Aulnay-sous-Bois is a municipality of the Seine-Saint-Denis department, some fifteen kilometres north-east of Paris. With nearly 86 000 inhabitants, it is one of the largest towns in the department. The Vieux Pays, around the Saint-Sulpice church and its farm, keeps the trace of the old village, while the town spread southwards with the Parc garden suburb, born at the end of the nineteenth century from a fragment of the former forest of Bondy, and northwards with the large housing estates built during the post-war boom years.
The town is cut in two by the RER B line, which connects it to Paris and to Roissy airport. South of the railway lie quiet residential areas of detached houses, popular with families, bordered by the Ourcq canal. To the north and east are the large housing estates, including la Rose des Vents, also known as the Cité des 3000, Mitry-Ambourget and Gros Saule, now engaged in major urban renewal programmes.
The recent history of Aulnay is marked by the former PSA/Citroën plant, long the town's biggest employer, closed in 2013 and now converted into a business park. The town is also preparing for the arrival of line 16 of the Grand Paris Express metro, which will serve a new station in Aulnay. The property market bears the mark of these contrasts: a sought-after and expensive southern belt of detached houses, a more affordable north in full transformation, with prices that remain, across the town as a whole, well below those of Paris.
