This is Paris’ mayor Anne Hidalgo at the closing ceremony. She was the one who started Paris’ campaign 9 years ago, after the worst terrorist attacks the city had ever known she became one of the most passionate (if not only) advocates for the games in the city.
If you’re not French, chances are you do not know her. She is pretty hated within the French population, mostly for her anti-car politics. Her opponents have always said she was “destroying” Paris. It was one of France’s most popular top tweets " #saccageparis". Even though she’s been re-elected, she’s been called every name in the books, lunatic, crazy (dingo) and so on and so forth, and everyone was betting on her to fail. Honestly ? Myself included.
When I turned on the Games, I was expecting to see her gloating everywhere, from the opening to the closing. Tweeting about the games, Léon Marchand’s victory and so on. Turns out the closing was the first time I did saw her. She remained very discreet the whole 2 weeks, not going to pose with the French champions or drying their tears like other French politicians did.
Now let’s be clear, the lady has flaws, but her and her administration’s ambition’s for these games in the face of constant public opposition ended up proving me wrong. This is a huge victory for Paris. Congrats, mrs Mayor !
I lived in paris for decades.
I can safely UNCONDITIONALLY state that Paris is way way better with less cars, more public transport and bike lanes.
the whole technocratic push for building these fucking highways through paris by the river from the 60s and 70s was a disaster for the city, the smog fucked up all the monuments, parking became a huge problem . Paris is a relatively dense and small city that prides itself on its side-streets, monuments, parks…its literally designed for strolling and light traffic.
now people can walk and cycle along the banks of the river, you can take the trams round the periphery saving tons of time.
People don’t understand how bad they wanted to make paris , you want a vision of what a "modern paris’ would look like check out La Defence, its a giant slab of concrete , malls , towers and fuck all else, the germans wouldn’t have spend a millisecond thinking about bombing the place flat.