The French suburbs, the banlieues, have developed over time into diverse, contradictory places, regularly associated since the 1980s with riots—often after young people have been injured or killed in traffic controls or police chases. In terms of image, this has given rise to their perception as ‘deviant landscapes’—a concept first applied to the cités de grands ensembles, the massive housing estates that seemed to epitomize the alien. But many other aspects of the banlieues are overlooked in this conception, as are the radical changes and processes of upgrading taking place in various neighbourhoods.—Against this background, the article briefly reviews the history of the development of the French banlieues and relates it to the recurrent suburban riots, most recently those of summer 2023. It goes on to highlight cinematic productions, and draws attention to the increasingly complex picture of urban landscapes with new-build gentrification in the Greater Paris area. In this way, it becomes apparent that life in Greater Paris has been subject to continuous, ongoing transformation and that hybrid urban landscapes in France should be understood in other terms than simple stereotypical attributions of negatively interpreted deviance.