The first challenge of building the Paris 2024 Olympic Village, situated North of Paris in Seine-Saint-Denis, was to construct a city section on polluted land that had previously housed businesses requiring relocation, all while completing the project in a record timeframe. This effort involved reducing carbon emissions by half, ensuring the neighborhood would be livable without air conditioning in 2050. Keep in mind that the project faced the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and several heat waves. But beds were delivered on time; the Games took place.

The second challenge, which is no less significant, has now begun: welcoming 6,000 residents and 6,000 employees at nearly the same time, an unprecedented feat since the era of France's villes nouvelles ("new towns"). Built on both sides of a bend in the Seine that straddles Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen and L'Ile-Saint-Denis, the new housing units sit next to a four-star hotel, former workers' houses now selling for a premium, large housing complexes that have long been neglected, and inner suburban buildings home to some of the region's most vulnerable residents.

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