An architect by training, Jilly Traganou teaches architecture, design and urban planning at the Parsons School of Design in New York. She is the author of Designing the Olympics (Routledge, 2016, untranslated), a book devoted to the architecture, urban planning, communication and media coverage of the Olympic Games, as well as the effects that these major events have on society and the protest movements that they generate.
The Olympic villages are intended to become housing districts. What distinguishes these neighborhoods from the rest of the cities in which they arise?
The villages are the least publicized part of the Olympic Games, and the least studied. During the event, attention is focused on the large equipment. The villages are intended to remain private, for the comfort and safety of the athletes. After the event, the small rooms must be converted into apartments. The village remains hidden behind construction barriers for a long time, and then it becomes a residential area. It can be social housing, or private housing. In Munich, the 1972 Olympic village became student accommodation.
How do we choose locations?
It depends. Some villages are located near the Olympic parks. Others don’t. In Athens, for example, the 2004 Olympic village was built in invisible areas of the city. It’s like hidden. It’s a social housing program, in a city that has very few. It was designed as a neighborhood in its own right, with shops, local services, etc. But, quickly, everything closed and the housing fell into disrepair. We invested very little in maintenance… It became a little ghetto. The Greek crisis played a role, obviously.
In Barcelona, the dynamic was different. The village was built on an industrial wasteland. It led to the creation of a gentrified neighborhood of private housing. A new population has been established. It regenerated the whole area. Commercially, it was a great success. But a good number of residents, who did not have the means to pay the rent for these new housing units, were forced to leave.
The largest number of displaced people was in Beijing. More than a million people have been evicted according to Cohre [une ONG spécialisée dans le droit au logement et les évictions]. We destroyed the “hutongs” [quartiers de ruelles du centre historique de la capitale chinoise] to build the Olympic facilities, but population movements were better anticipated. Residents were relocated to high-rise buildings in new neighborhoods.
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