ABSTRACT
During the 1840s and 1850s, the zone was more an object of military planning, political debate and legal dispute than creative representation. Most writers and artists interested in the urban periphery focused instead on the barriers or the petite banlieue, which were still being colonised in both a literal and imaginative sense. During the Second Empire, a small number of observers prompted partly by the most ambitious program of urban redevelopment in Parisian history began to explore the space immediately beyond the fortifications. Paris had been invaded by a coalition of British, Austrian, Russian and Prussian forces determined to crush the Napoleonic regime while ensuring the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. In September 1840, Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers obtained cabinet approval and emergency funds to start immediate work on a new defence system. The same law provided for the creation of a zone non aedificandi outside the fortifications, based on the precedents of 10 July 1791 and 17 July 1819.
