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The Olympics and the City

The Olympics and the City
Oscar Reyes

April 2005

"Oscar Reyes went to Athens to look at how the Olympics affected the life of the city, and found a legacy of privatization and surveillance. Back in London, he draws the lessons for the capital’s own Olympic Bid. "
The banner on the Millennium Dome reads ‘London 2012’. This doesn’t look like a very good bit of PR to me. It looks like an apparition: “we wasted £800 million on one white elephant, just think what we could do with a whole herd of them.”

That’s more or less the situation in Athens where almost all of the 36 purpose-built Olympic venues now lie empty. The main Olympic complex remains closed to the public. The Peace and Friendship Stadium has reported leaks and electrical faults, the marathon route and a new US$380 million tramway have caused severe drainage problems, and the floor of the Galatsi indoor arena is covered in broken glass. As costs mount, even the Greek government admits to a lack of planning: “We did not have a reliable post-Olympics plan in Greece. Many venues were designed without their post-Olympic use in mind," says Fani Petralia, the deputy Culture Minister who was the country's top Olympic official. (....)

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http://www.redpepper.org.uk/arts/x-apr2005-reyes.htm[/url]
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