A year ago, Paris was buzzing with the excitement of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. While little infrastructure was built for the occasion, the neighbourhoods where new facilities did spring up – such as Porte de la Chapelle, in northern Paris – have been transformed.
At the northernmost point of Paris, the Porte de la Chapelle neighbourhood is separated from the Seine-Saint-Denis department only by the city's ring road – the péripherique.
Perpendicular to this runs the rue de la Chapelle – "a major thoroughfare, as wide as the Champs-Élysées," says Jean-Michel Métayer, a local resident.
But any comparison with "the most beautiful avenue in the world" ends there, in a neighbourhood known for its poverty.
Rue de la Chapelle leads to the Adidas Arena, one of the flagship venues of the Paris Olympic Games which hosted badminton and rhythmic gymnastics events. Now it plays host to concerts as well as sporting events, and is home to the Paris Basketball club.
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Urban planning
Métayer has lived in the Porte de la Chapelle neighbourhood since the late 1980s, and has seen major changes around the Games.
"[Rue de la Chapelle] used to be an absolute nightmare of a street," he told RFI. "It was full of cars, side streets and everything. It’s been completely transformed. You see people strolling around, sitting under the trees, on the benches. Two years ago, you didn't have that."
In 2019, the Paris authorities entrusted urban planning firm Richez Associés with rethinking the neighbourhood ahead of the Olympic Games.
Vincent Cottet, a landscape architect and urban planner, and partner at the firm, said they began by reducing the spaces reserved for cars.
"We created more pavements and more cycle lanes. Above all, we extended bus line 38, which is the main [north to south] Parisian line to Saint-Denis. Porte de la Chapelle is no longer a terminus – it's a part of the city that you pass through and which connects to all the other neighbourhoods around it."
'Without the Olympics, we would not be where we are'
To see the full scale of the challenge Cottet and his team were facing, Métayer takes us to the top floor of one of the two tower blocks that flank the Porte de la Chapelle.
The apartment offers a panoramic view of the whole of northern Paris, with a tangle of roads laid out before us.
"This is a triple interchange that connects to the A1 motorway, Paris and Saint-Denis on the other side. Lanes were removed to make way for the Arena, and on the other side, a previously abandoned space was used to build the Condorcet campus university buildings," explains Cottet.
"The Olympic Games accelerated this transformation because, like any major project with tight deadlines, it created a strong collective dynamic. Without the Olympics, we would not have progressed so quickly and we would not be where we are today."
The vacant lots have disappeared, as has the "crack hill" – a meeting place for drug addicts that had long tarnished the neighbourhood's reputation.
And while drug trafficking has not completely disappeared, locals are counting on the upcoming opening of the university campus to complete the transformation of the Porte de la Chapelle.
This report was adapted from an episode of the RFI podcast Reportage en France.
