Nice by the Numbers: The Data Behind the City's Biggest Stories This July

Nice recorded its hottest June 30th in 41 years of municipal meteorological records this week, with temperatures at the station on Avenue Malausséna hitting 39.2°C — a figure that city officials are now using to justify fast-tracking the expansion of the Plan Canicule response network across all seven arrondissements. That number matters because France as a whole logged 2,025 excess deaths at the peak of the current heatwave, and the Alpes-Maritimes department is statistically among the three most exposed in the country due to its concentration of residents over 75.

The timing is not coincidental. The city's Direction de la Santé Publique has been under pressure since spring to widen the network of cooling centres beyond the current 14 sites, most of which are clustered in the centre-ville and Libération neighbourhoods. With school holidays beginning July 5th, the demographic mix on the streets shifts sharply: fewer working-age adults, more elderly residents and tourists, both groups less likely to self-refer to emergency services. The prefecture logged 312 heat-related emergency calls in the Alpes-Maritimes during the last comparable episode in August 2023.

Housing Costs and the Pressure on Local Residents

Separate from the health data, fresh figures from the Observatoire des Loyers de l'Agglomération de Nice Côte d'Azur show median rents in the city hit €18.40 per square metre in the second quarter of 2026 — up 6.8 percent year-on-year and a record high for the dataset, which dates to 2014. The sharpest increases are concentrated in the Carré d'Or and along the Rue de France corridor, where short-term rental platforms have absorbed an estimated 4,200 units that were previously on the long-term market. That is roughly 9 percent of the city's entire private rental stock.

The municipal council's Office du Logement has been trialling an encadrement des loyers pilot in the Vieux-Nice district since January — a rent-cap scheme modelled on frameworks already operating in Paris and Lyon. Early compliance audits covering 847 properties found that 31 percent were above the reference index, a higher rate of non-compliance than either of the two larger cities recorded in their first six months. Enforcement notices have gone out to 62 landlords so far, with fines ranging from €1,500 to €5,000 per infraction.

Tourism Numbers and the Promenade Problem

Foot-traffic sensors installed by the Métropole Nice Côte d'Azur along the Promenade des Anglais counted 94,000 pedestrian passages on June 28th alone — the single highest daily figure since the sensors were installed in 2019. For context, the entire stretch from the Quai des États-Unis to the airport boundary is 7 kilometres long, meaning average density at peak afternoon hours exceeded 13,000 people per kilometre. City planners use 8,000 as their informal saturation threshold.

The Aéroport Nice Côte d'Azur processed 1.4 million passengers in June 2026, according to preliminary traffic data released this week — 11 percent above June 2024 and the busiest month in the airport's history. Roughly 60 percent of arriving passengers gave accommodation in Nice proper as their first destination, rather than the wider Riviera. That translates directly into pressure on water consumption, waste collection and the tramway network: Lignes d'Azur reported a 22 percent increase in tram line T1 passenger loads compared with the same fortnight last year.

Residents living near the Jean Médecin interchange, which handles the heaviest T1 transfers, should expect continued crowding through at least August 24th, when the summer timetable returns to regular frequencies. The city's Direction de la Mobilité has confirmed that six additional tram sets are being brought forward from the autumn maintenance schedule to cope with demand. For those affected by the heat emergency, the updated list of 14 cooling centres — including the recently opened facility at the Bibliothèque Louis Nucéra on the Promenade du Paillon — is available on the Nice.fr portal and updated daily at 08:00.