Who benefits from the Olympic and Paralympic Games? (3/4)

The Olympic housing district project is cynical: improving the living environment comes at the expense of the people who already live there

“There is something new, extremely interesting on an urban level: we are delivering a complete neighborhood, which is somewhere the quintessence of the way we think about the city in these 2020s in France” : thus says Nicolas Ferrand, general director of the Olympic works delivery company (Solideo), when he describes the “Olympic village”.

Built on the border of three towns of 93, Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen and L’Île-Saint-Denis, this space will become from 2025 a residential area for 6,000 people, and will offer office space for 6,000 more. It is the most massive and emblematic development of Paris 2024, the largest part of its urban “heritage”.

It is also a fantastic showcase for the construction and real estate multinationals who have built this flagship: Vinci and its 69 billion euros in turnover in 2023, Eiffage and its 22 billion, Nexity and its 4.3 billion, Groupama and its 17 billion, the Caisse des Dépôts group and its 2.9 billion net profit, its subsidiary Icade and its 1.8 billion euros of activity, and Legendre, a developer which builds in Île-de-France, notably on the Saclay plateau, and its 960 million euros. A considerable flow of private money was poured into the athletes’ district: 1.56 billion euros paid by real estate developers.

By adding public subsidies committed in the same place, nearly 2 billion euros were spent in total on the “village” of Paris 2024. This is the equivalent of the entire budget, all areas combined, of all Seine-Saint-Denis in 2023. “ There is something that was requested by the government: we are the sixth economic power, the Games must reflect the power of our industry in the field of the city », Also declared Nicolas Ferrand.

But can we live in capital? Is it possible to raise your children, go to school, do your shopping with joy and dignity, when your neighborhood has become a center of investment? Will the showcase of French genius and urban capitalism leave room for those who clean its offices in the early morning and those who deliver to its executives the dishes they do not have time to cook? Particularly when we know to what extent the price level of the Olympic district is socially selective and that the share of social housing there is in the minority.

We can see it as a mark of the national influence and the patriotic success of a project to spread throughout the country. We can also detect a form of cynicism: we are using the advantageous material conditions, abundant and inexpensive land, of a poor suburb. We transform our poverty into symbolic capital: the transformation of a neglected territory. We build homes that are inaccessible to the people who already live there. A true social guarantee for the operation, they find themselves pushed out by the improvement of their living environment, in their name.

The sporting event primarily benefits a city and a country in terms of image and notoriety, beyond the strictly economic dimension.

Faced with such an outpouring of emotions, the Olympic Games are undoubtedly the most universal myth of modern times, even if their roots remain very Western and reflect the geopolitical imbalances of yesterday and today. But this model, although always criticized and contested, has never declined. Because, in any case, success comes every four years. Passion of a universal audience on site, exceptional audiences via the media, the rumors from the Olympic enclosure never cease to make the richest as well as the most modest dream. We imagine that the great profitability of the event obviously goes to the International Olympic Committee which, since its creation in 1894, has continued to grow in power until it becomes an institution with political-financial but also geopolitical and exceptional cultural.

The criticized Pierre de Coubertin has revived an old ancient project to project it into a curious modernity: let us recognize his intuition which perpetuates his committee created at the Sorbonne and moved to Switzerland during the Great War. Many of the challenges of our world are played out in its premises in Lausanne and in its national pharmacies around the world. Olympism, ideology of the 20th century^e and XXI^e centuries, must be studied as such. This is what the exhibition at the Palais de la Porte Dorée focuses on, which opened its doors until September, precisely on the theme of “Another history of the world” which has taken place every four years since 1896. .

To weigh up the profits and losses, we could deduce that the Games are a financial pit and that the countries and even more the cities concerned which venture into the organization of such an event emerge bloodless and disfigured. Didn’t the 2004 Games in Athens throw Greece into an insurmountable economic slump? Didn’t those in Rio in 2016 cause a crisis throughout Brazil? With, in both cases, abandoned sites and an impression of chaos. However, when it comes to costs, countries with strong backbones are doing much better, such as Australia, China, Great Britain and Japan. And there the power and the differential between a closed circle of capitals and the rest of the world only invited to the feasts come into play.

Thus, profit escapes the strictly economic dimension of the Games because the stakes lie elsewhere. As long as the financial contingencies are overcome and evacuated, the Games above all benefit a city and a country in terms of image and notoriety, the famous “soft power” which appears essential today to display itself in a good place. in the “concert of nations.” » Look at Seoul in 1988, the city and the country have changed status, just like Barcelona or Atlanta in 1992 and 1996. So, Paris in 2024, as already in 1900 and 1924, will be the center of the world and, beyond the temporary inconveniences of Parisians and the gnashing of teeth here and there, this will be very profitable for him.