Visible legacy of the Paris 2024 Olympics – see it, feel it, touch it
Paris was a party during the Paris 2024 Games – now, after the party …
Paris was a party. The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games are gone but not forgotten. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, expressing gratitude to the people of Paris, said, “Thanks to the Games, we have found the joy in being together.” 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.
Sport for Everyone
By the end of 2024, there will be 3,000 new inclusive clubs with better access to sporting activities for people with disabilities and the promotion of para-sport in Paris – 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 and the Paris Sport Seniors program were introduced for the public to use sporting equipment on Sunday mornings, including for people over the age of 55.
A new venue – the Adidas Arena – was built for the Paris 2024 Games in the north of Paris to accommodate 8,000 spectators – which is now the home of the district Paris basketball club and two gymnasiums for residents – and five sporting facilities benefitted from energy-efficient building renovations around Paris – a stadium, a boxing hall, two sport centers, and a swimming pool. 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
Every summer in the future, the public will be able to enjoy three safe supervised swimming spots in the river Seine, delineated by buoys and a pontoon with spaces for changing, showering, and storing belongings on the quays.
To achieve this, Paris established 2 water treatment plants with systems to decontaminate water discharged into the natural environment and increased the riverside vegetation so that rainwater flows into the ground and is not wasted. Improved water quality means restored biodiversity. In the 1970s, there were only two identified species of fish in the river. Now there are 34 different recorded species of fish in the Seine – trout, eels, lampreys, and shad.
Drinking water during the heat wave of the summer 2024 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.
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.
Culture
Gold medalists rang the Olympic bell 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.
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 …
The full article is available on my Paris website here.
Photographer: Martina Nicolls
Can’t see the whole article? Want to view the original article? Want to view more articles? Go to Martina’s Substack: The Stories in You and Me
