Let us begin with housing, and in particular the problems of housing migrants the French describe as “bachelors,” or at any rate as “living as bachelors.” This means beginning with the city.

THE GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF LYON

For most people, French and others, Lyon is a city they know only as a place seen in transit – to the Midi, Italy, Switzerland, or Spain. Historically it owes its importance to that fact. Its site, which has been continuously occupied since before the Roman era, made it a naturally defensible crossing point in the great river system floating north-south through this part of France. The area around the “Place du Pont” (the Place Gabriel Péri), now ironically one of the main Arab quarters and thus sometimes known as the “Place des Cons,” was the location of one of the earliest bridges across the Rhône, built to take Richard the Lionheart to the Crusades. Lyonnais themselves sometimes suggest that this quality of the city accounts for the frequently observed froideur of the native inhabitants. (For the history of Lyon, see Bonnet 1975; Deriol 1971; Kleinclausz et al. 1924; Latreille et al. 1975; Lojkine 1974.)

What is now known as the agglomération of Lyon, the city and adjacent communes administered collectively as COURLY, has like many French cities experienced a rapid growth in the postwar years.