After the Paris 2024 Olympics – what does Paris have now?
Paris was a party. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, expressing gratitude to the people of Paris, said, “Thanks to the Games, we have found the joy in being together.” After the social distancing of the pandemic from 2020-2022, it was surely time to party hard in the streets, to embrace each other again, neighbour and stranger, local and international, all people everywhere.
The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games are gone but not forgotten. The feeling of togetherness will linger awhile, but its legacies are physical, visible, and tangible all over the 20 arrondissements (districts) of Paris and beyond. The mayor’s office released a 52-page publication outlining the changes in Paris due to the Paris 2024 Games.
Sport for Everyone
By the end of 2024, there will be 3,000 new inclusive clubs with better access to sports activities for people with disabilities. Forty member associations of the network of paraccueillant clubs (RCP) will promote para-sport in Paris – with adapted cycling, para-swimming, para-archery, and para-athletics. The French government has also declared the promotion of physical and sporting activity a national cause with the introduction of 30 minutes of daily physical activity for 4.5 million primary school children.
Free supervised Sports Sundays – Paris Sport Dimanches – were introduced in sporting venues, parks, and squares for the public to use equipment, such as fit boxing, cardio training, and table tennis, every Sunday morning. To date, 6,000 Parisians at nearly 20 sites have benefitted from these outdoor sessions.
The Paris Sport Seniors program was also recently introduced for people over the age of 55 where more than 200 people (72.5% of them women) have already benefitted from more than 230 organized sessions. More than 50% of participants attended more than 15 sessions each.
Paris Sportives, co-financed by the Paris 2024 Endowment Fund, is supporting outdoor sportto promote diversity and encourage women and teenage girls to exercise in public spaces. Every week, 32 clubs and associations offer free activities to 2,588 women in more than 50 fields, squares, and gardens.
A new venue – the Adidas Arena – was built for the Paris 2024 Games in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement to accommodate 8,000 spectators – which is now the home of the district Paris basketball club and two gymnasiums for residents. Five sporting facilities benefitted from energy-efficient building renovations around Paris – the Pierre-de-Coubertin stadium in the 16th arrondissement, the boxing hall at the Max-Rousié center in the 17tharrondissement, the Bertrand-Dauvin center and the Poissonniers center in the 18th and the Georges-Vallerey swimming pool in the 20th.
Additionally, 34 basketball courts, 5 handball courts, 3 urban tennis courts, and 2 football fields were renovated for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Water
There was much controversy over the water quality of the river Seine and its capacity to hold Olympic and Paralympic events. Despite postponements to the triathlons (swim, cycle, and run) due to the daily water quality test being below target on scheduled days, the events were re-scheduled. With ongoing emphasis on water quality, the public are expected to be able to swim in the river from the summer of 2025. Every summer in the future, the public will be able to enjoy three safe supervised swimming spots in the river, delineated by buoys and a pontoon with spaces for changing, showering, and storing belongings on the quays: at the Marie arm, the Grenelle arm, and at Bercy.
To achieve this, Paris established 2 water treatment plants with systems to decontaminate water discharged into the natural environment; connected 3,000 homes to the sewerage network from 2016-2024 that previously had caused untreated water to be discharged directly into the Seine; provided funds to 159 barges moored in the river as homes and public restaurants to
facilitate their adaptation to connect to the sewerage system; and increased the riverside vegetation so that rainwater flows into the ground in the natural environment.
Improved water quality means restored biodiversity. In the 1970s, there were only two identified species of fish in the river that runs through Paris. Now there are 34 different recorded species of fish in the Seine – trout, eels, lampreys, and shad.
The Austerlitz basin in the 13th arrondissement, after 3.5 years of construction, opened in May 2024 to store wastewater and rainwater to prevent them from being discharged into the Seine. The basin is 50 metres in diameter and 34 metres deep, storing the equivalent of 20 Olympic swimming pools of water.
About 500,000 plastic bottles were not used during the Paris 2024 Games thanks to the “Here, I choose Paris water” campaign. Nearly 1,100 Parisian merchants were ready to fill people’s water bottles for free. Drinking water during the heat wave of the summer Olympics was more accessible to more people. Paris installed 1,200 drinking water points in parks, gardens, cemeteries, and public streets; 123 new two-in-one fountains (drinking and misting); and 50 iconic green Wallace drinking fountains.
The Paris 2024 Games also marked the end of single-use plastic for approximately 50 road races held each year in Paris (in which more than a million bottles of water are consumed per year during the races). From 1 September 2024, event suppliers will be provided exclusively with reusable cups or reusable water bottles.
Public Spaces
More cycle paths, pedestrian promenades, and greenery are in place due to the Paris 2024 Games. A total of 60 kilometres of cycle paths were created with 10,000 temporary bicycle racks installed near the Olympic sites. These bike racks have been redistributed to sport centres, schools, and municipal facilities. A total of 1,750 bus stops were established, making 59 bus lines accessible for people with reduced mobility as well as the elderly or people with baby strollers. Achieving in three years what would have normally taken 20 years, the accessibility of bus lines has been greatly accelerated. In July 2024, Paris inaugurated 17 hyper-accessible neighborhoods for all. These are “exemplary zones” enabling any individual to move around Paris easily and have access to all municipal services (accommodation, sports, health, shops, schools, and culture).
In 2025, the Place de la Concorde in the 8th arrondissement, the Olympic site for urban sports, will change its appearance. The project aims to re-establish the link between the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and the Tuileries Gardens by reducing motorized traffic and increasing spaces for pedestrians, with 30-40% more vegetation. The greening of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées has already begun. A green promenade will extend from the Louvre to the Chaillot hill with trees, lawns, and flowerbeds.
The Olympic and Paralympic village is preparing to become an environmental area of the city for residents of Seine-Saint-Denis from 2025, with schools and colleges, shops, offices, parks, and gardens. About 2,800 new homes will become available with 94% generated by deconstruction recycled and recovered materials. Almost 40% of the new homes will be dedicated to social housing. In addition, 8,000 trees have already been planted.
Paris reduced the maximum speed of vehicles on all roads on and around the Ring Road (the periphery) to 50 km/h to reduce air and noise pollution for the 500,000 residents along these routes.
Arts and Culture
Gold medalists rang the Olympic bell, engraved with the Paris 2024 emblem, in the France Stadium. This Olympic bell will be installed in one of the renovated towers of the Notre-Dame Cathedral.
Twenty-four artworks (murals, sculptures, canvases, textiles, frescoes, etc.), created by artists and students in Paris’s applied arts schools as part of the Ex-Aequo project for the Games, will be exhibited in 24 sporting facilities in the capital. Honoured during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Games, the statues of the ten golden women will take their permanent place in the north of the capital.
The Charles-Aznavour garden in the 8th arrondissement will be home to an Olympic sculpture by American artist Alison Saar. A monumental fresco at the Porte de Clignancourt at the Place des Tirailleurs-Sénégalais in the 18th arrondissement, with its bright colours and animated objects, will remain until 2028, along with another three frescoes. Two artists, American Katbing and French Kekli, created the Clignancourt artwork, embodying para-sport with an image of a wheelchair athlete, American sport through the image of a baseball, and urban sport via a skateboard. All four frescoes symbolize the cooperation between Paris and Los Angeles for the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
And the Olympic dream continues: the iconic Olympic rings will remain on the Eiffel Tower until the opening of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games.
The Olympic party in Paris is over, but the legacy of the Paris 2024 Games continues …
