Non-events and their legacies: Parisian heritage and the Olympics that never were

Abstract

This paper examines three failed bids by the French Olympic Committee and the City of Paris to host the summer Olympic Games of 1992, 2008 and 2012 in an attempt better to understand the role of heritage designations in the context of urban change. Introducing the various sites earmarked for the Games, the paper explores the relationship between planning as a political tool and its impact on the built environment within the context of a complex web of local, national and international demands, needs and aspirations. Based on archival research, the paper explores the dialectical relationship between the demonstrated ability of city councils to declare designated ‘Olympic’ spaces as functionally ‘ready’ to absorb massive new infrastructures and questions posed by whatever physical infrastructure remains after a bid has failed. Since the timeframe chosen for the paper (1986–2006) coincides with a move by the International Olympic Committee to prioritise ‘sustainable urbanism’ as a key legacy of ‘successful’ Olympic Games, this relationship between presences and absences is mediated not just with the help of possible futures in the form of Olympic sites but has had to validate and justify the choice of terrain as well. The paper concludes with a brief meditation on the relationship between present urban heritage and possible futures in the context of mega-events like the Olympic Games.

Keywords:

• Paris
• space
• Olympic bids
• urban heritage
• Bercy
• Tolbiac

Acknowledgement

Research for this paper was made possible by a DEA stipend issued by the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris.

Notes

1. Only Rome, Barcelona and Madrid have accumulated a similar overall track record of ‘rejection'; what singles out the Parisian bids even in this group is how agonizingly close the city came on two occasions to being successful in the bidding game.

2. This is not to deny the involvement of other less tangible aspects of heritage especially in the actual staging of the Olympic event itself, where not only the Opening and Closing ceremonies but also the design of emblems etc., often abound with heritage signatures. These, however, will not contribute to the focus on the built environment adopted for this paper.

3. It also entails at time a bizarre form of political squabbling: the Parisian bid for the 1992 Olympics was officially announced by then President Mitterand in 1985 only to be met by the then mayor of Paris lamenting that ‘it is up to the city to announce the candidature' (Boucher 1986, 2).

4. In the run-up to the Sydney Games, the IOC finally abandoned the established practice of allowing voting members of the IOC individually to visit candidature cities, replacing what had been a well-oiled gravy train for some IOC members with a more collective, ordered and accountable set of site visits by a pre-formed evaluation committee. Examples of the ‘gravy train' in operation can be accessed in the Archives de Paris, codes A.P.1861W, 87/555 and especially 2214W348–07788.

5. It has to be noted again that given the spatial extent of the contemporary games, the choice of a ‘site' will never encompass a singular site, requiring a multitude of sites for the hosting of the games to become a distinct possibility. What is referred to above as a site ‘intra' or ‘extra moors' is thus a reference to a principle site for the Olympic Games, often coinciding with the placement of spatially extensive building complexes like the Olympic Stadium or the Olympic Village (see, de Morgas, Llinés, and Kidd 1997, Muños 2006).

6. See, Archives de Paris, 2135W205-02592 documenting a shifting argumentation concerning the placement of either Olympic infrastructures between Bercy and Tolbiac.

7. A ‘ZAC' can perhaps best be described as a kind of planning tool in existence since 1967 that brings together all public and private stakeholders associated with the development of an identified space (see, Nelson (2001, p. 489), Harvey (1989) sees this as part of a wider move from the ‘management' of urban development to the emergence of a form of urban ‘entrepreneurialism').

8. As is always the case when analysing planning decisions, no absolute origin can ever be attested. The 1973 plan was in turn pre-figured by an earlier scheme dating back to 1965 which was responsible inter alia for the development around La Défense towards the west of the French capital and which created the slogan of a ‘balance towards the east' (see also, Paris Projet 29, 1990, ‘L'aménagement du secteur Seine Rive Gauche').

9. See, AdP 1436W187, where a note by the assistant secretary to the Mayor of Paris, Camille Cabana points out on 5 March 1984 in a memo to Chirac that the placement of an Olympic swimming pool, which at the time was still anticipated to be placed at Bercy, would amount to a ‘politically inacceptable' ‘massacre'. Chirac's handwritten comment adds a mere ‘impossible' to this note. In the end – see, AdP 1436W188 the pool was not planned for Bercy because of high ground water levels.

10. The minutes of the 91st session of the IOC held in Lausanne in October 1986 make for interesting reading in the context of the award of the games to Barcelona, invoking terrorist threats, hotel prices and the number of previously held games as argumentative material. As concerns the Olympic spaces, Paris appears to have suffered from the somewhat dispersed quality of its many chosen sites.

11. It needs to be stressed that the final submission presented to the IOC in 1986 anticipated the Olympic Stadium to emerge either in the ‘Pershing' part of the Bois de Vincennes or near Le Tremblay, in the north-east of Paris.

12. The subjective sentiments expressed in the text all stem from personal conversations between the author and various members of the groupement d'intérêt public (GIP) ‘Paris Ile de France 2012' – the official umbrella organisation orchestrating the bid – prior to the award of the Games to London in 2005.

13. The ongoing development of the site can currently be traced at www.clichy-batignolles.fr.