Swim City
Paris is making the Seine swimmable for the first time in a century. Despite the high cost, there are many good reasons to do it.
The Paris Olympics have put a spotlight on its iconic river, the Seine. Athletes will parade down the Seine during the opening ceremony, and the city plans to host the marathon and triathlon swimming events in the river as well. It’s not the first time athletes have plunged into the Seine: when Paris hosted the Olympics in 1900, they held swimming events in the river. But since 1923, the Seine has been illegal to swim in because of pollution and river traffic.
Paris has promised that swimming in the Seine will be possible once again, and that this will be a part of the legacy of their Olympics. In the past few years, the French government has invested $1.5 billion to make the Seine swimmable, building new infrastructure and putting in new regulations to keep it clean. Notably, they built a new water treatment plant, a holding tank to keep untreated water out of the river, and required upstream houseboats to connect to the sewer system instead of tossing their waste into the Seine. After the Olympics, the city plans to open three swimming spots along the river by summer 2025.
Parisians have criticized what the city calls the ‘Swimming Plan’, mostly due to the astronomical price tag and how that $1.5 billion could have been spent on other issues. It’s also still unclear if they’ll be able to host these events in the Seine due to fluctuating pollution levels. Water quality varies by the day, so the Olympic committee will have to decide the morning of the events whether the river is safe for athletes to swim in.
Despite the cost and last-minute uncertainty, there’s still a lot to admire in Paris’ plan to make the Seine more swimmable, especially once the Olympic dust settles. The biggest is environmental. The water quality in the Seine isn’t perfect, but it’s higher than it’s been in decades, and the infrastructure improvements have permanently reduced the amount of pollution and waste going into the river. There are clear results: last summer, the Seine was swimmable seven out of 10 days on average, a stat that was unfathomable just a few years ago.
If they look closely, Parisians may have noticed an improvement in biodiversity as well. “Thirty-four species of fish now swim Parisian waters,” the city has claimed. “That's a lot more than forty years ago, when only two species swam there.” Having more natural places to swim — especially places that are centrally-located, free to the public, and easy to get to by foot, bike, or public transit — is important for Parisians to be able to cool off at a time when the city is increasingly warm. A recent study came to an unsurprising yet important conclusion: open water swimming is good for our mental health, well-being, and connection to nature.
There is also the symbolism, which Paris is no stranger to. Cleaning up the Seine is as much an idealistic effort as it is a practical one. Expensive as it may be, this project suggests that we don’t have to resign ourselves to dirty, polluted rivers in our cities, waterways that are home only to boats and waste. City waters can be people-oriented as well, and they can become the cultural and recreational heart of a city just as they were in the past. “We want to make the reconnection of inhabitants with the river, reconnect the people with the water,” Paris Deputy Mayor, Pierre Rabadan, said.
Paris may have the Olympic spotlight, but Parisians aren’t alone in this effort. The city’s attempt to purify the Seine is now the most visible symbol of a renewed global movement to clean up urban rivers and reclaim them as spaces for people, especially to adapt to climate change. Beyond the Seine, perhaps the highest profile effort is the “+ Pool” project in New York City, which aims to build a plus sign-shaped floating pool in the East River. Earlier this year, after a decade of advocacy from local citizens, architects, designers, and activists, Governor Kathy Hochul announced a formal partnership with + Pool and committed $16 million with the goal of opening officially in the summer of 2025. + Pool, an out-of-the-box idea with a compelling design, has the potential to follow the High Line as the next iconic grassroots urban development project in New York.
River swimming in the city center is common in European cities like Copenhagen, Berlin, Zurich, Munich, Oslo, and Vienna. In Zurich, locals can take a dip in the river on their lunch break. Copenhagen has cleaned up its water system so effectively — to the tune of about $440 million — that much of the city center is now one big, interconnected swimming pool. They’ve turned old industrial harbors into lively, recreational spaces for people to enjoy, such as the Copenhagen Harbor Bath, which opened back in 2002. Harbor baths have since become a central part of local culture, and city leaders continue to add more swimming spots throughout Copenhagen There have been similar proposals in other places, such as the Thames Baths in central London, and on the Spree Canal in Berlin. Not every municipality has an Olympic-sized budget, but these efforts have proven that cleaning up urban waterways is worth investing in anywhere in the world, at any scale.
Even though Paris undertook this project for the Olympics, revitalizing the Seine is about more than just swimming. Soon, the Games will be over and Paris will be returned to the Parisians. Locals taking their first dip in the Seine may find that it not only helps them cool off, but they might also see the river in a new way, and feel a renewed sense of pride and possibility in their city.
Great point about biodiversity! Will have to add “swim in the Seine” to the Paris travel itinerary