RIO DE JANEIRO — Proud and beautiful as this seaside city is, glorious as the feats of athleticism and sportsmanship were these past two weeks, these Games underline that the Olympic model is fractured.

As we depart, Rio de Janeiro is left with stadiums for which it has little use and swimming pools far removed from the working class who could dearly use them. Tens of thousands of residents were displaced, a golf course sits atop a former nature preserve, and the towers of the athletes’ village will have a second life as luxury housing. Rio’s state government turns its pockets inside out looking for money to pay salaries and to keep hospitals open. The army withdraws, and fears rise that crime will spiral.

The International Olympic Committee has taken steps toward reform. But what it demands of nations is basically unchanged: Build us expensive monuments with a shelf life of two weeks. The I.O.C. has no hammer to bring down when cities fail to deliver on environmental promises.

There is a more sustainable and less ruinous path, and I will get to that. First, I should wrestle with the challenge tossed down by my colleague Roger Cohen. He is an incisive, humane observer, and he argued that critics have the Rio Olympics all wrong.