All Images © David Boureau

The recently unveiled Villas des Vignoles, in Paris, is the most charming public-housing complex in the world. Occupying one rectangular city block, the two- and three-story dwellings have many features most people don’t associate with the PJs: pitched roofs of varying heights, nooks designated for gardening and composting, vine-covered facades, and rabbit hutches. Yes, rabbit hutches. It’s also called Eden Bio, perhaps because when compared to most subsidized housing around the world, Vignoles is paradise. The rabbits here will likely live better than many people in the city’s less desirable housing projects — with apologies to those that end up as delicious lapin a la cocotte.
     Vignoles is getting a good deal of press in part because the bar for public housing is so low. Paris, like all large cities, has its fair share of unfortunate housing projects, and its reputation took a beating after the riots in October and November 2005. While the unrest in the city’s Clichy-sous-Boi neighborhood was reportedly a result of the lack of jobs available for the young, predominately Muslim residents, as well as police brutality, urban planners and other critics also blamed the buildings these kids called home: colonies of tall, concrete slabs which failed to provide residents the slightest feeling of warmth or security. The housing projects had a de-humanizing effect on the immigrants who were placed there and, perhaps even more so, on their children who’d never lived anywhere else.