HAS six months before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, debates and questions are multiplying on the holding of this global event. Several subjects give rise to concern: completion of the installations, unpreparedness and cost of transport, consequences on the price of housing, organization and security of the opening ceremony on the Seine, and, above all, the risk of a drift uncontrollable investment budget.
As always, in such cases, European precedents are invoked: Barcelona 1992, Athens 2004, London 2012. Most often, it is to celebrate the material and urban success (Barcelona), the optimistic expectation of a conversion Olympic installations (London) or, on the contrary, deplore their state of abandonment and neglect (Athens).
We generally add to these considerations a financial aspect on the final cost of the investment. In the case of the Greek capital, it would have aggravated the crisis of confidence in the Greek state budget, which was looming from the beginning of the 2000s, before bursting in 2008-2010. We neglect in these analyzes the purely political aspect, certainly much more enlightening, yesterday in Athens as tomorrow in Paris.
It must first be remembered that in terms of Athenian town planning, we cannot balance the current, desolate state of the Olympic installations, particularly the Calatrava stadium, with the radical transformation of housing and living conditions. transport in the Greek capital.
A glaring lack of infrastructure
After the war, Athens grew anarchically for half a century, almost doubling the city’s population, from 1.8 million inhabitants to 3 million. She suffers from a glaring lack public investments. In central neighborhoods, low houses give way to urban buildings, thanks to timely increases in the land use coefficient, without changing the street layout.
In the outskirts, we are witnessing a proliferation of spontaneous housing, soon to be legalized through electoral promises. There is also a glaring lack of infrastructure and public equipment, first and foremost transport, with a fleet of rickety and polluting buses. The international airport is located in the middle of the city, by the sea, a source of significant noise pollution in residential and tourist areas.
In short, the private creation of a very large city, made of a mixture of family solidarity and political patronage against a historical background of the absence of a real State since the re-foundation of Greece in 1830. The system is at the end of its rope. breath.
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