Quartier Asiatique

The Quartier Asiatique took shape in an unexpected way after a government urban renewal project called Italie 13 failed to attract its intended residents. Between the late 1960s and mid-1970s, the city constructed a series of towering high-rise apartment blocks in this southeastern corner of the 13th arrondissement, expecting them to house young professionals. Most Parisians shunned these modern concrete structures as undesirable, leaving the buildings largely empty. When thousands of refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos arrived in France following the conflicts in Southeast Asia during the 1970s, they found in these vacant towers an immediate place to settle. The neighborhood was transformed from a struggling development project into a thriving hub for immigrant life almost overnight.