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

Abstract

Originally published in 2020 in the French journal Jef Klak: Revue de Critique Sociale et d’Expérience Littéraire as “‘Banlieue is the New Cool’: Grand Paris et Instrumentalisation des Musiques Électroniques”, this article examines the 2010s electronic dance music boom in Paris. At the beginning of the decade, a set of public and private institutional actors agreed on the implementation of nightlife policies. Following the principles of the creative city, these have facilitated the development of festive activity particularly as deployed in the Parisian banlieues. Unfortunately, this boom has not avoided forms of instrumentalization of culture, sometimes closely accompanying the urban policies that prepare the Grand Paris planning project.