Paris stumbles in its pre-Olympics stress test

With global media pouring into one of the world’s most-visited cities, cameras were on hand to cover plenty of other miscellany. Spanish television gleefully filmed a rat scurrying outside the Notre Dame cathedral, while on May 29 a man disguised as a wheelchair-bound woman threw a pie at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre in a climate protest.

It would be wrong to paint this kind of chaos as a uniquely Parisian or French phenomenon. Last year’s Euro 2020 final in Wembley was marred by similar rush of ticketless fans and violence. As cities stir back to life after COVID-19, managing crowds feels like a work in progress.

But France has a lot riding on big sports events designed to burnish its global image. Its successful 2024 Olympics bid made it the poster child of a new kind of sports diplomacy, getting rid of the eye-wateringly expensive white-elephant stadiums of old in favour of more sustainable and cheaper projects that use existing facilities.

Its estimated cost of 6.6 billion euros ($7.1 billion) is supposed to be proof of the new paradigm, compared with the 31 billion-euro cost of the Beijing Olympics or the 16.5 billion-euro cost of the Rio de Janeiro games. It’s also supposed to be a vindication of Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s environmental urbanism, with a smaller carbon footprint than London 2012.

In practice, that means a mix of new and renovated buildings between Paris and Saint-Denis, site of the Stade de France, which is supposed to be the main beneficiary of regeneration – similar to Stratford in London.

It also means new transport infrastructure, from a metro expansion to newly-pedestrianised streets and dedicating part of the ring-road around Paris known as the ‘peripherique’ to Olympic transport. Soccer fans walking along the Seine on May 28 already have a taste of the kind of anti-car enthusiasm that makes Hidalgo popular with the ‘bobo’ (hipster) crowd.

There was already a risk of disappointment before this weekend. COVID-19 has already meant several of these projects won’t be ready in time.

Urbanist Laurent Chalard also warns that lowering the cost, and sprawl of an Olympics project also means potentially losing some of the regeneration benefit. Unlike Stratford, the plans for Saint-Denis, at the northern edge of Paris, don’t include a railway station or as much real estate.

It’s therefore vital that what can be fixed does get fixed. Some of the lessons of this weekend will be organisational. Sebastien Louis, a historian who specialises in sports-fan organisations, notes stadium security in France can involve a hasty last-minute recruitment drive; he suggests looking at Denmark, which requires training and a license.

Others will be cultural: Managing crowds of soccer fans has tended to default to strong-arm tactics once used against hooligans, as some local officials admitted on May 30.

Still more will be about the unequal post-COVID-19 urban fault lines of big cities, such as access to employment, transport and housing. If delays and disappointments mar the social-inclusion hopes of Saint-Denis — which Emmanuel Macron unconvincingly described as a budding ‘California’ — conflict with police won’t stop.

This weekend’s final wasn’t quite the soft-power victory lap it was supposed to be. But as a stress test for the future of urban development, it’s a needed wake-up call.

Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering digital currencies, the European Union and France. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.