A note on the economic causes of Paris riots

At the end of October 2005, the death of two teenagers of African origins shed Paris into the chaos. Riots in the banlieus resulted in street fighting, thousands of arrests, injured and fires throughout the city. In this note we argue that urban unrest in France has been determined by an historical pattern of increasing spatial segregation in the city. We support our discussion with a very simple model whose outcome is a finite set of equilibria describing different situations according to planning policies, social conflicts and potential dimension of rioting.