The village modernity hit with everything it had.
Now, let us go to Goussainville-Vieux-Pays, on the outskirts of Paris, near Charles de Gaulle Airport.
Goussainville was once a normal village. Old church. Old houses. Ordinary life.
Then the twentieth century arrived, wearing smug shoes.
First, development shifted the centre of life elsewhere. The new town expanded. The old one began to thin out.
Then came the airport.
When Charles de Gaulle opened in 1974, Goussainville-Vieux-Pays ended up directly beneath the flight path.
And I do mean directly. Not occasionally noisy.
Imagine trying to enjoy lunch while the sky repeatedly files a noise complaint against your bones. You cannot sip wine thoughtfully when a jet engine is rearranging your internal organs every ninety seconds. Even your croissant develops anxiety.
So people left.
What remained was the old village centre, half-frozen in place.
And then, because history is a comedian with a personality disorder, something even worse happened.
During the Paris Air Show, a Soviet Tupolev crashed into Goussainville. The crash killed crew members and residents, and sealed the village’s fate.
So Goussainville became one of those places modernity did not exactly destroy in a single gesture.
Urban expansion. Airport noise. Air disaster.
Today, it feels like a place caught between centuries: old stone, emptied streets, and then, suddenly, a low-cost airline thundering overhead.
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2 Comments
It’s very sad indeed, a tragic loss of people’s homes and businesses. Did the government compensate these residents?
Maybe building parts can be repurposed into other buildings so that it won’t be a complete loss.
How awful. The government should have bought them out and relocated them.