All eyes are fixed on Paris—the world’s most-visited city—as it gears up to welcome up to 10 million travelers next month for the 2024 Summer Olympics. But the world is paying attention to far more than just the sporting events this year, as the games' flashy new infrastructure projects aim to transform the city: Perhaps most notably, Paris has spent $1.5 billion attempting to clean up the Seine River to open it to swimming—something that pollution has made impossible for the past century. The city aims to open three public swimming spots on the river by next summer—just one of many initiatives that will affect Parisians and travelers far after the games are over.
Yet concerns from city leaders about the broader environmental and economic impact of hosting the Olympic Games led to bid withdrawals and fewer applicants in recent years. Paris 2024 is meant to mark a turning point in Olympic history: The IOC says these will be the first Games to be guided by the Paris Climate Agreement and fully aligned with the Olympics Agenda 2020, a roadmap of reforms established at the end of 2014 to adapt the massive event to the world’s most pressing environmental issues. The ultimate goal? To host the most sustainable Olympics in history—which will in turn shape the way travelers navigate and experience the Paris region moving forward.
From an environmental standpoint, 95% of the Olympic venues will be existing facilities or reusable temporary structures, each powered by 100% renewable energy and all accessible by public transport. By limiting new construction, organizers were able to focus the bulk of their efforts on how the Games will impact the city’s residents—particularly those living in Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest and most socially fragmented department in France.
“It was not about having Paris adapt to a predefined concept, but for the Games to be tailored to the city’s particular challenges and needs,” Marie Sollis, the IOC’s Director for Sustainability, tells Condé Nast Traveler. “In this case, that need is bridging the social and economic divide between central Paris and Greater Paris.”
Investing in Seine-Saint-Denis
With 26.7% of its population living beneath the poverty line, Seine-Saint-Denis stands to benefit the most from Olympics investment if all goes according to plan. Of the 4.4 billion euros (about $4.7 billion) spent by the country’s Olympic construction company, Solideo, to develop and restore permanent Olympic structures, 80% is being used to build a new aquatics center and Olympic Village in this department north of Paris. (The area will also host athletics and rugby sevens events in the Stade de France, the largest stadium in France.)
The Olympic Village, a 128-acre site built on former industrial wastelands encompassing three towns along the Seine, Saint-Ouen, Saint-Denis, and L’Ile-Saint-Denis, was designed not only for the 14,000 Olympic and Paralympic athletes who will live on-site during the Games, but also for the 6,000 permanent residents who will move in once they leave. By the end of 2025, the village’s buildings will be transformed into 2,800 permanent priced-capped housing units, 25% of which will be reserved for social housing.
The so-called eco-quarter is built primarily from reused materials, low-carbon timber, and glass, and powered by geothermal and solar energy. In addition to economically and environmentally sustainable lodging, the village will give locals access to 17 acres of green space and new bike paths, house offices, approximately 30 different shops, a daycare center, and a student residence.
On top of that, the influx of cash from both public and private investment has allowed for the renovation of two local schools in Saint-Ouen and the refurbishment of existing pools throughout neighboring towns. In addition to the new Aquatics Center, two temporary pools used for Olympic competitions and warm-ups at the Paris La Défense Arena will be relocated to Seine-Saint-Denis in the months following the Games. These basins, composed of a modular wall system using stainless steel and a white laminated PVC surface, will be repurposed for residents, sports clubs, and students.
“Concretely, this means more infrastructure in an area of France with the fewest facilities for the community, and where 50% of children entering secondary school don’t know how to swim,” says Tania Braga, who leads the IOC legacy department. With support from Paris 2024, the French Ministry of National Education has also launched a 30-minute daily exercise program in over 1,000 primary schools throughout France.
Karim Bouamrane, the mayor of Saint-Ouen, sees the Games as an accelerator for change that would have otherwise taken decades to achieve. “Seine-Saint-Denis is the poorest department in France, chronically under-resourced in terms of public services and sports infrastructure, with difficulties in giving hope to new generations; the Olympics strengthens our ability to nurture that hope.”
The Olympic investment in the neighborhoods has indirectly attracted commercial development to the area as well: Tesla moved its French headquarters to Saint-Ouen, Tony Parker's Adéquat Academy will open an outpost nearby, and the new Saint-Ouen Grand Paris Nord teaching hospital plans to welcome its first students by 2028. H4 Hotel Wyndham Paris Pleyel Resort, a four-star, 700-room behemoth located in Seine-Saint-Denis’ tallest skyscraper, la Tour Pleyel, opens July 8 with a rooftop bar, pool, and 16 different event rooms, targeting business travelers and corporate conventions.
Saint-Denis’ mayor Mathieu Hanotin sees the hotel project as one arm of a broader municipal strategy to put the Pleyel district, as it has been nicknamed, on the tourism map. “With this new positioning, the arrival of [new] metros and the Olympics, we can take our place in the Paris ecosystem,” Hanotin told Le Monde.
Can Paris pull off the most sustainable olympics in history?
The local developments, alongside the Games' broader sustainability ambitions, which include cutting its carbon emissions in half compared to past editions in London or Rio, all sounds great on paper. However, whether or not Paris 2024 will live up to the ambitious title of the most sustainable Olympics in history will depend mainly on what happens when all the delegations return home.
“The long-term success of the city’s post-Games ambitions, particularly for socially vulnerable communities, relies on deployment and means. Very few Olympics host cities have been successful on this front,” says James Lima, whose firm JLP+D works on large-scale urban planning and development projects in the US focused on social inclusion. “Paris has shown itself to be a leader in urban transformation and social programs, however, and is perhaps better positioned than most.”
Still, some of the Olympic preparations have sparked controversy. On the French Polynesian island of Tahiti, where surfing competitions will unfold, local surfers, fishermen, and environmentalists have raised concerns for marine life since the beginning of the year when it was announced that Olympic organizers would build a new viewing tower in the reef lagoon at Teahupo’o. Other locals struggled to imagine how their village would sustain an influx of visitors. The IOC responded by scaling back construction and reassuring the community that in-person spectatorship would be limited due to the village's size and the surfing reef's offshore location–thereby minimizing travel-related emissions. But as the AFP reported, “reducing emissions doesn’t necessarily mean preserving the environment.”
Whether we can truly talk about sustainability within the framework of the current Olympics format is perhaps the bigger question to ask as millions of travelers fly into a host city from all corners of the globe–the main source of Olympic Games greenhouse gas emissions, according to Professor Martin Müller of University of Lausanne. And those emissions are significant, particularly when considering the Paris tourism board’s latest report that projects that international flight arrivals will climb 11.4% during the Olympic period (July 26-August 11) versus summer 2023. (Paris 2024 impact goals take these emissions into account.)
“The environmental impact can’t be ignored. But I believe there is something visceral and hopeful about an in-person experience like this,” says Lima. “Maybe the Paris model will inspire a new way.” And finding the right way to come together in peace, particularly when the world is beset by war and conflict, is not only crucial but an important component of the discussion around sustainability.
The real lesson from this effort to overhaul the way the Olympics is carried out is that the tenets guiding it, such as environmental impact, community regeneration and preservation, low-emission transport, local food consumption, and multicultural togetherness, don’t only apply to mega events. They are the same principles informing the future of travel. If Paris 2024 will demonstrate anything, it’s that a more responsible approach to experiencing the world’s greatest destinations is not only possible—it’s the only way forward.
