Mill City, where Remi lived, was a collection of shacks in a valley, housing-project shacks built for Navy Yard workers during the war; it was in a canyon, and a deep one, treed profusedly on all slopes. There were special stores and barber shops and tailor shops for the people of the project. It was, so they say, the only community in America where whites and Negroes lived together voluntarily; and that was so, and so wild and joyous a place I've never seen since. On the door of Remi's shack was the note he had pinned up there three weeks ago.
Sal Paradise! [in huge letters, printed] If nobody's home climb in through the window.
Signed,
Remi Boncoeur.
JACK KEROUAC – On The Road – p. 38
[...] il y a quelques arbres par-ci par-là; puis des terrains vagues, une cité ouvrière, de nouveau des petits lotissements semés de cabanes, une usine par-ci par-là, on arrive à Blagny. La petite place inanimée à cette heure de la journée.
RAYMOND QUENEAU - Le Chiendent, p. 175
Nous avons en France des cités ouvrières [...] elles ne deviendront jamais de vraies villes: elles sont, au contraire, le produit artificiel des cités voisines.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE - Situation III, p. 97