Even before the Olympics, a victory lap for a fast-moving French mayor
The mayor grew up in a building so decrepit – dirty hallways, no private bathrooms, no showers – that his friends in nearby concrete towers pitied him.Five decades later, that building – in St.-Ouen, a Parisian suburb – is a distant memory, and in its place stands the French Olympic pride: the athletes' village, with its architectural showcase buildings equipped with solar panels , deep-sunken pipes for cooling and heating, and lovely balconies from which to look down on the planted forest below. A quarter will become public housing after the Games.“Suddenly, we feel the same feeling of pride as people who live in the hypercenter,” said St.-Ouen mayor Karim Bouamrane, 51, using his personal shorthand for the glamorous elite playgrounds downtown. “There was Los Angeles, Barcelona, ...