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The Île-de-France region, known to many as the Paris Region, is home to 11 million inhabitants in an area covering 12, 011km². This makes up 2.21% of the total French metropolitan area and 18.72% of its inhabitants.

There is a certain imbalance in its internal organisation which:

has Paris, at its centre, with 19% inhabitants per less than 1% of the Ile-de-France area,

is surrounded by 3 départements (French territorial division) accounting for 37% of inhabitants and 5.5% of the area,

which are encircled themselves by 4 départments which accommodate 44% of inhabitants in an area which accounts for 94% of the total surface area.

Naturally, the amount of contemporary architecture to be found is proportionally inverse to these figures. In Paris, such architecture is principally found in areas on the periphery to the north, east and south. In suburban areas, it is predominant in the ‘new towns’ of the outer suburbs.

A few preliminary figures will help to put into context the conditions in which the designers/architects of the projects worked.

There are also a few texts on architecture and urbanism, which lay no claim to being either exhaustive or objective.