SAINT-DENIS: Lower than 500m separate the Stade de France – the glowing centrepiece of the Paris Olympics –and the crumbling Francs-Moisins property tormented 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 an alternative she is going to pay attention from her window to the cheers and applause echoing over the canal.
Regardless of its identify, the Paris Olympics will happen largely 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, referred to as banlieues.
The densely populated working-class division north of Paris hosts 4 of the Video games’ large 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 onerous 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 individuals 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 solid throughout suburban riots which began there in 2005.
Its status took an extra battering on the planet’s media after the 2022 Champions League Ultimate fiasco, when soccer followers have been attacked and robbed on their means into the Stade de France.
“PEOPLE’S GAMES”?
Mohamed Gnabaly is relentlessly upbeat about how the Video games may assist change Seine-Saint-Denis.
The mayor of Ile-Saint-Denis, the slender island within the River Seine the place a part of the athletes’ village has been constructed, is “obsessed” about making the Olympics “a individuals’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 condominium blocks, has been turned the other way up by building works for the Olympics.
However the mayor is decided it’s going to 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 teen at a site 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.
“We now 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’re not 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, a neighborhood watchdog group. “One a part of Paris goes to be a giant social gathering whereas the opposite will not have the ability to 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 serious facelift – stated the considered the disruption brings him out in a chilly sweat.
“It will be a nightmare to get round,” he stated.
RENAISSANCE
It has been onerous to go anyplace in Seine-Saint-Denis within the build-up to the Video games with out seeing scaffolding or cranes constructing complete 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 group went on to win.
Excessive property costs in Paris and a large soon-to-be-delivered extension of its metro system into Seine-Saint-Denis – Europe’s single greatest infrastructure mission – has made the division enticing for builders.
Firms 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 initiatives.
And Seine-Saint-Denis’s “extraordinarily decrepit housing must be overhauled”, she added.
A big slice of the 4.5 billion euro (US$4.8 billion) constructing price range 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 personal funding is tougher to quantify, it doubtless isn’t far behind.
HOUSEING LEGACY
The Olympic Village, the Video games’ greatest constructing mission and an entire new eco-neighbourhood in itself, will home 14,250 athletes and their help groups in addition to 6,000 Paralympians.
Constructed on a former industrial zone alongside the River Seine, it’s architecturally various, with many buildings overlooking the river. All these below eight flooring are constructed of wooden and all of the village’s power comes from warmth pumps and renewables.
As soon as the Paralympics end, the village will morph right into a combined neighbourhood of residences and workplaces, the primary of its 6,000 new residents transferring in early subsequent 12 months, adopted by an analogous variety of employees.
However solely a 3rd of the two,800 residences shall be bought on the open market.
Opposite to earlier Video games like London – the place the organisers have been accused of “gentrification on an industrial scale” and never holding 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 residences, relying on the three municipalities the village spans, will go to social housing, with the remaining let loose at “reasonably priced” rents by semi-public housing our bodies.
Seine-Saint-Denis’s different large headline win is a clutch of latest swimming swimming pools, of which it’s in dire want.
Probably 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 is going to 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 more likely to be remodeled by the Video games.
Its inhabitants is about to develop by a 3rd with housing on a web site 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 charge in France.
One-third of the 1,400 new houses are being put aside to assist get individuals on the property ladder.
Dugny’s younger mayor Quentin Gesell stated a lot of his pals “who had grown up like me in Dugny have needed to go away as a result of they’ll neither purchase right here or hire (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 more likely to come by a sequence of latest footbridges linking areas lengthy divided by the foremost highway and rail arteries that slice by 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. “It’s a must to fold up the pushchair and take the newborn within the different arm. So that is actually nice, an actual plus for the world.”
The bridge had been talked of for years however the Video games obtained it over the road, placing up two-thirds of the ten.5-million-euro value.
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 got 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 % unemployment charge is almost a 3rd increased than the nationwide common.
“The Video games are recruiting – get your self a job!” declared the flyer for an Olympic job honest close to Charles de Gaulle airport in December.
“I’ve been to a variety of these and it is all the time the identical,” stated Fouad Yousfi as he went between stands on the lookout for cleaners and pastry cooks. “Not precisely the businesses you wish to work for, and sometimes badly paid.”
Stephane Laurent, 47, who was seeking to “get work shortly”, left one other honest in Saint-Denis with a proposal to coach as a safety guard – one thing the Video games have an enormous want for.
Whereas round 180,000 individuals will work on the Video games, in response to official estimates, most shall be on short-term contracts, such because the 6,000 individuals taken on by Sodexo for catering on the Olympic Village.
“We now have to be sincere, there may be most likely a mismatch between what was anticipated of the Video games and the extent of unemployment and precarity we’ve got,” stated Bernard Thibault, a former CGT union chief who sits on the Olympics committee.
Native corporations have additionally benefited, selecting up contracts price 330 million euros, in response to 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, a neighborhood 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 upset” given the windfall the Video games supplied, he added.
STUBBORN OLD IMAGE
But past the financial and infrastructural good points, one of many greatest Olympics legacies may very well be how Seine-Saint-Denis is seen.
Police have already stepped up operations focusing on drug sellers, road distributors and others who “monopolise public areas”, and a large 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 automotive throughout a chase, and the pinnacle of the Mongolian delegation was robbed of jewels price almost 600,000 euros on his solution to a safety committee assembly in October, the unhealthy previous picture is proving tough 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 put in writing a brand new chapter its historical past, one which performs up it variety and potential fairly 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 Ultimate), Saint-Denis’s picture will plummet once more,” she stated.
However council chief Troussel is much 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.
