How the 2024
Olympics changed Paris

This article is part of the Future of the Olympics special report.

Millions of visitors will flock to Paris later this month to attend one of the world’s largest sporting events: the 2024 Summer Olympics.

With an opening ceremony that will include a boat parade on the River Seine passing in front some of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre Museum, visitors will be presented with a city reshaped by the games.

We take a look at what Paris got right (gold metals) and what it didn’t (wooden spoons, an award traditionally given to a contestant that came in last).

The Paris 2024 Games’ pledged to be the “greenest in history.”

A key aspect of that vow was to invest in modernizing existing infrastructure rather than building anew, both for sustainability purposes and to keep costs from spiraling out of control (more on that later). According to the city of Paris, 95 percent of the Games’ venues are pre-existing infrastructure, including the landmark multi-purpose Stade de France stadium and the National Velodrome for cycling.

The city has showcased the Georges Vallerey pool as an example of how the Games will have a lasting positive impact: The pool, initially built for the 1924 Olympics, has been refurbished to serve as a training ground for athletes and will then be transformed into a public pool for its neighborhood.

The two key new pieces of infrastructure include an 8,000-seat arena and the Olympic Village in the deprived district of Seine-Saint-Denis. The former will be turned into a concert venue and home ground for the Paris Basketball team; the latter will become a housing development.

Holding outdoor events in spectacular venues in the heart of Paris comes with at least one major issue: the terror threat.

France has remained on high alert since a string of Islamist attacks stunned the country in 2015 and 2016. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has repeatedly indicated that terrorism remains the No. 1 priority when it comes to security ahead of the Games, while stressing that no plans for an attack targeting the event have been detected.

In March, Macron asked the capacity for the showpiece opening ceremony on the River Seine be reduced to half of what was initially planned.

Key fears include the prospect of having snipers located in buildings near the outdoor ceremony or explosive-packed drones. These risks are being reduced by rigid security procedures, French security officials have said.

The prospect of seeing the Paris transport system — saturated even on a normal day — become even more crowded has prompted many Parisians to flee the city for the duration of the Games.

Still, the Olympics have driven public authorities to invest in transportation, extending two subway lines and one commuter train route to facilitate access between venues — infrastructure that will then serve local populations.

The Paris-Orly airport, one of the international airports in the Parisian region, will now be directly linked to the city center via a metro line which will be crucial to the Games, connecting various venues including the Aquatic Center, Stade de France, Place de la Concorde — which will host breakdancing and skateboard among other events — and the Bercy Arena, where the basketball finals will take place.

The Olympics are supposed to help fulfill a decades-long promise: transform the Seine River, which snakes through Paris, into a body of water where people can swim for the first time in 100 years.

€1.4 billion was invested to build a mega-basin in Paris designed to store wastewater and prevent the sewage system from spilling into the river. But heavy rains in June, less than a month before the event, caused the system to overflow, prompting untreated sewage to flow into the river and making the Seine unfit for swimming.

The swim marathon and triathlon events are set to take place in the Seine. For the former, an alternative venue has been picked if the river is unsafe. For the triathlon, alternative competition dates have been planned in case the water is too polluted. “As a very last resort, the rules provide for the possibility of switching to duathlon,” Tony Estanguet, president of the Games’ organizing committee, told L’Equipe.

Seeking to prove the Seine’s cleanliness, Estanguet and Hidalgo went for a dip in the weeks preceding the opening ceremony.

Even though the Paris 2024 Games have gone over budget, they will still cost less than past editions — a triumph by Olympic standards.

The overall expenditure is expected to be €11.8 billion — 15 percent more than what was initially budgeted. That, however, remains under the purported cost of both the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Games, and miles under Sochi 2014, the most expensive Games in history clocking in at a mind-boggling $55 billion.

For Paris, costs included building the new venues, paying private security and ensuring transport and housing for athletes, the Paris 2024 committee specified.

Human rights groups have warned: French authorities are using the Olympics as an opportunity to rid the capital of populations deemed undesirable.

Authorities have sped up the removal of homeless people around Paris, offering them short-term solutions in smaller cities across the country.

While the state claims that this has nothing to do with the Olympics, organizations working in support of unhoused people have underlined an acceleration of such procedures in recent months, leading to accusations of a “social cleanse” ahead of the Games. The relocation policy is being conducted as part of a test phase, launched in April 2023 and set to run until the end of 2024.

“The way this is being handled goes beyond the unhoused; it also concerns drug users, sex workers,” said Antoine de Clerck, a spokesperson for Revers de la médaille (“the flipside of the medal”) collective, a group of nonprofits pushing for Paris 2024 to leave “a positive social legacy.”

“Everything that doesn’t fit into the ‘Emily in Paris’ postcard,” is being pushed aside, de Clerck said.