The beltway : upstairs and downstairs | M6 | Enquête Exclusive

The Paris beltway: a highway running around Paris used by more than a million vehicles per day. 35 kilometers of jams, entry ramps and tunnels. An urban jungle with 10,000 breakdowns and accidents every year. A world apart where nobody wants to hang around. And yet, for two years, a growing number of homeless people have found refuge on this road, the busiest and the most polluted in France. They live under the interchanges, in tents at the sides of the lanes, hidden in the pillars of the bridges. Between 500 and 800 people have been counted by the Paris mayor’s office. Why did they set up here? How do they live from day to day? We descended into their world over a period of three months.