On January 17, 2018, the French government announced on
television, via the voice of Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, that it
had given up on pursuing the highly controversial project of building a
new airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes (NDDL). This decision capped five
decades of political, economic, legal, environmental, and personal
struggle. The airport was to be located approximately 30 kilometers
north of the city of Nantes in western France; instead, the site became
la ZAD—the Zone a Défendre (Zone To Defend). What began as a
small protest camp grew into a world-famous space of autonomous
experimentation that lasted almost nine years