The aftermath on an Olympic city once the athletes have packed up and left.
In a matter of days Rio de Janeiro will well and truly be in the global spotlight. Hosting the 2016 Olympics from 5 to 21 August, all eyes have been closely watching Brazil to see how they will put on the sporting spectacle that is celebrated in every corner of the world.
Rio 2016 is following in the footsteps of London who seemingly pulled out all the stops, and one where the Olympic legacy is still going strong today. Conscious not to repeat the same mistakes as previous host cities such as Athens 2004 where the games resulted in empty Olympic buildings once the winners podium had been dismantled, London set about marking east London on the map. Regenerated as part of the Olympics, the area in and around the site has continued to proposer.
London’s athletes’ village became East Village, a new residential address. Zaha Hadid’s uniquely designed aquatics centre is open for the public to practice their strokes in, and you can even whizz around the Olympic velodrome on two wheels. A data centre and tech startup hub, known as Hare East, has even been created to replace the media and press centres.
With such big events, it is common for more money to be invested on the event itself than what is expected to generate. It is these critics who are happy to point the finger to the flaws created in the aftermath of the Olympics. For example East Village was sold to Qatar at half the cost than they were built for, a fact the British taxpayer is likely to feel bitter about but is salvaged by the fact that at least fifty percent of the units are available for affordable rent – something many developers manage to escape from achieving by investing money elsewhere.
The next stages of Stratford’s development focuses on housing of the larger site. Skeptics accuse the developers for a lack of inspirational design particularly as this is a rare opportunity for a new area and identity to be born in an already very built up London. But, on the other hand this development will close the gap on London’s housing supply, which cannot all be a bad thing.
Four years on and London is still grappling with the development of the Olympic site, it will be interesting to see how Rio fairs four years on too. Today much talk of Rio 2016 is around doping scandals and the water quality of Guanabara Bay where the marathon swimmers will take to the water, but will all the meticulous planning to put Rio on the centre stage payoff once the fanfare has died down? Only time will tell.