Cities hosting the Olympics have developed enormous tracts of purpose-made housing for athletes since 1924. These are widely used for urban redevelopment, but do they benefit local communities?
Pierre de Coubertin, co-founder of the IOC in 1894, proposed the first Olympic village in Paris for the 1924 Summer Games. The athletes would sleep and eat in purpose-built homes for the first time. Athletes previously stayed in hotels, hostels, schools, barracks, and even boats to the host towns.
De Courbertin was sensible and public-spirited. He believed that villages may foster community among international contestants and that athletes could stay in temporary constructions less than hotels. The 1952 Helsinki Olympics, which had two villages, pioneered the design of communities for post-Games use. Other host cities have followed or attempted this method in the preceding two decades. The village of the 1924 Paris Olympics was burned after the Games, while the present villages are meant to be lived in afterward.
Compared to sporting sites, villages have become more private and isolated during the Games. This followed the 1972 Olympics in Munich, West Germany, when Palestinian militant group Black September invaded the village and killed Israeli athletes, coaches, and a police officer. Besides athletes and their entourage, villages only allow visitors after strict security checks.
Ashley Munday writes that an Olympic Village’s legacy value of 3,000 to 5,000 additional dwellings, which boosts social housing supply, is crucial to the Games’ sustainability.
Villages have reflected host cities’ politics, morals, and architecture for decades. Country economic conditions also affect their quality. In the last 20 years, host towns have focused more on sustainability, urban regeneration, and legacy, which means long-term benefits for residents after the Games. Many appreciate these new villages and other Games’ buildings and services for revitalizing poor communities by offering social housing, new jobs, and infrastructure and transport upgrades. However, such initiatives generally fail and are controversial.
The Paris 2024 situation
Examples include the Paris Games’ three villages. The Saint-Seine-Denis department’s northern suburbs of Saint-Denis, Saint Ouen, and L’Île-Saint-Denis will host 4,250 Olympic and 8,000 Paralympic athletes. Despite repurposing run-down former industrial buildings as amenities and housing for the athletes, urban regeneration has forced many established residents, such as immigrants, to find temporary homes or squat in abandoned warehouses or offices, many in squalid conditions. This week, The New York Times highlighted events in Seine-Saint-Denis, and human rights activists have accused French authorities of “social cleansing”.
“One of the benefits of well-planned Olympics is their ability to rapidly regenerate an area,” says Dan Epstein, consultant director of Useful Projects, a sustainability and innovation consultancy with urban development and global events experience and former head of legacy and sustainability for the London 2012 Olympics.
“But with regeneration comes gentrification and this can lead to the forceful eviction of the most vulnerable people from the area. Policies such as provision of social housing and work for local people are vital, and should be properly integrated into the planning, design and economic model of development of Olympic villages. London moved 600 people and hundreds of businesses out [to make way for] its Olympic Park. But it had partnerships with the Greater London Authority, and policies and finance were put in place to rehouse people and relocate businesses. Inevitably some communities and individuals lost out but a real effort was made to protect people. When planning the 2012 London Olympics we were very conscious that this was a major risk other Olympics had fallen foul of.“
Local citizens in London dispute the Games’ regeneration plan’s benefits. Apartments in the Olympic village, now East Village, have been criticized for exorbitant rents. Two-bedroom flats in the former athletes’ blocks cost over £2,300 a month in 2022, and three-bedroom flats £2,700. The London organising committee promised 30,000 to 40,000 new residences on the Olympic Park, but The Guardian reported in 2022 that only 13,000 had been completed. The Park bordered Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, and Waltham Forest, where around 75,000 residents were waiting for municipal accommodation.
Dave Hill, author of Olympic Park: When Britain Built Something Big and founder of onlondon.co.uk, which covers London’s politics and culture, says some local residents benefited from the new housing due to the scarcity of homes on the original site. “Prior to the Games there was only one housing estate on what became the park land. Much of it was student accommodation, and the rest was poorly and badly run – it was almost certainly for the chop,” Hill says. “I can’t tell you where all those residents ended up… [but] East Village has a high percentage of new social and other affordable housing, which didn’t exist before the Games. I’d be surprised if lots of it wasn’t allocated to people on the waiting lists of Newham and other councils.”
He believes the overall impact on local businesses is mixed. “The LDA promised to find new premises for all businesses displaced from the park development site. Inevitably, there were long-running disputes about the process, compensation levels, alternative locations and so on, as there always are with compulsory purchase orders (and there were a massive number of these). I don’t know what happened to all the businesses – I doubt anyone does. Some businesses might have been damaged by relocating, some might have benefitted. Some might have taken compensation and retired happily. Some that went out of business might have done so anyway. It’s always a mixed picture, and you only ever hear from the people who aren’t happy.”
Nowadays, communities vying to host the Games must convince the IOC that their program is sustainable and their urban reconstruction plans sound. “Today, for host cities, providing evidence of sustainability credentials revolving around reducing embodied carbon [all the CO2 emitted in the building’s production] and operational carbon [carbon released by a building’s ongoing use of energy, such as electric lighting and heating] is a given,” says Ashley Munday, principal and head of design at Hassell, which designed the 2012 London Olympic Village. “A key criterion is the legacy value of between 3,000 and 5,000 new homes [created by the villages] – a great way to boost social housing stock.”
The first Olympic Villages
Village evolution over the previous century is spectacular. Spartan wooden huts with three beds made up de Coubertin’s 1924 Paris hamlet near the Games’ Stade Olympique. Bureau de change, telephone, dry cleaner, hairdresser, newsagent, and post office were also available.
The 1932 Los Angeles Olympics village was in Baldwin Hills, a 10-minute drive from the stadium. Women athletes were housed in a hotel and men in temporary, lightweight constructions, reflecting the Great Depression’s economic hardships. The village had dining halls, bathing houses, a hospital, fire station, telephone network, and a 2,000-seat amphitheater.
The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics hosted both sexes in its villages for the first time. 14 Eastern Bloc countries boycotted the Games in retaliation to the US-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and its protest over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but the villages celebrated. Jon Jerde’s pop-colored polychrome towers represented the 80s’ whimsical post-modernism and high-tech architecture.
The Olympic villages in Helsinki remain popular as perfect residential neighborhoods, according to Kristo Vesikansa.
The first broadcast Olympics were the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, which Hitler used for propaganda. Its hamlet had two-story dorms, a dining hall, gym, and training facilities. Nationalist feelings led to 370,000 visitors when it opened. After the Games, the town became a hospital and infantry school. The structure where Jesse Owens stayed was repaired.
London hosted the 1948 Olympics on a shoestring budget after the bombing. Richmond Park’s village, a former military convalescent camp with wooden houses, reused constructions. Male athletes lived here, while female athletes resided at Southlands College at the University of Roehampton in Wandsworth. The Finnish crew provided a prefabricated wooden sauna with a bathroom, massage room, and kitchen. After the Games, Britain received it and moved it to Cobdown Park in Maidstone until 2020.
In contrast, Helsinki Olympics villages were idyllic. They were created to save a key green space in the northern portion of the city from being gobbled up by a nearby business zone. The communities were on a slope woods with extensive outdoor spaces, connecting them to nature. Since Helsinki expanded, the villages are now in the city center yet preserve their rustic character. Their modernist buildings were designed by innovative architects like Alvar Aalto. “The villages in Helsinki have maintained their popularity,” says Finnish Architectural Review editor-in-chief Kristo Vesikansa. “For many Helsinki inhabitants, the villages represent an ideal residential neighbourhood with their compact, functional apartments and large gardens. A swimming pool, originally built for athletes, is also popular.”
The 1960 Rome Olympics village was an early regenerator. In Parioli, a rundown neighborhood, the Games’ organizers built 1,348 contemporary public residences for use after the Games.
The 1972 Munich Olympics’ contemporary architecture reflected their forward-thinking ideology. However, the community is well known for the Munich massacre. In 1969, architect Günther Eckert designed a concrete, high-rise complex with 801 large flats. The village’s streets were segregated from traffic, a green idea. The Munich Games’ village buildings were built for utilization thereafter, a pioneering legacy model. Its apartments were sold as residences, while two-story houses were converted into student housing (which had to be reconstructed after a student riot). Munday believes the community is “sought-after because of the quality of its architecture and its green spaces” today.
The 1992 Barcelona Olympics village relied on urban renewal. Residential area La Vila Olímpica was established in the Poble Nou district, a former industrial and dirty region. The village was planned by Josep Martorell, Oriol Bohigas, David Mackay, and Albert Puigdomènech to be stylistically diverse. Its orderly layout was based on Barcelona’s exquisite Eixample grid. “Barcelona is possibly the best example we saw of a village converted into a successful urban quarter that also made improvements to the waterfront,” he adds.
Dan Epstein: The Paris Games’ villages have great potential, but a host city’s impact is only shown 10–20 years after the Games.
The 2012 London Games redeveloped a dirty industrial site in east London’s Stratford. “The London Olympics set itself the target to be the most sustainable Olympics ever,” he adds. “The idea was to use the Olympics to catalyse the regeneration of the Lower Lea Valley and transform it into a vibrant, low-carbon, socially inclusive community with exceptional public transport. Many Olympic parks and their facilities in the past have frequently been abandoned after the Games were over.”
“Ken Livingstone, as London’s first elected mayor, championed the London Olympics,” Hill adds. “Livingstone could see the Games could bring enormous investment into the Lower Lea Valley.” Boris Johnson’s Classical and conservative architecture taste supported the Games. “Johnson had a vision for the Olympic park as a whole for Victorian-style terraced, family-sized housing and squares, inspired by London’s grand Grosvenor and Bedford estates.”
Fletcher Priest, Arup, West 8 and Vogt Landscape were commissioned to develop a village-like district with gardens reminiscent of Victorian street layouts in Maida Vale, West London. The project included 69 apartment blocks, squares, courtyards, and water features.
Criticism of local ‘heritage’
In addition to London and Paris, several host cities have been criticized for legacy issues. “The village at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens comprised 21 residential towers,” he adds. “After the Games, it was intended to become a new residential zone, its accommodation sold or rented to the local population. However, only half the apartments are now occupied. And when Rio hosted the Games in 2016, it wanted to emulate London. But its villages and 31 towers failed to create successful legacies, at least in the short term. The plan was for the towers to be transformed into luxury condos but they’re largely vacant.”
The evictions from Seine-Saint-Denis and other areas of the city in the run-up to this year’s Paris Games are angering many, but its organizers are showing a strong commitment to sustainability, with much evidence of future-proofing buildings in the villages for their post-Games use. Three athlete-built apartment towers in St Ouen will become homes and offices after the Olympics. Repurposed structures include factories and film studios. Solar panels cover rooftops, while wind tunnels bring fresh air from the Seine into settlements through huge gaps between buildings. “Paris Games have lots of promise,” adds Epstein. “They have a real focus on reuse of existing facilities.” But, he says, with a caveat, “You can only really tell what a host city’s legacy is, how sustainable it turns out to be in the long run, 10 to 20 years after the Games have been and gone.”
