelopment projects have been implemented in former industrial areas (Ingallina and Park 2009), such as La Villette (a major cultural complex and urban park built on the site of the city’s old slaughterhouses) or Bercy (where former wine warehouses were redeveloped as an entertainment and shopping ‘village’). New tourism patterns similar to those analysed by other scholars in London (Pappalepore et al. 2011) or Berlin (Füller and Michel 2014) can therefore also be observed in Paris. Even if they do not match numerically the concentrations witnessed in the established hotspots of Paris, tourism patterns are now clearly visible in specific areas such as Belleville, Bastille, the Canal Saint-Martin area, La Butte aux Cailles, etc. Tourism development in these districts has been encouraged by public and private initiatives, with the creation of associations dedicated to tourism development, using urban walks as an instrument to encourage visitors to discover new districts, as will be discussed in the final section of this chapter. A considerable number of local associations, start-ups and enterprises have been created over the past years in order to deal with new tourist demand, for instance Ça se visite, Like a local, Parisiens d’un jour, Meeting the French, Balades Paris chanson, Paris le nez en l’air, etc.
The development of a new geography of tourism in Paris towards these new districts has happened in parallel with processes of gentrification in the same areas (Clerval 2013). Researchers have highlighted the convergence between tourism development and the urban and social changes of some districts, specifically through gentrification processes (Gladstone and Préau 2008). In London, for instance, old and new gentrified areas are visited by tourists who are keen to discover ‘everyday life’ (Maitland 2008). We could therefore hypothesize that in Paris, the tourist can sometimes be a ‘gentrifier’, partly in relation to second-home ownership (Chevalier et al. 2013), as for example in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg (Dörfler 2010) or in New York (Gravari-Barbas 2014). While gentrification has been a widespread phenomenon in Paris for decades, beginning in the Marais after the creation of the protected historic district in 1962, it has extended more recently to districts such as Belleville in the north-east of Paris (Clerval 2013). These newly gentrified areas have also become sites of ‘new tourism’ development. But the development of a new geography of tourism in Paris, in parallel to gentrification processes, has not, thus far, raised massive or visible opposition. It appears generally accepted by the local population due, to an extent, to locally driven answers to international tourism demand.
Forms of resistance to the impacts of tourism in Paris
If compared to the situation witnessed in other European cities in recent years, e.g. Barcelona or Berlin, as mentioned in the introduction to this volume (see also Novy 2013), there does not seem to be visible manifestations of anti-tourist/anti-tourism opposition in Paris: no ‘anti-tourists’ graffiti in public spaces, no large-scale mobilizations on social networks,3 no noticeable reactions in the local and regional newspapers to the issue of mass tourism flows. While we do not observe open conflicts and large-scale institutionalized or formalized mobilizations against tourism, we do, however, observe the development of what we have termed processes of ‘infra’ or ‘micropolitics’, through which Paris residents seek to avoid tourist nuisances.
When thinking about resistance (to unwanted social phenomena), it is actually useful to distinguish between several regimes of action, on the basis of their visibility, intentionality and relation to hegemonic powers. Whereas resistance is often analysed in terms of collective mobilizations, i.e. institutionalized and visible social movements, a number of analyses identify everyday and hidden practices as ‘arts of resistance’ (De Certeau 1990; Scott 1990). This notion of resistance has been developed in studies that build on Foucault and Gramsci, in order to understand the agency of the subaltern and dominated. These arts of resistance also imply a capacity to subvert hegemonic discourses and rely on ‘hidden transcripts’ (Scott 1990). They constitute ‘infrapolitics’,4 a concept that refers mainly to the politics of the dominated (Bayart et al. 2008), which are not always intentionally ‘political’ (Bayat 2010). In that perspective, the lack of noticeable protests about a specific issue does not mean that no resistance exists.
In this chapter we assume that the above mentioned concepts are not only relevant to understanding the urban poor or visibly dominated citizens, but that the terms ‘infra’ or ‘micropolitics’ can be used to refer to hidden practices and non-visible actions in a more general context, e.g. to understand resistance in the tourist city. In this sense, resistance cannot be conflated with collective mobilisation, defined as an institutionalized and visible political movement directly challenging hegemonic discourses, e.g. in the urban context by claiming a right to the city and its amenities (Burawoy 1991) or fighting globalized dominant development models, including tourism-inspired ones (Stacy 1994). What then are the ‘infrapolitics of tourism’ and who are the subjects of resistance? Several studies have dealt with such forms of resistance in the metropolis (Burawoy 1991) but few have been conducted in tourism studies (Cheong and Miller 2000; Owens 2008). They are mainly concerned with forms of resistance by local communities, overwhelmingly in non-urban settings such as Goa (Zafer Dogan 1989; Routledge 2001; Saldanha 2010), through the use of the notion of ‘identity resistance’. Resistance may challenge tourism development, or tourism strategies and the politics that define who is legitimate as a beneficiary from tourism, as in the case of the resistance of street vendors in Cusco (Steel 2012) (see also Lederman in this volume).
In this chapter we argue that rather than illustrating a case of explicit, formalized social resistance challenging hegemonic urban trends, Paris represents a particularly interesting case of ‘infrapolitical’ and ‘micropolitical’ resistance, which can also be observed in other tourist cities. As shown by Quinn in the case of Venice (2006), various microtactics involving negotiating time and space demonstrate the local residents’ practical knowledge of tourist practices and their efforts to avoid crossing tourist hotspots. In Paris, the residents of the Montmartre district tend to avoid sites such as the Place du Tertre or the surroundings of the Montmartre Basilica.5 A similar phenomenon is observed in the Notre Dame cathedral area: while tourists spend time sitting on the square, enjoying the setting and taking pictures, local residents strategically remain on the north side of the street alongside the parvis and the Jean-Paul II square (Mermet and Chapuis 2011; Chapuis et al. 2013).6 Residents adapt their daily mobility practices to the rhythms of tourism flows: for instance, residents of Abbesses (Montmartre) or of the pedestrian streets of the Marais (such as rue des Francs-Bourgeois) avoid frequenting their neighbourhood on Saturday or Sunday. Moreover, as was implicitly said in 1992 in the second edition of the Assises du tourisme parisien, a public workshop reflecting on the role of tourism in the city of Paris, the ‘legendary aggressiveness’ of Parisians against tourists may also be interpreted as an exasperated reaction against the huge numbers of tourists or as microtactics of creating distance (Vial 1992).
Reactions to tourism may be more organized, such as those expressed against short-term apartment rentals, which can be interpreted as a form of micropolitics. As in other tourist metropolises, short-term vacation rentals have increased in Paris. The discourse promoted by defenders of Airbnb and similar services (see Introduction to this volume) insist on the opportunities that short-term rentals offer to local residents: the additional rental revenue is supposed to allow them to continue living in hyper-gentrified neighbourhoods. However, the proliferation of vacation rentals across the city has been the cause of numerous conflicts (around nocturnal noise, disturbance of the neighbourhood life, changes in local retail, etc.) that have led to both residents’ complaints and new regulations. For instance, a number of commonhold or condominium associations (copropriétés) introduced new regulations that made it illegal for a building’s tenants/owners to sublet their apartments for short-term vacation rentals and sued those who continued to do so. The City of Paris also introduced new measures aimed at controlling the proliferation of such rentals. In December 2014, the Conseil de Paris published a list of 257 addresses (containing over 8,000 apartments) that the city would have a ‘right of first-refusal’ (pre-emption right) to buy, in order to convert the housing units into subsidized (social) housing. According to O’Sullivan (2014: n.p.) ‘the idea is to give [the city of] Paris the ability to act as a social mix monitor, stepping in to prevent social segregation in the public interest if they feel it is under threat.’ In May 2015, the relevant municipal services controlled 1,868 apartments in 98 buildings mainly in the Marais district, in order to identify those that were not the main residence of their owners and had not received the authorization to be rented out on a short-term basis. While most of the controlled apartments were identified through a search of the Airbnb website, it is interesting to note that several others were brought to the attention of the authorities by local residents. According to the Deputy-Mayor in charge of housing, some residents complained about their building being transformed into an ‘informal hotel’ (Le Figaro, 22 May 2015).
A different example of mobilization is the reaction against the ‘love locks’ on the Pont des Arts and other Parisian bridges. This ‘invented’ tourism tradition, which started in 2008, consists of hanging locks with two lovers’ names on the bridge railings, and throwing the keys into the river Seine. Apart from visual pollution, love locks are considered by many a degradation of the UNESCO-protected historical heritage of that part of Paris. In the case of the Pont des Arts, the weight of the locks has endangered some elements of the bridge itself (in June 2014, part of a railing collapsed). Perhaps ironically, the most visible mobilization against love locks was initiated by two American residents of Paris, who were previously visitors to the city and had settled there.7 They created a website (www.nolovelocks.com) and an online petition that was signed by more than 10,000 people, and were invited to discuss the issue with the City Council staff under the mayor Anne Hidalgo elected in 2014. The mobilization led to the installation of new railings, to an awareness-raising campaign encouraging tourists to demonstrate their love in alternative ways less harmful to the city’s heritage, and to the deployment of policemen preventing informal street vendors to sell locks to tourists.
Problems related to tourism are also managed on a more regular basis, through the activities of several residents’ associations which aim at the improvement of quality of life in various Parisian districts that experience heavy tourism flows: Les Amis du Champ de Mars around the Eiffel Tower, Vivre le Marais in the Marais area, ADDM 18 (Association de Défense de Montmartre et du 18ème) in Montmartre and other associations in Belleville and la Butte aux Cailles, among others. Some associations date back to the 1970s (ADDM 18), the 1980s (Vivre le Marais) or the 1990s (Les Amis du Champ de Mars), and have a relatively large membership (around 1,800 for Vivre le Marais, 300 for ADDM8 or Les Amis du Champ de Mars). These associations were not set up for the purpose of dealing with the impact of tourism as such, but with a variety of ‘quality of life’ issues, such as local heritage preservation, urban planning, green spaces and street cleaning. The impact of tourism has been an occasional issue of concern, but not the only one.
In the Southern part of the Marais (‘SoMa’), a vibrant district considered the epicentre of gay life in Paris, the number of bars, night establishments and restaurants has increased considerably in recent years. The noise issue has become central to local debates, due to the increase in outdoor terraces, especially since the ban on indoor smoking. The main struggle of the Vivre le Marais association concerns the control of unauthorized terraces in public space. This topic has been one of the main reasons that recent new members joined the association. Each opening of a new club or bar has been followed by local opposition, in which residents put banners on their windows calling to ‘stop the noise’, and the association regularly calls for the police to enforce the rules of occupation of the public realm. As a result of their actions, some bars have been temporarily closed. It is, however, important to underline that tourism and tourists as such have not been at the core of these conflicts. Tourists are certainly part of the patrons of clubs and bars, but the initiatives taken by the association as well as non-organized residents have been directed against the managers and owners of the contested venues, not against tourists. More generally, tourism as such is not mentioned in the discourses of these associations, and the legitimacy of tourism development in the area is hardly, if ever, contested.
There is, however, a small number of conflictual issues explicitly related to tourism, such as the presence of tourist buses and informal street vendors and the congestion of key sites. Local mobilizations tried to ban the mass presence of tourist buses in the 1990s in the Marais and, more recently, around the Eiffel Tower and Montmartre. The main arguments are environmental (air pollution) or related to qualify of life. The first mobilization dates back to 1985: a petition which gathered 3,000 signatures against tourist buses in Montmartre, Rivoli and Madeleine, under the impetus of the association Plateforme des comités parisiens d’habitants (created in 1965 by various residents’ associations) which denounced the nuisance posed by tourist buses. The Montmartre association has been the most active on that topic: tourist buses have been accused of adding to the deterioration of the buildings (due to the narrowness of the streets leading to the top of the Montmartre hill) and the environment (through air pollution and noise). In 1985, local authorities complied with the association’s demand to ban tourist buses from the hill of Montmartre and forced them to park and drop off groups on the Barbès Rochechouart boulevard. In 1986 the protests broadened to address the transformation of restaurants and shops due to an increase in tourism. In the 1990s, local residents of Montmartre asked local authorities to expand the area covered by the tourist bus ban. Their activities involved ad hoc collective actions to block car traffic. More recently, residents’ groups from the neighbourhoods in which the bus parking spaces are located have also called for more regulation of bus stands (Collectif des Riverains des boulevards Clichy Rochechouart).
The presence of informal street vendors has also become an issue from the 2000s onwards. In some areas, a considerable number of informal street vendors from Senegal or Pakistan sell tourist souvenirs or counterfeit goods. They are concentrated around the Trocadéro and the Champs de Mars or on the stairs leading to the Montmartre Basilica. Near the Louvre and Notre Dame, groups of female street vendors have developed various tactics to extort money from tourists.9 This shows how the concentration of tourism can contribute to the emergence of ‘nuisance’ issues which affect not just residents, but also tourists themselves. The presence of various marginal activities and informal vendors, often from migrant origin, has become a topic of concern for local residents who have begun to alert public authorities, as did the association of residents Les amis du Champ de Mars.10
Tourism, in Paris, does not constitute a widely acknowledged and specifically identified ‘public problem’ for local residents’ associations. But as discussed above, some of its impacts have been the focus of issue-specific mobilizations. It is telling, in that respect, that some associations make a point of distinguishing, in their public letters, their critique of specific tourism-related nuisances from the broader issue of the presence of tourists and tourism in the city, towards which a generally positive attitude prevails. Interviews carried out with members of Paris residents’ associations11 revealed that tourism is regarded as a ‘normal’ trend and phenomenon for Paris, an unavoidable fact that will keep on growing. Despite the overcrowding of some districts during the weekends, local associations do not demand the reconsideration of the regulations allowing the opening of shops on Sundays (which is only authorized in specific tourist zones such as the Champs-Elysées, Montmartre, the Rivoli street, etc.). It is noticeable that despite the aforementioned problems such as overcrowding, nightlife noise or short-term apartment rentals, not a single association has called for restrictions to seek to reduce the numbers of tourists themselves, even in the most touristic areas such as the Marais.
In their public discourse or during interviews, the members of residents’ associations have developed two strategies in their argument. First, they do not distinguish between tourists and local users. They are aware that both locals and tourists patronize the trendy bars in Abbesses or Marais, and that the precise proportion of each group is hard to determine. In Montmartre, a member of the local association ADDM 18 labelled the Parisians that go there on weekends as ‘local tourists’ (interview October 2014). Second, they focus on the responsibility of local stakeholders: the bar manager who extends his/her terrace, encroaching on public space and reducing the space available for walking; the nightclub owner who does not manage the noise generated by customers; the local politicians who appear unwilling to regulate these nuisances, etc. In some cases, it has even been in the name of tourism that some protests have been led. For instance, the argument developed by the association Amis du Champ de Mars in the upper-class districts surrounding the Eiffel Tower consists of saying that the general improvement in the quality of life in the area would also benefit tourism.
Tourism in Paris seems so unquestionable that even the ‘f*** tourism’ graffiti written on the walls and parvis of the Montmartre Basilica in April 2014 were not interpreted by politicians as a protest against tourism, but as an anarchist attack against the sacred place of the Basilica.12 Problems, tensions and conflicts related to tourism are visible in the quintessential ‘tourist city’ that is Paris. What is noticeable, however, is that the protests that have emerged in response to the above mentioned issues are hardly, if ever, directed at tourism primarily, let alone at tourists themselves. Their presence seems to be considered – and accepted – as an inherent part of urban life, integral to the kind of city which Paris is.
How can we explain the relative absence of organized, widespread protest or resistance against tourism in Paris compared to the situation observed in Barcelona or Berlin in recent years? In Berlin, protest has been partly linked to anti-gentrification movements (see Novy in this volume). In Paris, although gentrification has been spreading to the whole city and has resulted in large-scale urban transformation, there is no clearly visible, socially and politically articulated resistance to gentrification. In fact, protests in central and wealthy districts, such as the hyper-gentrified Marais, are rather concerned with fighting against the building of new social housing units. And in more peripheral and more recently gentrified neighbourhoods in the eastern part of Paris, such as Belleville, the Canal Saint Martin Area, or the Château-Rouge district, mobilizations against gentrification are either weak or non-existent (Clerval 2013). What therefore are the political demands of the residents’ associations which criticize some of the side effects of touristification, if they are neither about tourism per se nor about broader processes of metropolitan transformation such as gentrification?
Increasing demands for the public and private regulation of tourism
As discussed above, there exists today various residents’ associations in the districts in Paris. They cover different scales: for instance, Vivre le Marais covers the 3rd and 4th districts of Paris, but in these two districts other associations have also been created, some of them with a very localized focus, e.g. a few streets (Collectif Pierre au Lard). The members of Vivre le Marais are mostly owner-occupiers and belong to the upper-middle class. When analysing the agenda and demands of these residents’ associations, it is worth reflecting whether they are an expression of ‘NIMBYism’, i.e. homeowners acting defensively to preserve their own self-interests without considering those of others or of the city at large. These associations mainly campaign for quality of life in their neighbourhoods, dealing with topics such as street cleaning, the fight against noise and other nuisances, and in some cases, opposition against street vendors or against the building of new social housing units. Nevertheless, their campaigns are often underpinned by broader arguments that connect specific, personal opposition/protest with broader social issues, operating a ‘generalization of the justification’ (Boltanski and Thévenot 1991). Neighbourhood nuisances arising from the night-time economy are, for instance, discursively framed with reference to the problem of youth alcoholism and drug abuse. These associations legitimize their actions through various strategies: reference to the legal context (that local authorities are regularly accused of not enforcing), the use of moral arguments as well as general allusions to the ‘public interest’, e.g. by invoking heritage and environmental protection.
These strategies are accompanied by networking activities. In 2009, 30 associations created a federation, Vivre Paris (whose name reflects the leading role of the association Vivre le Marais), bringing together national NGOs (such as Les droits du piéton or Association des Paralysés de France) and 24 local associations, mainly formed by local residents (the term riverains is omnipresent in their names). Many of these associations share a preoccupation with nightlife regulations, as indicated in the names of some of them: Droit au sommeil, halte aux nuisances (Right to sleep, stop nuisances) in the 5th district; Collectif pour une cour tranquille (Group for a quiet yard) in the 10th district. The associations which constitute the Vivre Paris network represent 19 of Paris’s 20 districts, but do not include residents’ associations from the Parisian suburbs. Networking, however, extends beyond the city, as relations were established with other French associations dealing with similar topics (e.g. in Strasbourg, Toulouse, Nantes) and even in other European tourist cities (e.g. Lisbon, Berlin, Barcelona) to share knowledge and best practice, for instance about noise regulation. These networking activities are a key element of the legitimacy of Paris’s residents’ associations, in order to present the problems they encounter in their neighbourhoods as widely spread, generalized problems. Legitimization by generalization relies therefore on two concomitant approaches: spatial/geographical generalisation, and appeal to broader moral and intellectual arguments that go beyond the associations’ immediate interests to encompass issues that appear of ‘public interest’.
In terms of collective action, these associations use various complementary strategies. They first have to ‘create a cause’ by circulating petitions, writing public letters or blogs (for instance the blog Vivre le Marais!). They justify the legitimacy of their cause by conducting inquiries, taking pictures or describing the problem very precisely with reference to the spaces and stakeholders that are involved, as well as to the legal context. They construct a nuisance as a ‘public problem’ (Cefaï 1996). In terms of their spatial strategies, their members tend not to demonstrate in the streets or to occupy public space, but rather make signs of protests visible on the outer part of private homes and buildings, e.g. through posters and banners hanging from windows (Figure 2.2). Although these associations claim to be apolitical, their activities are characterised by intensive and continuous working relationships with local politicians, in the context of frequent interpersonal relations, another characteristic of micropolitics. They also publicly challenge political candidates before local elections to push the issues they care about, such as the problem of nightlife nuisances, to the centre of local political debates. Nevertheless, they do not publicly support any political party and their members hold a diversity of political opinions.
Figure 2.2 Protest banner against the proliferation of bars and night economy establishments in Le Marais: ‘Quartier en danger: non à la mono-activité’ (‘Neighbourhood in danger, no to mono-activity’), 2015.
Source: Claire Colomb.
Besides voicing their complaints through social media or the press, their most successful strategy consists of negotiating with local authorities to trigger public action or the regulation of contentious issues. The need to control short-term apartment rentals, or the issue of ‘love locks’, have generated a wide consensus among public actors and associations, as mentioned above. The calls for local regulation have been made in the framework of the existing relations between residents’ associations and local authorities at both the municipal (city-wide) and district levels. For instance, the members of the association DDMA 18 (Montmartre) have frequent contacts with district councillors about local issues, and its representatives are always present during the District Council sessions to defend the protection of local heritage and quality of life against small encroachments by tourist-oriented uses. Vivre le Marais has over the years established itself as an important local player: its representatives can easily obtain an appointment with municipal councillors and regularly meet with the police chief to discuss various problems in the district.
Residents’ associations have even lobbied at the national level, through elected members of the French parliament, to promote further regulation of night-time activities or short-term apartment rentals. These associations are therefore not protesting or resisting from ‘outside’ the political system, but are regularly negotiating with public authorities. This confirms and reinforces their legitimacy. They do not fight for alternative models of urban development as such, and they do not question tourism development as a whole, taking it for granted. To them, the fight for a greater ‘quality of life’ is a question of balance between uses and users, and not about challenging, or creating alternatives to, the current status quo in terms of urban development and local decision-making.
This does not mean that there always is a convergence between these associations’ agenda and local authorities. One of the main motives of the associations’ discontent was the plan announced by the Paris City Council to develop and expand the city’s nightlife so as to make it competitive with that of Berlin, Amsterdam or Barcelona. This conflict is rooted in an old debate about Paris and its supposed ‘museification’, which was recently reactivated in the context of the increasing competition among European capitals for urban attractiveness. Instead of the capitale de la nuit (nightlife capital), Paris was accused of being the capital de l’ennui (capital of boredom).13 This accusation emerged from the trade union of bar and nightclub owners, who tried to legitimate their activities with two main arguments: the local economic benefits of nightlife in a period of economic crisis; and their critical contribution to the city’s competitiveness as a place to live, visit and invest in the competition between cities. The municipality of Paris responded to their concern and launched a ‘summit’ of the main actors and stakeholders of the Paris nightlife (Etats généraux de la nuit), appointed a ‘Night Mayor’14 and developed other initiatives to support and nurture Paris’s nightlife.
Several local residents associations, however, firmly opposed those initiatives, and created the already mentioned federation of associations Vivre Paris which gathered various local associations fighting against night activities and nuisances. These associations argued that the weakening of the local regulation of nightlife would worsen the situation. Following several meetings with local politicians, this federation managed to have an impact on the overall approach of the municipal government with regard to nightlife. The Barcelona example, and in particular the social mobilizations against the tourism-fuelled nightlife in the district of La Barceloneta, was used as a negative example to show that Barcelona had begun to pay the price for its tourist (over)-development and lax regulation of nightlife activities.
The control of vacation rentals, particularly Airbnb, was also developed through a process of collaboration between residents’ associations and local authorities. For decades the municipality of Paris, faced with a chronic lack of tourist accommodation, had tried to encourage alternatives to hotels. In 1974, the Paris Tourist Office established a list of residents who were willing to host tourists, from which point bed and breakfast formulas were encouraged. These initiatives were not seen as antagonistic to residents’ interests. However, the huge success, in recent years, of online rental platforms such as Airbnb, and the choice made by many landlords to turn flats into short-term holiday rentals, have had considerable impact on the housing market and have generated new problems and demands for regulations. The mushrooming of short-term rentals has been accused of accelerating real-estate speculation and housing shortages. Since 2014 the City Council of Paris (in particular its Councillor for Housing Ian Brossat), led by a left-wing government, has taken a tough stance towards the uncontrolled and rampant expansion of the number of vacation rentals. New legislation and regulations do not concern the temporary touristic use of a property, which remains legal, but its exclusive touristic use.15 Nevertheless, public authorities do not have accurate data about apartments rented out through the Airbnb platform, and their control by legal means is still a challenging task. Given the fact that the municipal government reacted rather quickly on this issue, residents’ associations played a watchdog role rather than one of outright protest on this issue. Nevertheless, the arguments put forward by these associations and by the socialist City Council are not the same: while the Council acts in the name of safeguarding flats for Parisians and the control of housing speculation, residents’ associations complain about the noise and nuisances generated by tourist flats for their surroundings. The case of the Old City of Venice is regularly mentioned in the public debates, appearing as the counter-model to avoid at all costs.
To conclude, on the whole, one may argue that residents’ associations in Paris do not accuse tourism as such of being a danger for the city. Rather, they blame specific categories of local stakeholders for exploiting tourist activities outside of established rules. Protest and resistance against tourism in Paris is not led by alternative or left-wing movements linking tourism and gentrification or tourism and capitalism. The issue of tourism’s impacts appears to be part of more mainstream fights for ‘quality of life’, led by middle- or upper-middle-class residents who are often part of the gentrification process that has transformed the social base of most of Paris’s districts. Nevertheless, a different kind of activity could be characterized per se as forms of resistance to (mainstream forms of) tourism: those that seek to introduce ‘new tourism’ or new social models that challenge the way tourism develops in the city.
Alternatives to mainstream tourism as an implicit form of resistance?
As regards the development of alternative forms of tourism in Paris, two initiatives deserve particular attention. The first is concerned with the relationship between tourists and residents and is part of a wider global trend – the development of the ‘Greeters’.16 Local associations such as Parisiens d’un jour (Parisians for a day), founded in 2007, have promoted tours conducted by local residents, mostly in the central districts of Paris. What is specific to Paris is the fact that this development has been widely encouraged by public authorities, in contrast to other cities where this process remains quite independent, or even controversial as in Buenos Aires.17 According to the former vice-mayor of Paris in charge of tourism, the Paris Greeters can contribute to fight the reputation of Parisians being rude with tourists, through the voluntary exchanges which locals develop with visitors to introduce them to their neighbourhoods (Todd 2013). The former district mayor of the Marais, Dominique Bertinotti, actively tried to encourage more contacts between tourists and locals in order to pacify their relationship in one of the most heavily visited parts of the city. In fact, far from strictly belonging to two separate worlds, tourists and residents in the Marais share the same infrastructure and venues for leisure and consumption (Chapuis et al. 2013). However, it is interesting to note that the above-mentioned residents’ associations campaigning for quality of life issues did not participate in these ‘Greeters’ initiatives. A clear gap appears between those associations’ concerns and agenda and the district mayor’s aim of fostering better relationships between the permanent and the transient (tourist) population of the Marais.
The second trend which has contributed to a shift in the relationship between tourism and urban development is the growth of tourism in more deprived areas of Paris, i.e. in the less wealthy, more multi-ethnic districts or even in the suburbs outside the périphérique (ring road). This trend started with the development of tourism related to the ethnic diversity of the metropolis (Rath 2007). The city of Saint-Denis, on the northern fringe of Paris, is a good example of the way in which tourism development in a ‘peripheral’ area can potentially challenge more conventional forms of tourism in central areas. In Saint-Denis, the systematic promotion of tourism dates back to the end of the 1990s, stimulated by the Soccer World Cup (whose main stadium was built in Saint-Denis). Saint-Denis has suffered from a bad image in the mass media due to social and economic problems (deindustrialization, unemployment, concentrations of deprivation and urban violence), which led the municipal government to implement new development strategies (Bertho 2008). At the beginning of the 2000s, the inter-communal organization Plaine Commune, an institutional structure that gathers various municipalities around Saint-Denis, developed various actions to promote its industrial, social and cosmopolitan heritage and promote tourism on the fringes of Paris (Jacquot et al. 2013). For instance, an ‘interpretation centre’ was created in the garden city of Stains, a social housing settlement built between 1921 and 1933. This form of tourism may be regarded as ‘tourism off the beaten track’ (Maitland and Newman 2009) in a geographical sense, due to its location in the suburbs of Paris.
Additionally, this form of tourism development relies on different principles than more mainstream forms of urban tourism. First, tourism is not necessarily seen as a form of mobility that implies an overnight stay (according to the WTO definition), but as a way to discover a place through a short visit, including by Parisians or residents of the city-region who are seen as potential tourists. Second, tourism is used as a way to encourage a new gaze upon parts of the city-region which were formerly regarded as derelict or in decline (e.g. former industrial areas). Third, local residents are supposed to play a key role in this shift, not only as beneficiaries of tourism-led economic development, but as co-participants in the symbolic upgrade of their neighbourhoods. The tourism development plan (Plaine Commune 2012) advocates a ‘participatory’ model of tourism that relies on locals’ contributions. Moreover, it is based on a conception of ‘local heritage’ which differs from the traditional approach to heritage in central Paris – one that is based on intangible social or industrial urban heritage rather than on monuments and museums.
Such initiatives have to be read within the context of a long-standing contrast between Paris and the suburbs in terms of tourism development, although Parisian suburbs have experienced a boom in hotel construction since the end of the 1990s due to the lack of available development sites in central Paris (Decelle and Jacquot 2013). While these hotels have started to bring considerable amounts of tourists to the suburbs, they have sometimes been accused of transforming the Paris periphery into a ‘tourism dormitory’. Local tourism initiatives in the suburbs, such as that mentioned above, are by contrast based on the promotion of endogenous resources and heritage, and designed as alternatives to dominant tourism approaches. Recently, the political reorganization of the Paris metropolis and the creation of the Grand Paris city-regional authority (which took effect on 1 January 2016)18 has encouraged a number of local political leaders, such as the president of the Plaine Commune inter-municipal association, P. Braouezec, to call for an alternative conception of metropolitan development in the Paris city-region – one based on polycentrism to counteract the hegemony of central Paris over its fringes. This would include alternative tourism and heritage policies in support of new forms of territorial development in the suburbs.
By contrast, the development of new forms of tourism in districts with high levels of migrants and ethnic minorities is not only happening in the suburbs but also in central Paris, in northern and eastern districts such as Belleville, Strasbourg-Saint-Denis, La Goutte d’Or, or ‘le Petit Mali’ (Little Mali). Such forms of ‘ethnic’ tourism have not been developed by public institutions, as in Plaine Commune, but promoted by local associations of various kinds, such as Belleville Insolite, an association created to support tourism in Belleville by promoting its multiculturalism (Corbillé 2009), Anardana, an association which organizes urban walks to discover Indian migratory cultures or Bastina, an association rooted in the responsible and sustainable tourism movement. These associations all share a willingness to put migrants or ethnic minorities at the centre of tourism practices as guides, interlocutors and main characters (Chapuis and Jacquot 2014), not as a mere object of spectacle (Shaw et al. 2004). Migrant-led tours can enable the development, through tourist-oriented discourses, of narratives which challenge dominant forms of urban development that threaten the existence of migrant communities. For instance, a North African tour in the district of Goutte d’Or openly evoked the eviction of migrants from that area in the context of large-scale urban renewal operations.19 Alternative tourism initiatives are therefore not only alternative to mainstream tourism. They are also political in the sense that they contest, explicitly or implicitly, the dynamics of metropolitan transformation, in this instance in a number of multi-ethnic districts of central Paris as well as in Parisian suburbs. In that sense, it is not resistance to tourism, but a resistance that uses tourism and its codes, which contributes to challenge dominant urban dynamics and their consequences on urban spaces and residents.
Conclusion
In this chapter we have argued that the patterns of mobilization surrounding tourism-related issues in Paris are different from those recently witnessed in Berlin or Barcelona, as the city is not the theatre of forms of resistance to tourism per se. No visible manifestation of protest against touristification as such can be observed. Can we conclude that there is ‘no conflict’ in Paris, the archetypal (and one of the most visited) tourist city? As demonstrated in this chapter, various forms of mobilization from local residents are in fact related to the impacts of tourism, but are not led against tourism or tourists. Since the waves of urban renewal which began in the 1960s, residents’ associations (with mostly middle-class members) have appeared in various districts and at various scales, initially fighting against urban renewal operations, and from the 1970s onwards, for the preservation of ‘quality of life’ in Paris. At the same time, Paris has been subject to processes of gentrification, first in the historic core (e.g. the Marais from the 1960s), later on from the 1980s in more peripheral districts (such as Belleville in the 19th district). Residential gentrification made tourism-related tensions more visible and complex: the first wave of short-term vacation rentals appeared in trendy, desirable, already gentrified areas and contributed to super-gentrification processes, mainly in the Marais (illustrating the link between residential gentrification and touristification, also discussed by Opillard in this volume). This in turn fuelled new tourism-related tensions, exemplified by the denunciation of short-term vacation rentals by local residents.
The mobilizations which deal with tourism-related issues analysed in this chapter have various goals: to banish tourist coaches, to tackle the nuisances of nightlife in which tourists play a role, to deter buskers from playing music at night, to control the illegal renting out of apartments to tourists, etc. Nevertheless, these mobilizations are not directed against tourists as such. Our analysis of the agenda of residents’ associations in Paris has shown that their claims are focused towards local stakeholders: bar and nightclub owners and managers, migrants and street vendors, booksellers on the banks of the Seine that sell love locks to tourists and, of course, the municipal and district governments. Protests and mobilizations are part of broader local social conflicts about the kind of city which Parisians want, and address wider issues such as the regulation of street life and nightlife, the priorities for urban residential development (for local residents or for commercial activities such as vacation rentals), the types of uses that should be prioritized in urban space and their temporal regulation. One may argue, however, that the agenda of these largely middle- and upper-middle-class residents’ associations remains relatively defensive and focused on ‘quality of life’ issues, without challenging and questioning the social changes that have been occurring in these districts at the same time (i.e. rapid gentrification). Their mobilization has not reached the point at which the legitimacy of tourism as an instrument of urban development in Paris would be questioned. Tourism-generated issues are pragmatically accepted in the name of economic development.
Finally, we have briefly outlined the emergence of a counter-model of tourism development based on new relationships between tourists and locals, through various initiatives for ‘alternative urban tourism’ in central Paris and on its outskirts. First, the development of so-called ‘Greeters’ initiatives seeks to reconfigure relations between hosts and guests, although they are disconnected from the mobilizations for ‘quality of life’ analysed above. Second, the development of alternative, resident-focused forms of tourism in areas that have not traditionally been regarded as touristic – such as deprived suburbs or multi-ethnic central districts now presented as valuable ‘ethnoscapes’ (Appadurai 1996) – can be interpreted as a form of ‘soft’ resistance to dominant patterns of metropolitan tourism in the Paris city-region (characterized by a huge gap between centre and suburbs). In some cases, they can also challenge the narrative of dominant forms of urban development, by giving symbolic value to these areas through the construction of a tourism discourse and the encouragement of a tourist gaze.