Lhe party is over, the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games handed over the keys at the beginning of November, the post-2024 Olympics can officially begin. Because there would be an after, a “legacy”, for Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis, and even beyond, it has been promised and sworn a thousand times. It is now a condition of the specifications of the Olympic Games: the considerable sums of public money released in record time for two fifteen days of summer magic must sustainably benefit the host territories.
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In November, work resumed on the athletes' village, located between Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen and L'Ile-Saint-Denis, north of Paris, one of the most emblematic objects of this material legacy. The first residents and employees are expected at the end of 2025. Before then, the temporary partitions of the apartments must be removed and equipped with kitchens, noted the Minister of Housing, Valérie Létard, on Thursday, November 28. More than 2,800 housing units, a quarter to a third of which will be reserved for the most modest, that's no small thing in a metropolis where the shortage is glaring. The nights will be pleasant there, even at 45°C, assure the designers. Saint-Denis Pleyel station, served earlier than expected by metro line 14 and which will be served by lines 16 and 17 by 2030, is eight minutes away.
Insulated walls, an “Ecodistrict” label and good transport connections are not everything. We will have to wait a few years to measure the material legacy of these Games. Because the question that no one knows how to answer today is how residents will appropriate this piece of city built in record time, how the graft will take hold with neighboring neighborhoods, some of which are very disadvantaged. Some 6,000 residents and 6,000 employees moving in in three months is the equivalent of what happened in two years, in Marne-la-Vallée (Seine-et-Marne), in the 1970s, at the great era of new towns. The social engineering challenge is daunting.
Glass half full or half empty
The animation of the ground floors, that is to say the choice of shops and activities at the bottom of the buildings, is decisive. Promises are always good during the competition phase. Now that the world is looking elsewhere, it should not be the ambition to devote these square meters in particular “sport, culture for all, catering” disappears. Same requirement at the media village, in Dugny, further on the A1, where residents arrive in the spring.
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