If Paris before 1870 belonged to all the people of France, then Paris after 1870 belonged to provincials and even foreigners.
The twenty years from 1870 to 1890 were a period of economic depression. France as a whole seemed to grind almost to a halt, and the lively commercial atmosphere of the imperial era was nowhere to be seen. People no longer showed any interest in cutting new roads through the city. The sole exception was Parisian land prices, which continued soaring all the way.
To perform the "urban symphony" in his heart, Haussmann adopted a policy: every old building within the areas he had "marked out" had to be demolished. It was impossible to simply order the original residents to leave; they had to be compensated. So Haussmann colluded with bankers. The bankers funded compensation for the residents, while the government sent people to forcibly remove them whether they wished to leave or not. The land that had once belonged to those residents was then bought by the banks and turned into new luxury apartments befitting Paris's image.
It was heartbreaking just to think about it. A worker earning 1,300 francs a month and someone earning 14,000 francs a month could both support five children, but their quality of life would naturally be different. Differences in food and clothing could still be endured, but the greatest disparity was housing. Both property prices and rents rose sharply with land development. The money bankers paid the original homeowners was nowhere near enough for them to buy another home in the same neighborhood, so native Parisians could only be squeezed out into the suburbs.
The vast municipal projects required huge numbers of migrant workers, but they were not the ones living in luxury apartments. Those homes belonged to people of higher social