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Paris still has empty acreage like the “petite ceinture,” or small belt, an abandoned 19th century railroad track that encircles Paris, and it’s being transformed into agricultural gardens.

Guests watched from the platform onto the Petite Ceinture, or Little Belt, railway — a thirty-kilometer track circling the city.

More than 350 Roma people had lived in the camp on La Petite Ceinture since last summer.

The day after we met, I walked from the Place Blanche, an important intersection in so many of Modiano’s novels, up through Pigalle and across the 18th arrondissement to the newly inaugurated Promenade Dora Bruder, a walkway that runs above the overgrown tracks of the now defunct Petite Ceinture railway line, separating Rue Leibniz from Rue Belliard.

It has also inspired similar projects around the world, such as the Petite Ceinture in Paris and the Chapultepec Project in Mexico City.