Tag Archives: Olympics

The Olympic Village

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Adrenaline is a powerful force. When I arrived in Vancouver in 2016, I bounded with energy despite only having slept 4 hours in the previous 36. After dropping my stuff off at my lodgings, I rented a bike and rode like a woman on a mission along the waterfront trail. Part of that mission was to burn off the adrenaline so that I would be able to sleep that night.

However, revisiting my photos and my recollections of this trip to write about the bridges and greenery, I’ve been haunted by the thought that there was an additional mission to that bike ride. I distinctly remember biking the trail along False Creek, but I have no photos from this excursion (the photo above is False Creek from Granville Bridge, nowhere near Olympic Village). Perhaps I was too focused on my mission? One line from my travel journal buried in a flurry of thoughts on urban design reminded me that the destination of that bike ride was the Olympic Village from when Vancouver hosted the 2010 Olympics.

In my journal reflecting on the city’ newer architecture that could have been anywhere, I wrote: “In biking along the coastal trail, there were several parts that I felt could have been Cardiff or London. For instance, the part around Yaletown felt like the Cardiff Wharf development, though this one melded into its surroundings on all sides unlike Cardiff’s which was just plopped there. The area around Olympic Village and parts also around Yaletown felt a lot like the part of London past the Tower Bridge on the southern shore.” (Photos of the area around Tower Bridge are below and, of course, the building that I remember as being what I probably was thinking of in Vancouver is not one I photographed.)

My interest in the Olympic Village came from the same place as my on-going interest in World Fairs and Urban Renewal. These are large-scale developments that cities pursue “for the greater good” to attract tourists and others outside their boundaries while ignoring or actively harming their residents. Despite the intent, the end result is often more harm than good. For example, the Olympics and World Fairs are typically promoted as events that will bring in extensive revenues to the city, but most lose money due to the large expenditures required to build the necessary facilities. A successful Fair or Olympics is the one that breaks even.

In my Comparative International Urbanism course in college, I wrote a paper on three large-scale redevelopments in London, including the Olympic Village from the 2012 summer games. I intended to visit the Olympic Village when I visited London that May, but I got distracted by bridge walking. The research I did for that paper on Olympic Villages highlighted the inequities inflicted on residents in the construction of these developments. Based on my paper, over 200 local businesses and nearly 1,000 residents were evicted for London’s Olympic Village.

While I can’t find my notes, I seem to recollect that researchers featured Vancouver as the city whose Olympic Village created the least harm for existing residents and most seamlessly integrated into city life after the games and athletes left. Something I definitely would have wanted to see while in Vancouver, but I was operating on too little sleep to take photos to prove I was there.

Cardiff Bay Wharf Development

London Tower Bridge Southern Shore

London Olympics

Blackfriars Bridge

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One thing that stuck out to me while in London was the amount of construction going on.  It seemed like everywhere I went in the city there were cranes and/or something was being built, and I didn’t go anywhere near any of the sites for the Olympics.  While on the bridges, cranes could often be seen at a distance, but the Blackfriars Bridge seemed to be in the heart of a construction area.

Cranes can be seen on the southern shore in the first image above.  The downriver view from the bridge was completely blocked and will remain blocked by “London’s first station to span the Thames.”  At first I find this very annoying, as I think there would be a good view of the city looking downstream from Blackfriars Bridge.  However, building a station over the Thames is actually an interesting idea.  In a city as dense as London there isn’t much room for expansion.  There doesn’t appear to be anywhere else this close to the heart of the city to build a new large station.  The rail website explains that this station, which is being built on top of a Victorian railway bridge, will allow for longer commuter trains and improve access to the Tate Modern and the Globe Theater.  Another piece of note about the bridge is that it is being fully equipped with solar panels and will be the longest solar bridge in the world.  Apparently, the competition for the title “World’s Longest Solar Bridge” is not particularly tough at the moment as there is only one other known solar bridge in the world which is the pedestrian Kurilpa Bridge in Australia.

My favorite part about this revamped railway bridge is that it challenges the function of a bridge.  Today, most bridges function simply as a way to get from point A to point B.  One exception to this is the Galata Bridge in Istanbul (see June 25 post).  I remember seeing and using a bridge in Bath, England, when I was a kid that had shops on both sides so that you couldn’t even tell you were on a bridge while crossing it.  Bridges like this seem to have been popular in medieval Europe.  In a class I took on the history of cities, we looked at medieval Paris which had multiple bridges with buildings lining both sides.  Perhaps with the invention of transportation technologies that permit sprawling cities, there is no reason to use bridges as anything more than a connector.

I suppose if there were more bridges with mixed functions like carrying shops as well as roads, then there would be less great views, still it’s an interesting concept.  Bridges often end up adding to the dead space of a city, but this might be more because of what they connect than because of their function to move people along.