Expensive, fraught with risk and increasingly under fire from a carbon point of view, the Olympics have many critics. In a recent Economist article, sports historian David Goldblatt called for the Games to be halted altogether on the grounds that “it would send a strong signal about the urgency of this moment and the scale of change required.”

Does the Olympics remain a powerful and worthwhile branding agent?

They have strengthened existing reputations and inspired momentous shifts. They’ve sparked transformations of whole areas, as seen in London, and turned cities like Barcelona into tourist destinations. But does their value to places outweigh the cost?

The answer is in a city’s ability to capitalise on the world’s attention with perception-shifting action.

The last time Paris hosted the Olympics in 1924 it was in a rush of exuberant joie de vivre. It made Paris the capital of the world – the city of Hemingway and Picasso, of Montmartre and Moulin Rouge. Partly, this was because it was conveyed through a new and highly evocative medium — the radio broadcast — but also because the city recognised and seized the cultural ‘moment’.

What people talk about long after the last medal has been won is the lasting legacy. The Olympics can help cities write new stories that reinvent them because of something so simple: many people coming together with a single focus.

When we carried out our research with TfL for the renaming of the London Overground lines, many people still spoke of the London 2012 Olympics as one of the last moments the city felt happy and together.

For Paris, after such political turmoil, this moment is a chance to be a happiness raiser in the same way. A timeless lesson in the art of place branding is that attention is everything, so timing, tone and content matter. The way these Games have used so many different parts of the city throughout has made Paris itself the main character. It’s a brilliant move: it says, ‘look at all we have to be proud of’.

Ambitious plans from Mayor Anne Hidalgo like the ‘15-Minute City’ concept and becoming Europe’s greenest city show flashes of the turn Paris wants to take on the road ahead. A lightning rod for global attention, the Olympics can provide the public commitment ceremony the French capital needs to prove its seriousness about such goals. There is no better stage to make a promise people will believe in. That is Paris’ true Olympic opportunity.