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Post-Olympic Abandonment

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Re: Post-Olympic Abandonment

#121

Post by praneshp »

duiker101 wrote: post #26
danpalmer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live next to the olympic park in Stratford and it's pretty great. - The main stadium is now the local football team's home ground and gets used for concerts as well. - The olympic pool is an open public pool that anyone can use and looks like it gets a fair amount of use. - The park itself is a nice open space to be in with lots more flats and shops being built in and around it. - I have several colleagues who trai…

Another thing from the article that struck me as good for London is how little it costed compared to the others > The games set back Sochi $51 billion, London $11.6 billion and Beijing at least $40 billion That is no small amount, I wonder how much of it was corruption and bad management.

My friends and I were joking before that Olympics that organizing it was just writing a bunch of letters. To Wimbledon for tennis courts, to FA for Wembeley, etc. Others were probably building from scratch.

Re: Post-Olympic Abandonment

#122

Post by sly010 »

As the article also mentions, London spent a lot of it's olympic preparations thinking about what will happen to all the building and materials after the games. I was in design school at the time and we all submitted proposals for reusable architecture, etc. There was so much idealism, we all assumed things will be turned into sculptures or street furniture and the olympic park will itself will become an open site where people will hang out, etc. I wasn't in London for the games, but planned to go back to see the park after. When I got there a month after the Olympics, it was all abandoned, closed, fenced around and all you could see is giant empty parking lots. If they did any recycling I didn't see any of it.

Re: Post-Olympic Abandonment

#123

Post by user5994461 »

saalweachter wrote: post #36

Would it negatively impact the Olympics if we stopped rotating them at this point? I mean, besides the IOC missing out on the opportunity compete with FIFA on graft? Let's just locate the Olympics in a permanent facility -- Greece, if they'll have them, for tradition. I think between "not rebuilding everything from scratch every four years" and the expectation of recurring events, the single host country could both r…

> Let's just locate the Olympics in a permanent facility

No.

The Olympics is a political event, it needs to continue rotating location to assume its role.

It is not about sports, it is not about efficiency.

Re: Post-Olympic Abandonment

#124

Post by sandworm101 »

jonknee wrote: post #116
sandworm101 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think any boom would be short lived. The travel novelty would grow thin. The repeated use of the same facilities would also impact the sports. More fundimental is the question of any boom. London didnt see much, with some shops downtown instead seeing marked reductions. Vancouver barely broke even. China didnt do it for the money. And the less said about Sochi's costs the better.

> The repeated use of the same facilities would also impact the sports. Doesn't seem to matter to the Cubs or Red Sox who both play in parks over 100 years old and are two of the most popular baseball teams. When you don't have to build them new every Olympics the facilities themselves could be much higher quality and actually be maintained.

Not age. Many events want slightly different venues each year. Marathons, sliding sports, even sailing. Adapting to the new venue is part of the sport.

Re: Post-Olympic Abandonment

#125

Post by jasonmclaren »

saalweachter wrote: post #36

Would it negatively impact the Olympics if we stopped rotating them at this point? I mean, besides the IOC missing out on the opportunity compete with FIFA on graft? Let's just locate the Olympics in a permanent facility -- Greece, if they'll have them, for tradition. I think between "not rebuilding everything from scratch every four years" and the expectation of recurring events, the single host country could both r…

After the Vancouver Olympics, I half-jokingly proposed a Distributed Olympics:

https://invisiblesummer.net/2012/08/12/towards-a-distributed...

Summary:

1. The host city gets it for 40 years, to amortize the cost of building the facilities and to improve through experience.

2. Distribute groups of sports (skiing events, swimming events, etc) to different host cities, to reduce the impact on each city and to foster a sense of international cooperation.

3. Stagger the events throughout the year, to avoid scheduling conflicts and viewer burnout.

Re: Post-Olympic Abandonment

#126

Post by johansch »

saalweachter wrote: post #36

Would it negatively impact the Olympics if we stopped rotating them at this point? I mean, besides the IOC missing out on the opportunity compete with FIFA on graft? Let's just locate the Olympics in a permanent facility -- Greece, if they'll have them, for tradition. I think between "not rebuilding everything from scratch every four years" and the expectation of recurring events, the single host country could both r…

All of these comments are missing the entire point of the olympics. It's like watching engineers trying to solve business problems in entrenched markets. Hint: it's not a logistical/engineering problem.

The olympics as they exist today are there to enrich the members of the IOC. That's it. How are any of all of these brilliant suggestions going to enrich the IOC members?

I have no idea on how solve this, besides first destroying the olympic brand that they are all hiding beneath.

Re: Post-Olympic Abandonment

#127

Post by personlurking »

marcosdumay wrote: post #118
StavrosK wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree with you, I wish lots of our corrupt officials went to jail, but I'm afraid it's not happening...

Well, our most important of our corrupts are still free, and nobody is certain if they are ever going into jail (what is already a huge improvement). The good part is that it takes an entire mafia to run a country. I doubt its heads alone are powerful enough.

Well, it (Lava Jato) still hasn't reached the Judicial, plus Pezão is in hot water and Lula possibly will make a 2018 return. With all the people taken out of poverty in the early 2000s having returned to it, perhaps people will somehow want Lula back....if not, it could be Bolsonaro following Temer. So much going on.

Re: Post-Olympic Abandonment

#128

Post by mulmen »

sandworm101 wrote: post #124
jonknee wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The repeated use of the same facilities would also impact the sports. Doesn't seem to matter to the Cubs or Red Sox who both play in parks over 100 years old and are two of the most popular baseball teams. When you don't have to build them new every Olympics the facilities themselves could be much higher quality and actually be maintained.

Not age. Many events want slightly different venues each year. Marathons, sliding sports, even sailing. Adapting to the new venue is part of the sport.

Marathons and sailing don't require purpose-built facilities so it's easy to maintain the variety there, just draw the route somewhere else. Sliding sports might present more of a challenge but a few corners can be changed to add variety without having to build an entirely new facility.

Re: Post-Olympic Abandonment

#129

Post by mulmen »

nhaehnle wrote: post #88
untog wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested to know how the financial benefit of hosting the Olympics (tourism, etc) would compare to upkeep of permanent facilities. In theory the crowds coming to town every 4 years would be a big economic boost, though perhaps not enough of one.

It depends a lot on whether the facilities can be put to good use and how big the tourism effect is in the interim. An interesting case to study here is the town of Oberammergau in Bavaria. Several centuries ago, the people there vowed to put on a passion play every ten years if they were spared by the plague. They stuck to that vow and have been doing it ever since, putting on an absolutely top quality production ea…

I think previous commenters have suggested this but what about splitting the Olympics up into four years of competitions. So 1/4 of the the events are played every year. There would be "premiere" events to draw people in but the less-viewed sports could actually get more attention because there is less competition for viewership.

Re: Post-Olympic Abandonment

#130

Post by ern »

intoverflow2 wrote: post #97
sandworm101 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think any boom would be short lived. The travel novelty would grow thin. The repeated use of the same facilities would also impact the sports. More fundimental is the question of any boom. London didnt see much, with some shops downtown instead seeing marked reductions. Vancouver barely broke even. China didnt do it for the money. And the less said about Sochi's costs the better.

> London didnt see much Part of it is on the verge of being converted into a cement factory ( https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/11/olympic-park... ) Honestly believe a world without the Olympic games is a better world, if London can't find much use for them and Rio is already letting them fall into disrepair. What on earth is the point in this.

Reading your link, it seems that the cement factory land was always zoned industrial, and was intended to be used for industrial purposes after the Olympics.
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