The transformations of towns at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. In the suburbs, the Zone

Abstract

The urban growth and the industrialization in the second half of the 19th century attracted excluded populations to big urban areas when old familial and social solidarities didn’t work anymore. In towns, homeless and unemployed people were numerous. At the town’s gates, often in the former military area, the “zone” attracted unemployed and homeless people and families who earned their living as scavengers, beggars or sometimes pillagers. The “zone” worried the upper middle class and the governments, and was frequently depicted in literature, which either praised the liberty of the “zoniers” or despised them due to the danger they posed.