policing or economic development?

Submitted by clazy (United States), Nov 26, 2006 at 12:26

By describing ZUSs as "Those places in France that the French state does not control," Mr. Pipes makes them sound like law enforcement problems. However, from what I can tell from a Google translation of the French Wikipedia discussion of the subject, the term ZUS was defined for urban planning purposes in 1996, and it would be improper to assume it directly implies anything else.

http://64.233.179.104/translate_c?hl=en&u=http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politique_de_la_ville

ZUSs are districts "in difficulty... characterized by the presence of great sets or districts of degraded habitat and by an imbalance accentuated between the habitat and employment." They include the zones of urban relaunching (ZRU), which are apparently excluded from certain taxes and exempted from social security contribution, and the urban frank zones (ZFU, no idea what that is) which seem to offer similar incentives to businesses.

I see nothing to indicate they are anything but urban redevelopment zones. They may overlap with lawless districts, but they are not defined by lawlessness. The ZUS is not a law enforcement concept. Not all poor people are Muslim, nor are all heavily Muslim neighborhoods beyond the control of the French police. I walked from a hotel at Paris's Gare du Nord through ZUS 493 two months ago, and I would not have guessed there was anything to be concerned about.

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