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Paris Ouest (West Paris) is an expression referring to the wealthiest and most prestigious residential area of France.
Located in the central and western part of Paris, it roughly follows Paris' Voie Royale (Royal Way) or Axe historique (historical axis): a line of monuments, buildings and thoroughfares that extends from the former royal Palace of the Louvre through the Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs Élysées, the Place de l'Etoile and all the way to Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Paris Ouest has long been known as French high society's favorite place of residence, comparable to New York's Upper East Side, Los Angeles' Beverly Hills or London's Mayfair and Belgravia, to such an extent that the phrase "Paris Ouest" has been associated with great wealth, elitism and social hegemony in French popular culture as well as in some masterpieces of French literature such as Balzac's La comédie humaine or Proust's In Search of Lost Time.
The cultural, social and economic influence of the area has played a prominent role throughout French history and is still highly vivid in nowadays' French elite. Paris Ouests standards of life were also highly influential in educating foreign elites, especially in Europe, Russia and Northern America (see Frick Collection). As such, Paris Ouest should not only be seen as a geographic area but also as a social attitude symbolized by French high society's habits and way of life.
History
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In 1612, Queen Marie de Medicis bought an estate in the left bank of Paris and commissioned architect Salomon de Brosse to transform it into the outstanding Luxembourg Palace surrounding by a large royal garden. The new Palace turned the all neighborhood into a fashionable district for French nobility.
By the 17th century, French high nobility started to move from the central Marais, the then-aristocratic district of Paris where nobles used to build their urban mansions (see Hotel de Soubise) to the clearer, less populated and less polluted Faubourg Saint-Germain that soon became the new residence of French highest nobility.
The district became so fashionable within the French aristocracy that the phrase le Faubourg has been used to describe French nobility ever since. The oldest and most prestigious families of the French nobility built outstanding residences in the area such as the Hôtel Matignon, the Hôtel de Salm or the Hôtel Biron.
In the 18th century, alongside the rising attraction of exclusive Faubourg Saint-Germain, the Faubourg Saint-Honoré district (surrounding the Champs-Élysées) also became known as one of Paris wealthiest residential area (see Hôtel d'Évreux or Hôtel de Crillon).
During the 19th century, Paris became socially divided between an eastern working-class area with growing numbers of factories and subsequent pollution and a more and more wealthy and privileged western part. Some historian have said that that trend was reinforce by the sea winds that comes from the west and therefore preserved western Paris fresh air. The avenue des Champs-Élysées was the fashionable high society promenade, and the new districts of the current 16th and 8th arrondissement were covered by many grand palaces (see Avenue Foch) such as the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild and the Hôtel Jacquemart-André or the Hôtel Nissim de Camondo as well as luxury bourgeois Haussmanian buildings.
By the end of the 19th century, the new French high society, made of wealthy bourgeois and old nobles exclusively lived in Western Paris and the high-profile social life was deeply rooted there, as Marcel Proust described. A state of things that has not changed much, according to sociologists Michel and Monique Pincon-Charlot, the role of a Paris Ouest address and education is still extremely prominent to be part of the French elite.
Geography
Paris Ouest is made of four central and western Parisian arrondissements: the 6th, the 7th, the 8th and the 16th; and of the city of Neuilly-sur-Seine, which is immediately adjacent to the 16th.
Paris Ouest covers a land area of 21.7 km2 or 30,66 km2.
Demography
As of the 1999 census, 363.445 people were living in Paris Ouest:
<table class>
<th>District
<th>Year
<th>Population
<th>Density
(inh. per km²)
</tr>
<tr><td>6th arrondissement<td><td>1999<td>44,919<td>20,854
<tr><td>6th arrondissement<td><td>2005 (est)<td>45,200<td>20,984
<tr><td>7th arrondissement<td><td>1999<td>56,985<td>13,940
<tr><td>7th arrondissement<td><td>2005 (est)<td>55,400<td>13,552
<tr><td>8th arrondissement<td><td>1999<td>39,314<td>10,130
<tr><td>8th arrondissement<td><td>2005 (est)<td>38,700<td>9,972
<tr><td>16th arrondissement<td><td>1999<td>161,773<td>20,619
<tr><td>16th arrondissement<td><td>2005 (est)<td>149,500<td>19,054
</table>
Sociology
Not only is Paris Ouest as a whole the wealthiest area in France, but the five districts that make it up, individually, rank at the top of France's highest income districts:
Among cities of over 50,000 inhabitants, Neuilly-sur-Seine, the western suburb immediately continuing Paris Ouest, is the wealthiest city in France, with an average household income of €62,646, and 20% earning more than €8,000 per month.
But within Paris, the four Western Paris' surpass wealthy Neuilly-sur-Seine in household income: the 6th, the 7th, the 8th and the 16th ; the 8th "arrondissement" being the richest district in France (the others three following it closely as 3rd, 2nd and 4th richest ones).
When considering Paris Ouest as a whole, the average household income is close to €8,000 per month, which makes it one of the wealthiest areas in the world (slightly higher ranked than Teton County, Wyoming, the wealthiest U.S. county for household income, according to a 2009 governmental census). Paris Ouest has also more people paying the solidarity tax on wealth (people who own more than €700.000 in assets, deducted of all debt) than anywhere else with around 60,000 declarers, a little more than 16% of its population.
Moreover, one-third of the French citizens whose fortune is at least €50 million live in the area (around 175 families), and 8 out of the 10 richest French billionaires (and 70% of the 50 wealthiest French) live there as well, including the wealthiest European, LVMH owner and CEO Bernard Arnault (living in the 7th arrondissement), and the world's richest woman, L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt (living in Neuilly-sur-Seine).
That extreme concentration of wealth and power has led to a unique case of social domination and reproduction. According to famous sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (in his work Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (in French, La Distinction)), social stratification is linked to the amount of social, cultural, and symbolic capitals one possesses as well as it is based on aesthetic preferences social classes taught their children during childhood. In regards to that theory, Paris Ouest is the perfect example of social distinction based on both high level of all capital and common upper-class preferences. As shown by sociologists Pinçon-Charlot, a Paris Ouest's education and address is determining when it comes to taking part of French elite.
Real estate
As a high society residential area, Paris Ouest has the most expensive real estates market in Paris and features some of the most expensive real estate in France including the outstanding Faubourg Saint-Germain hôtels particuliers, haussmannian bourgeois apartments or artist ateliers as well as the famous Auteuil "villas", heirs to 19th-century high society country houses, they are exclusive gated communities with huge houses surrounding by gardens, which is extremely rare in Paris.