That's not really how I read in that article. It's the introduction of the jet engine that caused the bulk of the problems. It does mention O’Hare in Chicago as

That's not really how I read in that article. It's the introduction of the jet engine that caused the bulk of the problems. It does mention O’Hare in Chicago as an example of an airport built far from the city only to have the city eventually expand around it, but that was in the 40s, 50s, and 60s and wasn't a big problem until jet engines came along. It also mentions that airports have become much much larger (both in terms if surface area and traffic) – it's not just cities that have expanded. There is a big difference between "an airplane once a day" and "an airplane every five minutes", whether it's during daytime or early mornings/evenings/nights. My hometown is also an example of an airport built far form the city (in the 30s) only to have the city expand around it, but traffic has expanded massively since the early 00s (after the city expansions happened) with RyanAir traffic. Before that it was mostly a military airport with some limited regional passenger traffic. As an additional point, the most noise isn't necessarily near the airport but sometimes dozens of kilometres from the airport. Sometimes this is because the airport changed flying routes due to noise complaints and/or expansions.