Karim Bouamrane, the Socialist mayor of St.-Ouen, a Paris suburb that will host the athletes’ village for the 2024 Games, is leading a rapid transformation of the long-struggling city.
Karim Bouamrane in his office in St.-Ouen, France. “I’m using the Olympic Games as a political weapon,” he said. Credit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times
The mayor grew up in a building so decrepit — filthy hallways, no private toilets, no showers — that his friends in nearby concrete towers pitied him.
Five decades later, that building — in St.-Ouen, a Paris suburb — is a distant memory, and in its place rises France’s Olympic pride: the athletes’ village, with its architectural-showcase buildings that are outfitted with solar panels, deep-sinking pipes for cooling and heating, and graceful balconies from which to look down on the forest planted below.