» “These games are for the athletes who have been dreaming of them for years and fighting for the holy grail of standing on the podium – and someone’s sabotaging that for them,” she said.
» More than 45,000 police officers, 10,000 soldiers and 2,000 private security agents are being deployed
Here it is written, games are for athletes, not for people who live in Paris. City of a few million people grinds to a halt, for several weeks.
Paris does not even get any money for this "privilige", they have to pay for their own abuse!
It really depends on where in the city you live - I live in the north of Paris and so far this has not affected me in any way. In fact, I already went to a couple of Olympic matches (a bunch of sports have started already), and I'm enjoying it immensely.
The city center had restricted access for about a week and is completely inaccessible for 2-3 days, which sucks for the people that live and work there, but it's a far cry from the `several weeks` you mentioned. I think folks are blowing the impact of the opening ceremony way out of proportion.
If done right project like the Olympics can be a chance to push forward all those needed projects that you never get approved because NIMBYdism:
A new subway line? Normally no, but you know: Olympics.
Mega events can be used by cities to justify needed large infrastructure projects. Funding guidelines usually are weakened; the people working on the projects tend to think their work actually does matters and last but not least: there is a hard deadline, so no excuse for needing just 2 more years.
Some cities in Germany greatly benefited from the football WM.
Indeed. We got a bunch of stuff in Atlanta from them and actually came out revenue positive. And it could be argued that the Olympics is what helped propel Atlanta to the place it is today as the Capital of the South and a second tier city. Some cities have come out much worse for the wear but it's often down to the competency and corruption of the local politics and local committee for the games.
It's really for the local politicians who have likely paid billions of euros worth of other people's money for the glory of holding an Olympics. The modern Olympic movement went off track when it decided to move the event to a new city every 4 years with new stadiums instead of maintaining a permanent Olympic location like the ancient Greeks did.
No, it's mostly a move from Macron who which he could host the Olympics on his second term, for glory. Hidalgo mostly though about the long-term positive implication for the city of Paris, something nice to put on her CV and the money that came along the responsibility.
French population and Parisians didn't have a word about it.
The Paris bid was submitted in 2015, and remained the only one in 2017 (a few cities pulled out in 2016-2017, the last one in February 2017), getting officially ratified in September 2017.
Macron was elected in May 2017, two years after the Parisian bid was submitted, and months after it remained the only one.
I was just listening to a podcast, where they said that they are shipping homeless and refugees to smaller towns around France, so I guess Paris gets a little something out of it. The real losers here are the French people, especially the ones in more rural areas, with smaller budgets(we're talking towns of 5000 people).
While technically correct, it's also misleading, because there's a new bidding process that aims to eliminate contests. There's now a "Continuous Dialogue" with everybody interested, and IOC then uses opaque criteria to select "Preferred Hosts" for "Targeted Dialogue".
While there were initially 5 bids for the 2024 olympics, 3 of those were withdrawn before the session to look at them even started.
Given the spate of withdrawals, and that half the bids had also been withdrawn for the 2022 Winter Olympics, the IOC decided to just allocate 2024 and 2028 directly to the two bidders left to not take risks over 2028.
Paris was the only city too for 2024, the only other city was Los Angeles who will host the 2028 Olympics. They won the contest together and the two cities decided together which one will host the first of the summer games. Los Angeles didn't really care about the year so Paris stick with 2024.
Obviously it's not about the 0.1% that are athletes, but about the 0.01% that are making big money out of it. And the one caring for those are the one governing us.
I'm surprised they don't get held in Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and that part of the world. They have the cash and inclination to buy the world cup, F1 races, golf competitions etc - why not buy the olympics too?
If you have the infrastructure already, they bring in money. Salt Lake City and Atlanta I believe were both able to make them profitable or at least mostly breakeven.
In Paris? Doubtful.
It's not like Paris need the olympics to be full of tourists.
I read of very good editorial a few weeks ago regarding these games and how unliked they are in France. The journalist remarked that hosting the games is mostly a PR move from a city and, that if there is one thing Parisian could be counted on for, it's not caring about their own image in the rest of the world, leading to some kind of paradoxical situation here.
Paris is already a huge tourism destination - so it's not going to benefit from increased name recognition, or "putting the city on the map" like a less well known city might. Those hotel rooms were going to get booked at the height of summer, olympics or not.
And cities the size of Paris often don't really benefit from expanding tourism - tourism jobs generally lower average salaries. And they're not just poorly paid, they're also often seasonal work.
The main benefit is when there was a bunch of infrastructure you wanted to upgrade anyway, and having a strict deadline helps stop schedule over-runs.
» More than 45,000 police officers, 10,000 soldiers and 2,000 private security agents are being deployed
Here it is written, games are for athletes, not for people who live in Paris. City of a few million people grinds to a halt, for several weeks.
Paris does not even get any money for this "privilige", they have to pay for their own abuse!