The city center had restricted access for about a week and is completely inaccessible for 2-3 days, which sucks for the people that live and work there, but it's a far cry from the `several weeks` you mentioned. I think folks are blowing the impact of the opening ceremony way out of proportion.
Mega events can be used by cities to justify needed large infrastructure projects. Funding guidelines usually are weakened; the people working on the projects tend to think their work actually does matters and last but not least: there is a hard deadline, so no excuse for needing just 2 more years.
Some cities in Germany greatly benefited from the football WM.
French population and Parisians didn't have a word about it.
The Paris bid was submitted in 2015, and remained the only one in 2017 (a few cities pulled out in 2016-2017, the last one in February 2017), getting officially ratified in September 2017.
Macron was elected in May 2017, two years after the Parisian bid was submitted, and months after it remained the only one.
It was recently announced Brisbane, Australia won the contest to host the 2032 summer games.
They were the only city that submitted a bid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bids_for_the_2032_Summer_Olymp...
Given the spate of withdrawals, and that half the bids had also been withdrawn for the 2022 Winter Olympics, the IOC decided to just allocate 2024 and 2028 directly to the two bidders left to not take risks over 2028.
Who cares about the 0.01% when they annoy the rest of the population?
# Alexandre Mirlicourtois (Xerfi) - J.O. de Paris : le revers de la médaille économique
I read of very good editorial a few weeks ago regarding these games and how unliked they are in France. The journalist remarked that hosting the games is mostly a PR move from a city and, that if there is one thing Parisian could be counted on for, it's not caring about their own image in the rest of the world, leading to some kind of paradoxical situation here.
And cities the size of Paris often don't really benefit from expanding tourism - tourism jobs generally lower average salaries. And they're not just poorly paid, they're also often seasonal work.
The main benefit is when there was a bunch of infrastructure you wanted to upgrade anyway, and having a strict deadline helps stop schedule over-runs.
» More than 45,000 police officers, 10,000 soldiers and 2,000 private security agents are being deployed
Here it is written, games are for athletes, not for people who live in Paris. City of a few million people grinds to a halt, for several weeks.
Paris does not even get any money for this "privilige", they have to pay for their own abuse!