Chinatown Paris centre

The neighborhood you are entering emerged from a failed urban planning project. In the late nineteen sixties, the French government launched a development initiative called Italie Treize, which aimed to transform this part of the thirteenth arrondissement into a hub for young, modern professionals. The project saw the construction of massive high-rise apartment towers that were initially shunned by Parisians who found the aesthetic cold and uninviting. By the nineteen seventies, as thousands of refugees fled the aftermath of wars in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, these vacant, modern housing complexes became the foundations for a new community.