Located just north of Paris, the administrative department of Seine-Saint-Denis is France’s poorest and most ethnically diverse. Its Brutalist public housing complexes, once triumphant monuments to socialist modernism, are now sites of social marginalization. It’s the last place one would imagine seeing wandering shepherds tending their flocks. Yet here, and elsewhere in metropolitan Paris, an urban agricultural revolution is taking root. When I walked with the sheep of the
Bergers Urbains on their migration to winter quarters in the Parc Georges-Valbon a few weeks ago, a group of young men stopped to take selfies with them, and a shopkeeper called out an offer to buy one for 600 euros (they’re not for sale).
