In May 1968 student protests in Paris, centred on university campuses including the new suburban faculty at Nanterre, escalated into street barricades in the Latin Quarter and a general strike that briefly paralysed France. The unrest spread internationally, joining a wave of protest movements across cities that year. Critics linked student grievances to alienating postwar planning, high-rise estates and the segregation of universities to the periphery. The revolt subsided but reshaped political and intellectual life.
It crystallised a critique of technocratic modernist planning and the dormitory suburb, feeding later movements for participation, the 'right to the city' and human-scaled urbanism.
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