Did the popular Seine-Saint-Denis win Olympic gold?

A resident of the massive gray bars of this city undermined by drug trafficking, reputed to be among the most difficult in Seine-Saint-Denis, Samia Achoui will see nothing of the Olympic Games which will be held in front of her home from July 26 to August 11.

The tickets ? “Too expensive” for this secretary who didn’t even try to buy any. The sixty-year-old will be content, she says, with "the sound of applause" coming from the stadium, just on the other side of the Saint-Denis canal.

Because despite their name, the Paris Games will in reality be held largely in Seine-Saint-Denis, on the other side of the ring road which traces the demarcation - both physical and symbolic - between the capital and its proletarian suburbs.

The northern department of Paris, which hosts four competition venues and several key structures such as the athletes' village, is among the most criminogenic in the country - often associated abroad with the chaos around the Stade de France during the final of the Champions League in 2022.

During the candidacy, the promise was to regenerate this territory of 1,6 million inhabitants, a third of whom live below the poverty line.

The same bet was made in 2012 in Stratford, the poorest district of London, with mixed results.

Integration, housing, employment, image: how will these Games change (or not) the lives of those on the front lines?

"For the people" ?

“Games for the people” and not “above ground”: this is the “obsession” of the mayor of L’Île-Saint-Denis, Mohamed Gnabaly.

For several years, its small town of pavilions and dreary buildings has suffered from the nuisance of construction sites to accommodate part of the athletes' village.

In recent months, the town, which stretches out on an island in the middle of the Seine, has not been spared from violence. Deadly fire of a building in August, town hall ransacked during the riots which engulfed France in June...

At the cost of significant budgetary efforts, the municipality of 8.600 inhabitants managed to obtain 7.000 tickets for the Games - or "a place in an Olympic event in Île-de-France for each resident", claims the left-wing mayor.

Enough to strengthen cohesion.

"I've been working on it for three years. My goal is to say: 'we've suffered but not only will it transform our city, but during the Games you're not going to be outside, you're going to be at the heart of the reactor+ ", explains Mr. Gnabaly.

An optimism that is not really shared by the many residents interviewed by AFP in the department in recent months.

“People are in an in-between”, notes Cécile Gintrac of the Vigilance JO collective, “one part of Paris will be celebrating when the other will be prevented from working because they will not be able to move around”.

Like this delivery driver seen in front of the only supermarket in Francs-Moisins, a city undergoing urban renovation. Moussa Syla, 45, fears the consequences of “the Olympics at home”.

With the security perimeter and traffic restrictions, “to get around, it’s going to be horror,” he says.

Urban Renaissance

It's difficult today to move around Seine-Saint-Denis without coming across workers working on scaffolding or cranes building a new neighborhood.

Home to successive waves of migration left bloodless by the deindustrialization that began at the end of the 1960s, the department is engaged in a phase of long-term urban revitalization, in which the Olympic Games are part.

A change whose symbolic starting point dates back to the decision to locate the Stade de France in Saint-Denis for the 1998 Football World Cup, on the site of gigantic and sinister gas reservoirs.

The high prices and low availability of land in Paris, added to the extension of the public transport network in the suburbs, now make Seine-Saint-Denis attractive.

The wastelands left by the decline of historic factories allow the construction of major projects and the reception of tertiary companies, such as Tesla which will move its French headquarters to Saint-Ouen.

“We had to find a second wind so that employment remained in Seine-Saint-Denis,” explains Isabelle Vallentin, deputy general director of Solideo, a public company responsible for delivering the Olympic works.

“There is also an extremely dilapidated housing stock so it was necessary to develop living spaces with all the necessary comforts,” continues this former manager of one of the department’s main developers.

In total, the construction of the Olympic works cost 4,5 billion euros (public and private).

Proof of the place given to Seine-Saint-Denis, around 80% of the public envelope of 1,7 billion euros was devoted to it. Undoubtedly the same proportion for the private sector, given the concentration of long-term works in the department.

With the red line of avoiding the "white elephant effect", these pharaonic constructions transformed into a financial burden for lack of utility once the competition is over.

Material inheritance

In just six years, on a former industrial zone on the banks of the Seine, a brand new district of 52 hectares has emerged, straddling the municipalities of Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen and L'Île-Saint-Denis.

In its tall, diverse buildings made of wood or concrete, the athletes' village will welcome 14.250 athletes and accompanying people as well as 6.000 para-athletes next summer. The site aims to be a showcase for low-carbon construction and consumption.

Once completed, the largest Olympic construction site will be transformed into a residential and office district.

Unlike the previous Games, Solideo asked operators “to have a project that first responds to (local) housing needs,” says Isabelle Vallentin.

This second life will begin in the summer of 2025. Ultimately with 6.000 new residents in 2.800 homes, two school groups, offices for 6.000 employees, shops, etc.

Of the hundreds of apartments that will accommodate the athletes, nearly a third are intended for purchase - with sluggish sales for the moment, given the high prices for this area in a context of sagging real estate .

The rest will be distributed between social housing - 25 to 40% depending on the municipality - and rentals.

In Stratford, 12 years after the Games, the promises of "affordable" housing for local residents have still not been kept, while the neighborhood has gentrified, causing rents to soar...

Opposite the Stade de France, a wooden aquatic center was created. Under its ample canopy undulating like a wave, diving, water polo and artistic swimming events will be held.

Its opening to the general public will increase the availability of aquatic equipment in a department which is sorely lacking in it.

Very local impacts

On a map of Seine-Saint-Denis, the Olympic projects appear like confetti whose impact will be above all local.

In the small town of Dugny, poorly served by public transport, the construction of these long-term infrastructures will revolutionize the social composition of the urban block.

This popular commune of 11.300 souls, wedged between an airport and a park, has seen the growth of a new district intended to serve as a “media cluster”.

With 1.400 homes ultimately built, the population of Dugny will jump by almost a third.

The typology of apartments planned, with around a third reserved for home ownership, should diversify the population of this city with 77% social housing, the highest rate in France.

Notable but less noticed, several bridges and pedestrian footbridges built for the Olympic Games make it possible to recreate urban continuities in an area scarred by major road and rail routes.

In Francs-Moisins, the Games were an opportunity to design a new footbridge for pedestrians and cyclists over the Saint-Denis canal, connecting the city to the Stade de France district, replacing an old road bridge that often turns broken down and a footbridge with difficult to access stairs.

"It's really a good thing because today it's a hassle to get across: you fold the stroller, you take your baby with the other arm... Really it will be perfect, it's a plus for the neighborhood", says Karene, resident of the city and mother of three children.

The project had been in the pipeline for several years but the holding of the Olympic Games accelerated the schedule for the 10,5 million euro project, two-thirds of which was paid for by Olympic money.

The Games constitute "a tipping point. It accelerates a moment in the transformation of the territory", estimates the socialist president of the departmental council Stéphane Troussel to AFP.

“We condensed in record time and with a quantitative aspect of scale the deliveries of equipment, housing, roads, footbridges, public equipment.”

“The Games are recruiting”

This is the other big promise: the Olympics will benefit the economic fabric of Seine-Saint-Denis.

At 10,4%, the unemployment rate in France's youngest department is three points higher than the national average.

Of the two million hours intended for the integration of people far from employment on Solideo construction sites, some 57% benefited the inhabitants of Seine-Saint-Denis.

“The Games are recruiting, get a job!” promises the prospectus of an employment forum organized in December in Villepinte.

In a multipurpose room, around forty companies, ranging from private security to a famous pastry brand including cleaning professions, set up their stands.

Fouad Yousfi is looking for a job there as a driver or in administration. “I've been to almost all the forums and it's the same scenario: not necessarily companies you'd like to work for, very often poorly paid,” he says.

Leaving Gagny in a specially chartered bus, Stéphane Laurent, 47, obtained training in another forum in Saint-Denis. This former ground handling agent has converted into a security agent.

“What motivated me,” he says, “is the possibility of finding work quickly” in a sector where the needs are immense for the Games.

Short-term jobs

If the Games will mobilize a total of 180.000 jobs, according to the latest estimate from the Center for Sports Law and Economics, these will above all be short-term contracts linked to an increase in ephemeral activity.

Like the 6.000 hires from Sodexo which ensures the catering of the athletes' village. Or security agents: after the Olympics, “we have no guarantee,” confides Stéphane Laurent.

"We have to be sincere, there is undoubtedly a gap between the level of expectations, the level of unemployment being what it is, the degree of precariousness being what it is and what the Games can bring in themselves - same", recognizes the former leader of the CGT union Bernard Thibault who represents the signatories of the social charter of the Olympic Games on the organizing committee.

According to figures from the departmental council communicated to AFP, 550 companies in the department have obtained contracts representing 330 million euros in this framework.

Young companies received a boost to respond to large calls for tenders, such as the award of the laundry market for the athletes' village to a group of companies from the department.

“We are the winners of this affair,” says Mehdi Ourezifi, head of Personal Services.

“But there is widespread disappointment, both among local businesses and integration structures” in the face of the “windfall” that the Olympics represented.

"Visibility"

Beyond the material and economic legacy, what if the main legacy of the Games resided in the image it will project of Seine-Saint-Denis?

With a massive deployment of law enforcement during the competition, the department is praying not to suffer the negative fallout from further violence.

Like the mortar attack on a police station in March after the death of a young person during a chase with the police. Or when the head of the Mongolian Olympic delegation was robbed in October.

The police have increased patrols in the streets and stepped up operations against delinquents, drug traffickers, street sellers and counterfeit sellers.

By opening its arms to visitors from around the world in the summer, the department hopes that the Games will help write a new page in its history.