ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents the closing thoughts of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book discusses the negative images of the zone and confirms the commonplace idea that the centre defines itself through opposition to the periphery. Throughout its existence and especially after 1870, the zone non aedificandi generated an extraordinary level of interest. Many observers predictably represented the zone as a repulsive other to the Paris of the Enlightenment, of Haussmann, of the male bourgeoisie, of the Third Republic or of the German Occupation. The zones chaos and squalor together with its ragpickers, Gypsies and carnival performers. From the 1890s, it came to include the pimps and prostitutes who frequented the area and the factory workers who settled there. From the interwar period it encompassed the zones foreigners and communists, who were often perceived as a single, hostile mass. Valls, Cline and Giraudoux also suggested that the zone was an extension of a deeper, more pervasive corruption.
