The Paris Summer Olympics concluded after only 19 days, but the infrastructure built to accommodate the Games will permanently transform the city. As the Paralympics come to a close and with just eight years until the 2032 Brisbane Games, plans are already in motion for urban renewal in Australia.

The 2024 Olympics was one of the largest global event ever hosted in France, over 10 thousand athletes competed, with more than nine million tickets sold, and billions of viewers tuning in via broadcast or digitally.

Monash Sport and Australian Studies lecturer Dr Thomas Heenan said the primary motivation for cities to host the Olympics is as an opportunity for urban development.

 “The spirit of the sport is about money,” Heenan said.

Paris’ Olympic Village was built in Seine-Saint-Denis to house more than 14,000 Olympians and 8,000 Paralympians. After the Games, the village will be repurposed as a neighbourhood for residents, including shops, a hotel, parks and gardens. 

Prior to the Games, controversy was sparked surrounding the location of the village, as hundreds of homeless people were forced to vacate the area.

“You've taken a working-class suburb in Seine-Saint-Denis, and you've put in LegoLand apartment blocks,” Heenan said.

"Seine-Saint-Denis is in one of the poorest suburbs in Europe, it’s got a high crime rate, unemployment, and a lot of undocumented migrants. What's happened here is they've built the village, and it’s being sold off to developers…it’s about gentrification”.

The Australian Olympic Villages will be constructed in surrounding Brisbane’s inner-city suburbs such as Northshore Hamilton.

"As developers get hold of it, from the stadium to the river will be completely different to what it is today, and it started with high-rises around the [Gabba Stadium] already," Heenan said.

The 2032 Olympic Village is not only intended to house athletes during the Games, but eventually will become permanent housing after the Games. 

The plans promise to include “20 per cent social or affordable housing” but fail to indicate the ratio of social homes.

The Olympic budget set by the Federal Government was already increased from $4.5 to $7 billion (AUD) as of 2023, but Heenan predicts the total cost of the Games will exceed $20 billion (AUD).

“The one takeout of the Brisbane Olympics will be a mountain of debt,” Heenan said.

The Paris games is expected to have an estimated economic impact of $8.9 billion Euros based on an independent study. 

Monash Public Transport expert Dr Graham Currie has worked on every Olympics since 1996. He said as the host city was solely responsible for planning the Games, innovation unique to the city was essential to ensure economic, social, and environmental benefit.

"It's the host cities that both pay for it, manage it, and are responsible for it," Currie said.

"It's important to use the motivation of these events to create sustainable outcomes, because frankly it's only two weeks, but what's important in cities is the future of their sustainability and these events can be used to do good things."

Dr Currie said Brisbane will face transport challenges due to its geographical isolation and reliance on buses.

"You need a megacity with a good public transport system, or you can’t really run the Games," Currie said.

Millions of athletes, media, and tourists will enter the city over the two-week period causing additional strain to existing inner-city congestion.

"In the Olympic Games they do something I think all cities should be doing, they ban cars,” Currie said.

Brisbane will be the first ever Olympics contractually required to have net zero emissions. However, it will not be the first Olympics to see environmental benefits, in the past, temporary traffic mitigations have generated long-term positive sustainable outcomes in some host cities.

Typically, public transport will be incentivised to spectators, whilst locals are encouraged to commute less by working from home, walking, and riding bicycles.

During the 2012 London Games, commuter transport habits did change for some.

"It's really all about sustainability, with a particular emphasis on long-term trying to nudge a city and shift a city to doing good things," Currie said.