-For me, Paris is like a dream, I always dreamed of living in Paris,
for the architecture, the shops, the bars, everything.
-There is a magic to Paris.
It is the City of Light, it is beautiful.
It has a history, a romantic past...
There are all kinds of things in Paris.
-The moment you get past the ring road,
you really are in the suburbs.
There is a demarcation, the atmosphere is really different.
So we decided to party in Paris.
Even we are different, our state of mind is different.
We change, because we are in Paris.
The city is very bright,
very attractive.
-Ile-de-France immediately evokes its capital,
Paris, the nerve center of France,
the leisure, the capital, everything that comes with it.
It also has a multiculturalism that may be lacking in other regions.
-It used to look like a forest of huge chimneys,
because it was a very industrial area.
Now there's no more work.
-We make rockets, we make cars,
we have agriculture, we have engineering capabilities.
All that is you, not other people, it is our territory.
-Make Paris a business city, that is the real challenge.
Either it goes on becoming a museum,
it is constantly filled with foreign tourists, which is nice.
Or we give ourselves the means to make Paris a dynamic city,
for young entrepreneurs, for trade centers,
for corporate headquarters...
-I came to Ile-de-France in 1954, I arrived in the village of Sarcelles.
All you had here was beetroots, fields, and gardens.
I used to go for walks in the country, and when I came back there were towers.
We are considered as suburbs and as suburbanites,
and the term "suburbs" is loaded with negative symbols.
The notion of "Francilien" has not taken over.
The term alone marginalizes us.
-For me, Paris and the metropolis are two separate worlds.
Paris is a cultural, active, and beautiful city.
Whereas in the suburbs, life is different, it is not the same.
Things move slower, it's more comfortable.
-There are places not far from Paris that feel almost like countryside,
it is possible to really relax, and there are many things to discover.
-What I can tell you about the Quatre-Chemins
is that it was almost like a small Champs-Elysées.
There were merchants on Sundays,
but people would really come to walk in the Quatre-Chemins,
even from Le Bourget, from Drancy,
even from Paris, from the 19th arrondissement.
-If we compare to cities such as New York or London,
which are roughly equivalent,
we seem to have a different approach to heritage.
Paris is a historic city,
but doesn't necessarily keep up to date.
-They say that Paris is dying, that it is asleep, that it is small.
We notice that more and more places are away from the center of Paris,
and that the periphery is waking up.
It extends further and further, beyond the current city limits.
-In the end, the metropolis corresponds to the Seine department,
that I knew in the 1960s.
I used to live in Aubervilliers, and we were called "Albertivillariens",
but we were Parisians.
-All the other capitals are huge.
Paris is limited to 2 million inhabitants.
We know that Ile-de-France has 12 million inhabitants.
So why stop 10 other million from being Parisian?
-Maybe the Champs-Elysées are nice.
Maybe it is nice outside the luxurious areas of Paris.
But that is not for us, that is for rich people.
We just have Bobigny, it's nice here.
-For me, the 78 is very expensive and very wealthy.
The 91 is too rural or not developed enough.
As for the 93 and 95, I never set foot there.
Paris is too expensive, and Seine-Et-Marne is too far.
-There is like a border when we arrive in Neuilly or Courbevoie,
it's not the same at all, the setting, the stores are different.
It feels like they have more things.
I find it interesting to create links between cities,
to make a Grand Paris, but it remains quite virtual,
the cities will still exist in their own right.
-Walls exist, but only in people's heads,
there are no walls.
There are no suburbanites, no Parisians, on the contrary.
-I prefer the term Metropolis rather than Grand Paris.
Metropolis evokes the idea of something together.
I am a suburbanite from Arcueil.
We do share a common future,
but I don't want to be told that I am Parisian
or that I will become Parisian.
-When it comes to the development of metropolises, of megalopolises,
I see the fear of something huge
rather than the benefit of all being together.
-Openness to the suburbs is going to be necessary
to break down the walls.
Paris often molts, changes its shell.
The inner suburbs will have to be integrated.
I think it will maintain its identity,
as it is a safe haven that the French need.
-Paris's outreach is international, cosmopolitan.
More light should be shone on the suburbs,
and Paris will do that, it has the means to do it.
It has the economic and social means to do it.
-If Paris were to expand and include the inner suburbs,
it would give even greater luster to Paris,
for Parisians, for suburbanites, as well as abroad.