ZUP

   Zone à Urbaniser en Priorité

   largescale public housing projects (grands ensembles) set up in France between 1959 and 1967, to cater for the rapidly increasing urban population. By the 1990s, the term ZUP had come to be used in the sense of problem estates or sink estates, though this was by no means always the case. While some ZUP, such as le Val-Fourré in the north-west suburbs of Paris, or les Minguettes, a development of 9200 apartments in the suburbs of Lyon, were truly problem estates, others had less problems. Many of the worst ZUPs have been partly or largely demolished and are in the process of renovation as more people-friendly environments.