Roubaix
Roubaix is a city in northern France, located in the Lille metropolitan area on the Belgian border. It is a historically mono-industrial commune in the Nord department, which grew rapidly in the 19th century from its textile industries, with most of the same characteristic features as those of English and American boom towns. This former new town has faced many challenges linked to deindustrialisation such as urban decay, with their related economic and social implications, since its major industries fell into decline by the middle of the 1970s. Located to the northeast of Lille, adjacent to Tourcoing, Roubaix is the chef-lieu of two cantons and the third largest city in the French region of Hauts-de-France ranked by population with nearly 99,000 inhabitants.
Together with the nearby cities of Lille, Tourcoing, Villeneuve-d'Ascq and eighty-six other communes, Roubaix gives structure to a four-centred metropolitan area inhabited by more than 1.1 million people: the European Metropolis of Lille. To a greater extent, Roubaix is in the center of a vast conurbation formed with the Belgian cities of Mouscron, Kortrijk and Tournai, which gave birth to the first European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation in January 2008, Lille–Kortrijk–Tournai with an aggregate population of over 2 million inhabitants.
Geography
Location
Roubaix occupies a central position on the north-east slope of the Métropole Européenne de Lille: it is set on the eastern side of Lille and the southern side of Tourcoing, close to the Belgian border. As regards towns' boundaries, Roubaix is encompassed by seven cities which constitute its immediate neighbouring environment. These municipalities are namely: Tourcoing to the north and the northwest, Wattrelos to the northeast, Leers to the east, Lys-lez-Lannoy to the southeast, Hem to the south and Croix to the southwest and the west. Roubaix, alongside those municipalities and twenty-one other communes, belongs to the land of Ferrain, a little district of the former Castellany of Lille between the Lys and Scheldt rivers.As the crow flies, the distance between Roubaix and the following cities is some odd: to Tournai, to Kortrijk, to Brussels and to Paris.
Geology
The land upon which Roubaix stands belongs to the plain of Flanders. The Roubaisian area stretches on an east-west oriented shallow syncline axis which trends south-southeast to the Paleozoic limestone of the Mélantois-Tournaisis faulted anticline. It consists predominantly of Holocene alluvial sediment depositions. It is flat and low, with an elevation drop of only over its. The lowest altitude of this area stands at, while its highest altitude is meters above the sea level.Hydrology
The Trichon stream fed by waters of the Espierre stream used to flow through the rural landscape of Roubaix before the industrialisation process began to alter this area in the middle of the 19th century. From that century on, the ensuing industries, with their increasing needs for reliable supplies of goods and water, led to the building of an inland waterway connected upstream from the Deûle and downstream to the Marque and Espierre toward the Scheldt, which linked directly Roubaix to Lille.Opened in 1877, the Canal de Roubaix crosses the town from its northern neighbourhoods to its eastern neighbourhoods and partially flows along the city's boundaries. The Canal de Roubaix closed in 1985, after more than a century in use. Thank to the European funded project Blue Links, the waterway has been reopened to boating traffic since 2011.
Climate
The area of the city is not known for undergoing unusual weather events. In regard to the town's geographical location and the results of the Météo-France's weather station of Lille-Lesquin, Roubaix is a temperate oceanic climate: while summer experiences mild temperatures, winter's temperatures may fall to below zero. Precipitation is infrequently intense.Urban geography
During the Middle Age, the city grew in a northward-facing semicircle around its primitive core, beyond the area spread out between the church Saint Martin and the former fortified castle. The existence of this south boundary remained until the 18th century and marked an urban expansion which mainly occurred on the western and northern sides of the town. Increasing industrialisation, land transport improvement, continued population growth and the resulting need for suitable low cost lands for housing and manufacturing plants, all of which finally led to expand the city southward from the centre, in the 19th century.Toponymy
The current city's name is most likely derived from Frankish rausa "reed" and baki "brook". Therefore, the meaning of Roubaix can, in all likelihood, find its origin on the banks of its three historical brooks: Espierre, Trichon and Favreuil. The place was mentioned for the first time in a Latinised form in the 9th century: Villa Rusbaci. Thereafter, the following names were in use: 1047 and 1106 Rubais, 1122 Rosbays, 1166 Rusbais, 1156 and 1202 Robais, 1223 Roubais. Over the span of centuries, the name evolved to Roubaix as shown on Mercator's map of Flanders published at Leuven in 1540.Parallel to the official and usual name Roubaix, some translations are worth a mention. Firstly, though the city has never belonged to the Flemish-speaking area, the seldom-heard renderings Robeke and Roodebeeke are documented for Roubaix. Furthermore, the Dutch Language Union established Robaais as the city's proper Dutch name. Lastly, one can cite Rosbacum as the definite Latin transcription of Roubaix which has been in use since the 19th century, as recorded on dedication statements sealed in the first stones of the foundations of the Hôtel de Ville laid in 1840 and the Church of Notre Dame laid in 1842.
History
During the repression of January and February 1894, the police conducted raids targeting the anarchists living there, without much success.Heraldry
People
Inhabitants of Roubaix are known in English as "Roubaisians" and in French as Roubaisiens or in the feminine form Roubaisiennes, also natively called Roubaignots or in the feminine form Roubaignotes.Demographics
The evolution of the number of inhabitants is known through the population censuses carried out in the town since 1793 and the research study of Louis-Edmond Marissal, Clerk of the Peace of the city, published in 1844. Roubaix evolved into a provincial market town until the end of the Early modern period with a census population of 4,715 inhabitants in 1716. By the late 18th century, the city began to emerge as regional textile manufacturing centre and its population increased, reaching a level of 8,091 in 1800. As a result of the industrialisation process of the 19th century, the need of workers was supplied by rural flight as well as immigration. Belgian settlement was a feature of the Roubaisian life at that time.During the first-half period of the 19th century, Roubaix ranked the first French town in terms of population growth rate with a five times increase, whereas in the remaining period of this century its population doubled. Within this last time framework, Belgian immigration appeared to be one of the major factor to explain the significantly high population growth, with 30,465 Belgian inhabitants counted in 1866 and 42,103 in 1872. Nonetheless, the rate of natural increase shew to be a more important component of the population growth in that period.
At the 20th century threshold, the Roubaisian population reached a peak of 124,661, from which it progressively declined over the successive decades. Occupied by German troops from October 1914 to October 1918, Roubaix belonged to the combat zone of the Western Front during the First World War. Over this occupation period, Roubaisians suffered from dearth, deportation for compulsory labour and unusual casualties with a rather slight population drop from 122,723 to 113,265 between the 1911 and 1921 censuses.
The population of the city was 98,828 as of January 2019. This enables Roubaix to remain the third largest municipality in the region Hauts-de-France, after Lille and Amiens.
As of 2019, at least 25% of residents in Roubaix were immigrants, mainly of Arab, North African, Turkish, and Sub-Saharan African origin.