According to the sports facility survey - Recensement des Équipements Sportifs (RES) - carried out by the City of Paris and the Youth and Sports Ministry - Ministère de la Ville, de la Jeunesse et des Sports - there are almost 12,000 public and private sports facilities in Métropole du Grand Paris, including those located within the grounds of educational establishments, and nearly 28,000 in Île-de-France as a whole. The Grand Paris Express runs services directly to over 1,900 sports facilities which are to be found in any one of the 68 station neighbourhoods, 650 of which, over a third, are in districts which will benefit from entirely new public transport services (as opposed to districts which already have public transport service systems that the GPE will interconnect with).
This study aims to heighten awareness of the sports facilities on offer in Grand Paris Express station neighbourhoods and to highlight the new accessibility brought by the GPE to numerous facilities. The study also underlines the challenges raised by developing the public spaces adjacent to stations to allow all types of feeder and inter-connecting means of transport, particularly walking and two-wheel options but also to facilitate and potentially increase sports activities. Today sport is done in facilities similar to those in the city centre: in large parks and green spaces open all day long, in the street, in squares and station forecourts. In this context, should even more offers of sports facilities be developed, if investment is put into improving the quality of public space and thus encouraging the free development of sports activities?
It appears clear, through the study, that both types of initiatives can be combined. The renovation and upkeep of existing sites and the mutualisation of the most expensive facilities, between a number of communes on the same metro line for example, form other leverage points for increasing the offer of sports facilities in the Metropolis.
Visit and download all documents produced within the framework of the Grand Paris Express Station Neighbourhoods Observatory via our interactive map.
