Not that wide open: Urban securitization and the experience of Paris 2024

Source abstract

This article uses the Olympic carceral framework to examine how securitization shaped urban experience in central Paris during the 2024 Games. Based on eight days of focused fieldwork in the 7th arrondissement, combining participant and non-participant observation with brief on-site conversations, and using official documents to establish planned perimeters and operating rules, we trace how public space was reorganized through layered controls. Although venues were urbanized into iconic sites, nearby streets were defined by fences, staffed checkpoints, and time-gated crossings that produced conditional publicness and muted ordinary presence. We show how commercial and legal constraints tied to venue governance, together with risk-led security, enabled the urbanization of the event without yielding the eventalization of the urban. More specifically, the Paris case suggests that carceral Olympism operates through calibrated permeability and graduated thresholds of access, movement, and visibility rather than through closure alone. The result was an archipelago of managed sites rather than a citywide celebration. We conclude with practical implications for host cities: permeability, re-entry, edge participation, and the relaxation of sponsor exclusivity are preconditions for integrating mega-events with everyday urban life.