The name Drancy comes from Medieval LatinDerenciacum, and before that Terentiacum, meaning "estate of Terentius", a Gallo-Roman landowner.
Origins to 20th century
In the 17th century, Drancy was divided into two distinct villages: Drancy le Grand and le Petit Drancy. The quarter "Village Parisien" is built on the old location of the hamlet of Groslay, which was surrounded by the Forest of Bondy: hence the name of rue des Bois de Groslay.
During World War II, Drancy was the site of the Drancy internment camp where Jews, Gypsies, and others were held before being shipped to the Nazi concentration camps. In 1976, the Memorial to the Deportation at Drancy was created by sculptor Shlomo Selinger to commemorate the French Jews imprisoned in the camp. In 2009 the memorial was vandalised. The French government vowed to find those responsible for painting swastikas on it.[3]
Population
Historical population
Year
Pop.
±% p.a.
1793
399
—
1800
193
−9.86%
1806
218
+2.05%
1821
207
−0.34%
1831
258
+2.23%
1836
315
+4.07%
1841
308
−0.45%
1846
352
+2.71%
1851
296
−3.41%
1856
310
+0.93%
1861
420
+6.26%
1866
534
+4.92%
1872
456
−2.60%
1876
446
−0.55%
1881
606
+6.32%
1886
934
+9.04%
1891
1,104
+3.40%
1896
1,096
−0.15%
Year
Pop.
±% p.a.
1901
1,247
+2.62%
1906
1,776
+7.33%
1911
4,190
+18.73%
1921
15,582
+14.04%
1926
31,489
+15.11%
1931
51,156
+10.19%
1936
42,938
−3.44%
1946
42,166
−0.18%
1954
50,654
+2.32%
1962
65,890
+3.34%
1968
68,467
+0.64%
1975
64,430
−0.86%
1982
60,183
−0.97%
1990
60,707
+0.11%
1999
62,263
+0.28%
2007
65,843
+0.70%
2012
67,181
+0.40%
2017
71,318
+1.20%
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.
1 This group is made up largely of former French settlers, such as pieds-noirs in Northwest Africa, followed by former colonial citizens who had French citizenship at birth (such as was often the case for the native elite in French colonies), as well as to a lesser extent foreign-born children of French expatriates. A foreign country is understood as a country not part of France in 1999, so a person born for example in 1950 in Algeria, when Algeria was an integral part of France, is nonetheless listed as a person born in a foreign country in French statistics.
2 An immigrant is a person born in a foreign country not having French citizenship at birth. An immigrant may have acquired French citizenship since moving to France, but is still considered an immigrant in French statistics. On the other hand, persons born in France with foreign citizenship (the children of immigrants) are not listed as immigrants.
Heraldry
The arms of Drancy are blazoned : Azure, on a chevron Or a gothic letter 'D' sable at its summit, between two mullets and a sheep passant argent.
Drancy's buildings are too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style. Some of them with a style Art Nouveau are typical of the 19th and 20th centuries. There are housing estates and a garden city.
Park and Castle of Ladoucette
The parc de Ladoucette[8] is the only park of Drancy. It contains a pond, a small educational farm and the castle of Ladoucette.[9] The castle was built in 1533 by Pierre Séguier.[10] In the 19th century, the castle was the property of the senator Charles-Loetitia de Ladoucette. In 1874 his wife, la Baronne de Ladoucette, died and her body was placed in the Mausoleum de la Baronne de Ladoucette. Today she is buried in the Parisian cemetery.
Urbanism
Drancy is an urban commune, as it is one of the dense or intermediate density communes, as defined by the Insee communal density grid.[a][11][12][13] It belongs to the urban unit of Paris, an inter-departmental conurbation comprising 407 communes[14] and 10,785,092 inhabitants in 2017, of which it is a suburban commune.[15][16]
The commune is also part of the functional area of Paris[b] where it is located in the main population and employment centre of the functional area. This area comprises 1,929 communes.[17][18]
^According to the zoning of rural and urban municipalities published in November 2020, in application of the new definition of rurality validated on November 14, 2020 by the Interministerial Committee for Rural Areas.