..". a well-written monograph that nicely reveals the dilemmas of community-making in situations where all residents are newcomers, but not all newcomers are equal ... There is much to admire and learn from this lucid study, both about the villes nouvelles as particular socio-spatial environments, and about the heavily politicized field of culture talk in France." -French Politics, Culture, and Society

The banlieue, the mostly poor and working-class suburbs located on the outskirts of major cities in France, gained international media attention in late 2005 when riots...