SAINT-DENIS: Lower than 500m separate the Stade de France – the glowing centrepiece of the Paris Olympics –and the crumbling Francs-Moisins property affected by poverty and crime.
Samia Achoui, a secretary who lives in one of many gray blocks dogged by drug dealing, doesn’t have a ticket to see the Video games.
As a substitute she is going to pay attention from her window to the cheers and applause echoing over the canal.
Regardless of its title, the Paris Olympics will happen principally in Seine-Saint-Denis on the opposite facet of the “peripherique” ring highway that divides the French capital from a few of its poorest and most infamous suburbs, often called banlieues.
The densely populated working-class division north of Paris hosts 4 of the Video games’ massive venues, the athletes’ village and different key Olympic websites.
Paris’s pitch for the Video games – which run from Jul 26 to Aug 11 – leaned laborious on regenerating an space that has absorbed wave after wave of immigration and has the nation’s youngest inhabitants. A 3rd of its 1.6 million folks lives under the poverty line.
France not solely hopes to make use of the Olympics to turbo-charge ongoing redevelopment there, however to recast the fevered picture of Seine-Saint-Denis as a crime-ridden assortment of ghettos cast throughout suburban riots which began there in 2005.
Its repute took an extra battering on the earth’s media after the 2022 Champions League Closing fiasco, when soccer followers had been attacked and robbed on their method into the Stade de France.
“PEOPLE’S GAMES”?
Mohamed Gnabaly is relentlessly upbeat about how the Video games might assist change Seine-Saint-Denis.
The mayor of Ile-Saint-Denis, the slim island within the River Seine the place a part of the athletes’ village has been constructed, is “obsessed” about making the Olympics “a folks’s Video games”.
A lot in order that his little municipality has introduced 7,000 tickets – one for just about all of its inhabitants.
The island, which has its share of grim house blocks, has been turned the other way up by building works for the Olympics.
However the mayor is set it can now extract the utmost profit from the Video games, however that his city corridor was ransacked when rioting once more erupted in poor suburbs throughout France final June after police shot and killed a young person at a visitors cease simply outdoors Paris.
“I’ve been engaged on this for 3 years,” stated Gnabaly, who’s proud the island can also be house to the Olympics’ “Africa Station”, a fan zone devoted to African tradition and sport.
“Now we have suffered (with all of the work) however not solely will this rework our city, we shall be on the coronary heart of the reactor,” the mayor insisted. “We aren’t going to be ignored by the Video games.”
His optimism isn’t shared by everybody throughout Seine-Saint-Denis.
“There are two extremes,” stated Cecile Gintrac of Vigilance JO, an area watchdog group. “One a part of Paris goes to be a giant occasion whereas the opposite will not be capable of go to work or get round” due to all of the Olympic highway closures and restrictions.
Supply driver Moussa Syla, 45, who lives within the Francs-Moisins property – which can also be getting a significant facelift – stated the considered the disruption brings him out in a chilly sweat.
“It’ll be a nightmare to get round,” he stated.
RENAISSANCE
It has been laborious to go anyplace in Seine-Saint-Denis within the build-up to the Video games with out seeing scaffolding or cranes constructing entire new neighbourhoods.
The Olympics is a part of a long-term push to pull up the division that started with the symbolic resolution to construct the Stade de France there for the 1998 World Cup, which France’s “rainbow” multiracial workforce went on to win.
Excessive property costs in Paris and an enormous soon-to-be-delivered extension of its metro system into Seine-Saint-Denis – Europe’s single largest infrastructure mission – has made the division engaging for builders.
Corporations like Tesla have moved their French headquarters to its former industrial areas the place factories have lengthy shut.
“We have to discover a second wind for Seine-Saint-Denis so jobs keep right here,” stated Isabelle Vallentin, the quantity two at Solideo, the state physique charged with delivering the Olympic tasks.
And Seine-Saint-Denis’s “extraordinarily decrepit housing needs to be overhauled”, she added.
A big slice of the 4.5 billion euro (US$4.8 billion) constructing finances for the Video games goes into this push, with the division the massive winner, taking round 80 per cent of 1.7 billion euros in public cash. Whereas non-public funding is tougher to quantify, it doubtless isn’t far behind.
HOUSEING LEGACY
The Olympic Village, the Video games’ largest constructing mission and an entire new eco-neighbourhood in itself, will home 14,250 athletes and their assist groups in addition to 6,000 Paralympians.
Constructed on a former industrial zone alongside the River Seine, it’s architecturally different, with many buildings overlooking the river. All these below eight flooring are constructed of wooden and all of the village’s vitality comes from warmth pumps and renewables.
As soon as the Paralympics end, the village will morph right into a blended neighbourhood of flats and places of work, the primary of its 6,000 new residents transferring in early subsequent yr, adopted by the same variety of staff.
However solely a 3rd of the two,800 flats shall be offered on the open market.
Opposite to earlier Video games like London – the place the organisers had been accused of “gentrification on an industrial scale” and never conserving their guarantees to locals – Solideo’s Vallentin stated they insisted builders “reply first to (native) housing wants”.
So 25 to 40 per cent of the flats, relying on the three municipalities the village spans, will go to social housing, with the remaining let loose at “reasonably priced” rents by way of semi-public housing our bodies.
Seine-Saint-Denis’s different massive headline win is a clutch of recent swimming swimming pools, of which it’s in dire want.
Essentially the most eye-catching is the Olympic Aquatic Centre, a spectacular undulating wooden edifice reverse the Stade de France the place the diving, water polo and creative swimming medals shall be determined.
It should additionally get the principle Olympic pool, which is to be dismantled and divided in two after the Video games, in addition to a brand new coaching pool. The organisers are additionally serving to pay for 2 others.
“A REAL PLUS”
Olympic-related websites have been popping up like confetti throughout Seine-Saint-Denis, with the little city of Dugny prone to be reworked by the Video games.
Its inhabitants is about to develop by a 3rd with housing on a website inherited from the Olympics’ “media cluster”. Badly served by public transport till now, Dugny is utilizing the Video games to diversify its housing inventory, 77 per cent of which is social housing – the very best fee in France.
One-third of the 1,400 new properties are being put aside to assist get folks on the property ladder.
Dugny’s younger mayor Quentin Gesell stated lots of his associates “who had grown up like me in Dugny have needed to depart as a result of they will neither purchase right here or lease (their incomes being too excessive for social housing), after they would have most popular to remain near their households.”
One other extra delicate transformation is prone to come by way of a collection of recent footbridges linking areas lengthy divided by the main highway and rail arteries that slice by way of the division.
Again close to the Francs-Moisins property, a foot and bike bridge is being constructed throughout the Saint-Denis canal to the Stade de France, changing an previous and unreliable rotating highway bridge and a steep-stepped pedestrian crossing.
“It is a nightmare to cross now,” stated Karene, a mom of three. “You need to fold up the pushchair and take the infant within the different arm. So that is actually nice, an actual plus for the realm.”
The bridge had been talked of for years however the Video games bought it over the road, placing up two-thirds of the ten.5-million-euro price.
The Olympics have been the “pivot level that has accelerated the transformation” of the division, Stephane Troussel, the socialist head of Seine-Saint-Denis council, advised AFP.
“In document time we’ve managed to ship an enormous quantity of infrastructure, housing, roads and bridges,” he stated.
“BADLY PAID” JOBS
However there are doubts over the roles the Video games promised to ship to the division, whose 10.4 p.c unemployment fee is sort of a 3rd larger than the nationwide common.
“The Video games are recruiting – get your self a job!” declared the flyer for an Olympic job truthful close to Charles de Gaulle airport in December.
“I’ve been to a variety of these and it is at all times the identical,” stated Fouad Yousfi as he went between stands searching for cleaners and pastry cooks. “Not precisely the businesses you want to work for, and sometimes badly paid.”
Stephane Laurent, 47, who was trying to “get work rapidly”, left one other truthful in Saint-Denis with a suggestion to coach as a safety guard – one thing the Video games have an enormous want for.
Whereas round 180,000 folks will work on the Video games, based on official estimates, most shall be on short-term contracts, such because the 6,000 folks taken on by Sodexo for catering on the Olympic Village.
“Now we have to be trustworthy, there’s in all probability a mismatch between what was anticipated of the Video games and the extent of unemployment and precarity we’ve,” stated Bernard Thibault, a former CGT union chief who sits on the Olympics committee.
Native corporations have additionally benefited, choosing up contracts price 330 million euros, based on Seine-Saint-Denis council.
However others query whether or not the Video games’ financial dividend has filtered down.
“We’re one of many winners,” stated Mehdi Ourezifi of Providers Persos, an area back-to-work nonprofit that landed a part of the laundry contract for the Olympic Village. “However usually native corporations and back-to-work schemes are disenchanted” given the windfall the Video games supplied, he added.
STUBBORN OLD IMAGE
But past the financial and infrastructural good points, one of many largest Olympics legacies could possibly be how Seine-Saint-Denis is seen.
Police have already stepped up operations focusing on drug sellers, avenue distributors and others who “monopolise public areas”, and an enormous safety operation is deliberate for the Video games themselves.
However after a police station was attacked in March after a youth was killed by a police automobile throughout a chase, and the top of the Mongolian delegation was robbed of jewels price practically 600,000 euros on his solution to a safety committee assembly in October, the dangerous previous picture is proving troublesome to shake.
Two lethal drug gang shootings in Might have not helped.
But in welcoming guests from everywhere in the world this summer season, Seine-Saint-Denis hopes to write down a brand new chapter its historical past, one which performs up it range and potential reasonably than crime and sporadic outbursts of rioting.
Again on the Francs-Moisins property, Karene is praying that “the visibility” will do everybody good.
“I hope it’s effectively organised, as a result of whether it is just like the soccer (the chaotic scenes earlier than the 2022 Champions League Closing), Saint-Denis’s picture will plummet once more,” she stated.
However council chief Troussel is way extra optimistic: “5 or 10 years from now it is going to be to Seine-Saint-Denis that individuals will come to see the heritage of the Paris Video games,” he stated.