In July, Paris will host the Olympic Games, bringing the world’s gaze upon the City of Light. In Sydney, we know a little about what that’s like, a quarter-century after our own moment in the Olympic sun.

Sydney famously threw everything at the best Olympics ever, then started to lose its mojo. Then premier Bob Carr declared the city was “full”, we stopped building infrastructure aside from a few toll roads, and we cracked down on fun.

Hosting the Olympics forces optimism upon a city. Sydney’s challenge in 2024 is to recreate that sensation.Credit: Dallas Kilponen

As you’d expect, Paris is at the pointy end of an infrastructure blitz. It is laying 200 kilometres of new metro track and building 68 new stations, among other major projects. A city that has always been about creativity, passion and love will enter a new era of urban utility.

Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper wrote earlier this month that his hometown was “approaching a new zenith of glorious liveability”. But he noted, importantly, that becoming a wonderful city has a downside: “It becomes so desirable that almost everyone is priced out.”

We have witnessed this first-hand in Sydney. It is a great city, and many people want to live here, which makes property – limited in supply as it is – frightfully expensive. That squeezes out the people who can’t afford it: the young, the creatives, the essential workers.

Kuper reports Parisian apartment prices have nearly quadrupled since 2000, the same year Cathy Freeman won gold in Sydney. “The city risks becoming a dreamscape for the wealthy,” he wrote.

Paris is building 200 kilometres of new metro track, 68 new stations and significant housing, including social housing.Credit: iStock

To counter this, Kuper said, Paris was aggressively pursuing subsidised housing. Nearly a quarter of homes inside the ring road are social housing, “up from 13 per cent in 2001”, with a target of 30 per cent by 2035. Another 10 per cent is to be affordable housing, and the city is also building many dwellings above and around its new metro stations. Sound familiar?

The NSW government spent its first nine months cooking up plans for higher density housing in Sydney’s transport corridors, and much of this work has now been announced. The coming year is one of implementation – and given just 21,000 new dwellings were completed in Sydney in the 12 months to June 2023, we’d better hope it bears fruit.