Paris 2024: Leaving a lasting legacy

Moreso than glitzy new arenas, when it comes to urban regeneration, the Olympic Village has been the cornerstone of Olympic legacy projects ever since Barcelona transformed its run-down industrial zone of Poblenou into a dynamic neighborhood adjoining the Olympic Port and city beaches three decades ago.      

In an effort to emulate the Catalan capital, Paris is attempting to level-up its long neglected and stigmatized near-north banlieues, stitching together the social and economic fabric in an effort to create vibrant, affluent districts of a new Greater Paris.

Changing rooms
It’s one of the largest infrastructural undertakings of these Olympics: the construction of an Olympic Village with a capacity of 14,250 beds in the towns of Saint Ouen and Saint Denis. Once the Paralympics conclude on the September 8th, its buildings – located on an island on the River Seine to the north west of Paris, as well as adjacent parts of Saint Denis and Saint Ouen – will be emptied of people and stripped of their temporary walls and bathrooms, alongside a certain number of elevators, to transform housing for elite athletes into a brand-new urban neighborhood for local people.

In all, the erstwhile Olympic Village will provide 2,656 new homes, with between 25% to 40% designated social housing. To avoid the possibility of any future ghettoization, the buildings will contain schools, kindergartens, as well as sports and cultural spaces. Furthermore, the tertiary sector has been allocated 117,000 square meters, with retail accounting for 3,850. The zone will also contain seven hectares of parks and other green spaces.

"Porte de la Chapelle was specifically chosen as the location for the gleaming new Adidas Arena in order to spur the regeneration of this unloved part of the city"

Of course, a cynic might say that 25% social housing means 75% gentrification, and certainly there is a balance to be struck here between maintaining the character of the local environment while adding the necessary amenities to attract businesses and homeowners to the area. According to a June 2022 report in The Guardian, of the 13,000 homes that had been built on and around the London 2012 Olympic site, “only 11% were genuinely affordable to people on average local incomes.”

For all the positive talk of the Olympics as a game-changer for local citizens, the fear is that the problems of the banlieue will not be solved by this flurry of construction, they will just be pushed a few miles further away from the center of this sprawling metropolis of 13 million.

Towering achievement
As a potent symbol of urban decay, the rusting, 38-story Pleyel Tower took some beating. An unmissable eyesore on the northern Paris skyline, for the past two decades it had mostly functioned as an advertisement delivery mechanism for multinational corporations such as Phillips, Siemens and Kia, thanks to the massive rotating sign on its roof which invariably caught the eye of train passengers and motorists on their way in and out of the city.  

Yet those taking the RER B commuter train from Charles de Gaulle airport into Paris during the games will instead see a gleaming white skyscraper, complete with a 700-room, four-star hotel which opened its doors on the eve of the Games, as well as the adjacent, and slightly smaller, Maestro Tower. Touted by its financial backers, Pleyel Investissement, as a “Business Resort” – a kind of mini La Defense with cinemas, restaurants and other cultural activities – the hope is it will attract people to work, live and socialize in the area.   

"After the Games, the Olympic Village will provide 2,656 new homes, with between 25% to 40% designated social housing" 

Boosting the chances of this happening is the fact that the tower now sits at one end of the recently extended Line 14 – the city’s most modern metro line – just six stops from Madeleine in the center of Paris.

Peripheral vision
The périphérique ringroad is widely accepted to be the spot where Paris proper ends and its banlieue (literally the suburbs, but a term that’s mostly used in the pejorative sense to mean the projects/council estates) begins, yet – whisper it – the banlieue has always penetrated Paris, in the guise of the wedge-shaped La Chapelle neighborhood, an unloved corner of the 18th district sandwiched between the tracks of the Gare du Nord and nearby Gare de L’Est train stations which opens out funnel-like to the the near Paris towns of La Plaine Saint Denis and Aubervilliers.

When France hosted Euro 2016, few risked the walk from the then terminus of the metro line 12, Aubervilliers’ Front Populaire station, through run-down streets to the Stade de France, but whereas eight years ago the walk took you past derelict buildings and waste ground, now the roads are lined with modern apartments, office complexes and university buildings.

Porte de la Chapelle was specifically chosen as the location for the gleaming new Adidas Arena in order to spur the regeneration of this part of the city. Across the avenue, another ambitious project, the Campus Concordet of Paris-Saclay University, is rising from the earth.  

The legacy of these games will not just be limited to new arenas and housing. In order to respond to the preparation needs of athletes, across Seine-Saint-Denis, no less than 19 pools, gyms and small arenas have been renovated, and these will be made available to the local population from this autumn on. Another facility in the northern suburbs that will have a second life after the Olympics is the media center adjacent to Le Bourget airport, which will be transformed into 1,500 homes post Games.

Thanks to the 2024 Olympics Games, the border between Paris and its near north suburbs has been blurred. The challenge in the years to come will be to ensure the wealth and opportunities that it provides, benefits the largest number of people – and above all local people.