The conflagration over in the Île-de-France reminded me of the fires in the South Bronx.
An article from The Economist on the troubles includes a nice map and unemployment chart. But this quote from The Christian Science Monitor expands on what The Economist called “bleak high-rise estates.”
Former President François Mitterrand once publicly sympathized with the inhabitants of the projects, wondering aloud in 1990, while he was still in office, “What can a young person hope for, born in a soulless neighborhood, living in an ugly building surrounded by ugliness, grey walls in grey surroundings for a grey life, surrounded by a society that prefers to avert its eyes and get involved only when it is time to get angry and to stop people from doing things?”
So, yes, you probably can blame this one on Charles Edouard Jeanneret.
(Oh, and the French word for riot is émeute.)