Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass arrived in Paris Thursday for a three-day visit to study France’s plans for the 2024 Summer Olympics, a gigantic undertaking that Los Angeles and California will host four years from now.
With the Paris games less than five months away, Bass said the trip offered a chance to see what Los Angeles might learn from how France is grappling with security, transportation, the environment and homelessness — issues Los Angeles is facing to different degrees and will have to address before Southern California takes the global stage in 2028.
The city’s goal, Bass said, will be to use the two weeks of international athletic contests — and the run-up to those events — as an "accelerator" to develop public infrastructure, notably transit, in a way that will have lasting benefits for California and the nation.
"We certainly are expecting a lot of investments from the federal government, state government, absolutely," she said after a City Hall meeting with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo. "I mean this is the games for the United States. So we obviously focus where the games are, but this impacts our entire country."
The Olympics offer an exceptional opportunity — and some risk — to Bass. She did not work for the games or even ask for them. That was an accomplishment of her predecessor, Eric Garcetti. And yet, should she be re-elected in three years, it’s Bass who stands to reap the advantages that the Olympics confer.
In that sense, the Olympics are a gift.
Los Angeles was chosen in part because it already has the facilities required for sporting events and housing, so major construction in those areas is not necessarily needed. But the influx of expected guests will place demands on the city’s hotels, transportation systems and security arrangements. It also will generate significant economic activity.
The 1984 Summer Olympics are fondly remembered by longtime LA residents for the festivities that surrounded the games and the respite from traffic that careful planning supplied. Those games also turned a profit, and helped fund sports programs and other city initiatives long after they ended.
The 2028 games provide incentives and potential resources for addressing the city’s most pressing issue, both in moral and political terms: its tens of thousands of unhoused people.
Garcetti, in a fit of exuberance, once suggested that the city could eliminate street homelessness by the time of the Olympics. That seems unlikely, but if Bass is still in office in 2028, it will be five years into her work on this issue, enough time for her to demonstrate substantial progress or to be held accountable for a lack of it.
Homelessness in France is nowhere near as extensive as it is in California. On Friday, Bass and her delegation, which includes three LA City Council members, plan to meet with volunteers who distribute clothes and other necessities to unhoused people in Paris.
After meeting with Hidalgo at Paris City Hall, Bass said she was not worried about the world focusing on California’s difficulties housing its population in 2028.
"I’m convinced, and I’m sure my colleagues here on the city council are convinced, that Los Angeles will look different," she said at her joint appearance with the mayor of Paris.
Although the Olympics are awarded to — and hosted by — cities, the larger state of California will surely be affected by the games. As California becomes a case study in the culture wars, it has attracted more and more criticism — for its income inequality, the erosion of its middle class, its policies on immigrants, policing and homelessness.
For those who consider California a state in decline, the Olympics are a chance to demonstrate otherwise.
While events will be scattered across Southern California, from Pasadena’s Rose Bowl to Perris Lake well east of Los Angeles, visitors are expected to extend their stays on the coast, bringing tourists to San Diego, San Francisco and other parts of California.
Still, the games come with risks, too. In the run-up to the 1996 games in Atlanta, local boosters saw it as an opportunity to modernize venues and display the modern American South. "The city too busy to hate," as Atlanta liked to call itself, wanted to demonstrate its cosmopolitan multiculturalism, its embrace of civil rights, its sheer modernity.
And then a bomb went off. The pipe-bomb explosion in Centennial Park overshadowed much of the event and left a stain on the host city, which also was criticized for transportation breakdowns and hotel shortages.
The Atlanta games were a reminder that the Olympics can bring glory, but they also bring scrutiny. Being the center of international attention is not always easy.
Indeed, France’s buildup to the Olympics has not been entirely smooth. Security concerns led the interior minister to announce that just 320,000 people would be allowed to attend the extravagant opening ceremony planned for the most picturesque stretch of the Seine River between the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral — well short of the 2 million spectators initially promised.
Labor unions have threatened to disrupt the games unless their members get big bonuses for extra work required during the Olympics, which will take place during France’s peak vacation season in late July and early August. Price gouging for hotel rooms and short-term rentals during the Olympics has only recently begun to let up.
Some Parisians have been alarmed by restrictions in public access to the city’s central neighborhoods. And police executed a search warrant at Hidalgo’s City Hall office on Tuesday for an investigation of possible misuse of public funds in the mayor’s trip last year to Tahiti, where Olympics surfing contests will take place.
The LA mayor’s visit continues through Saturday, as Bass and her delegation visit the site of the opening ceremonies and the Olympic Village, among other stops on whirlwind visit. She returns to Los Angeles on Sunday.
Michael Finnegan & Jim Newton, CalMatters
