Are Swimmable Cities Coming Back?

A grassroots movement called Swimmable Cities is working to transform polluted urban waterways into clean, swimmable rivers for public recreation, despite hundreds of billions of gallons of waste flooding U.S. rivers annually due to aging infrastructure and storm runoff. Major progress is being made in cities like Chicago, which held its first public river swim in nearly 100 years, and Paris, which opened the Seine River for Olympic swimming events in 2024 before granting public access. London is now targeting the River Thames for recreational swimming within the next decade, proving that decades of environmental damage might be reversible as cities invest in cleaner water infrastructure.