“Paris will be magnificent, don’t leave this summer”, the appeal for Parisians not to flee en masse during the 2024 Olympics

THE Paris Olympic Games enthuses its mayor, Anne Hidalgo and They make Parisians desperate. They are looking to rent their apartments Of several thousand euros a week and escape an avalanche of 15 million sports tourists, who will flood the city between 26 July and 11 August, at the height of the European summer.

Parisians traditionally leave the French capital to tourists in July and August and go on holiday. This year appears to be no different. To avoid the hateful traffic restrictions Lady Hidalgo and attracted by the increase in rents during the Games, which can reach 30,000 euros a week, many Parisians have put their summer holiday homes up for sale on Airbnb.

But Anne Hidalgo, the city’s socialist mayor, has other ideas. “Paris will be magnificent. Don’t leave this, they’ll see. It would be stupid,” she said. Just as the new Adidas Arena, the Olympic facility in Porte de la Chapelle, was inaugurated, a decadent and dangerous neighborhood in the north of Paris, where drug addicts and homeless migrants live. “We will enjoy the excitement together. This is truly the beginning of the Olympic magic”, harangued the mayor of Sevillian origin.

Paris with closed restaurants?

Hidalgo’s attempt to win over Parisians comes amid growing concern among restaurant owners that they are losing a lot of money in their businesses. Sports tourists will come with budgets “low cost”they will prefer fast food restaurants and will lose their regular customers of the year or of high consumption tourism.

Over 15 million visitors are expected. But restaurateurs fear that, after paying high prices for tickets to the Games, Their budgets don’t go beyond fast food. The concerns may be justified: London restaurants lost business during the 2012 Olympics.

There is no such thing as Olympic fever

Many Parisians say they are more worried about crowding and rising public transport fares during the event than Olympic fever.

Polls suggest that around a fifth of the capital’s residents would be willing to rent their homes during the Games, when the price of some apartments increased sixfold.

No delivery

Despite claims from Hidalgo and President Emmanuel Macron that the City of Light is preparing to do so “a moment of collective joy”, The atmosphere was further soured by instructions given to residents to avoid delivering packages or moving house during the Games.

The mayor will make life difficult for regular residents and There will be a higher tax for those who rent the house at astronomical prices.

Security measures are also expected to cause disruption. Police will restrict entry into some areas, especially during the opening ceremony, along the Seinein the center of Paris on July 26.

Parisians bought tickets

However, despite the complaints, the French (and Parisians in particular) they seized about 64% of the nearly eight million of tickets for the Olympic Games already sold. Most of the remaining 36% was purchased by English, Americans and Germans.

“We were afraid that the French public would react slowly,” said Damien Rajot of the organizing committee. “But that’s not the case at all: it’s clear that people want to be part of it.”

The risk of nineteenth-century balconies

Plans for the opening ceremony on July 26 include a water show in which more than 10,000 athletes and national officials will sail down the Seine in about 160 boats. They will be followed from the river banks by 300,000 spectators.

The opening ceremony in the waters of the Seine will be spectacular, but it has created a new urban security problem: the state of these centuries-old balconies overlooking the river and that they will not be able to support the weight of those who rent them to attend the ceremony.

In principle, the balconies of Parisian buildings from the Haussmann period since the end of the 19th century They should support 350 kg/m2. The equivalent of about three adults. But authorities fear this could lead to poor maintenance and overcrowding some give in.

A real estate industry body said balconies, often in buildings that are more than 150 years oldmaybe they can’t handle the tension.

The old balconies of Paris”pose a risk to the crowd who participate in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games”, warn the architects.

Four people died in the western French city of Angers in 2016 when a balcony collapsed during a party, while in May last year, two people were seriously injured when a balustrade and part of a balcony collapsed in neighborhood.15 Paris.

Paris authorities are debating whether to order an inspection of balconies and balustrades of thousands of buildings that line the Seine.

“It is clearly a scenario that could happen,” Olivier Princivalle of the real estate professionals association FNAIM told Agence France-Presse, adding that the issue had recently been raised in a regular preparatory meeting with police and city hall officials.

Paris police and city hall confirmed that the issue, which theoretically affects several thousand buildings along the 6-kilometer route of the ceremony, was under discussion. But no decisions have yet been made and the cost of a full structural inspection was considered low prohibitive.

THE bouquinistes they were saved

The Olympic Games have put ancient Parisian traditions at risk. THE BouquinistesThat They sell old books and posters in their traditional green boxes on the Seine 400 years ago, were at risk of disappearing for safety reasons at the Olympics. President Emmanuel Macron had to intervene to stop Hidalgo.

The president said he considered them part of the “living heritage of the capital”.

Last summer, police told booksellers that, for “obvious security reasons,” 570 of the seats of the bouquinistes – approximately 60% of the total – will have to be temporarily relocated, in a special “booksellers’ village”, for the entire duration of the Games.

Booksellers have been actively campaigning to keep their green boxes in place, even if they have to be closed during the opening ceremony, saying they are as much a part of Paris as the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame Cathedral.

The Elysée Palace said the French president had instructed officials to ensure that security measures for the ceremony were adequate to allow bouquinisteswho have been selling used books on the banks of the Seine for centuries, could remain.