The day England won the Olympics was one of the worst days of my life

April 4, 2018 7:59 AM

Gentrification, white elephants and overpriced social housing: six years later, Dr Penny Bernstock and Dr Juliet Davis try to answer the question, who are the real Olympic winners?
posted by Juso No Thankyou (24 comments total)

The Olympics are a method for transferring public money into private hands - more or less corruptly depending on the host.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 8:02 AM on April 4, 2018 [11 favorites]

Can I just quickly point out how nice it is that both experts here are women, and that the topics they are experts in are economics, architecture, and urban planning? That still feels pretty rare: you get a lot of all-men panels, a lot of panels with some women but still half or more men, and almost none where most or all of the experts are women unless the topic is specifically female-coded. It's as if the people who put these things together feel like the audience won't take it seriously unless there is A Man present to lend some gravitas to the proceedings. Nice to see an exception.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 8:10 AM on April 4, 2018 [13 favorites]

So the article does not actually mention who the real Olympic winners are and judging by the fact that, as GallonOfAlan remarked, the whole shebang is just a big wealth transfer, it would be safe to follow the path of profit. Developers? Construction conglomerates? Media companies? Local politicians? The IOC? Is this all an elaborate scam to benefit a couple of development/media ultralords and their corrupt political goons? I certainly took this dim view of the whole Olympic charade after what happened in Athens.
posted by Laotic at 8:15 AM on April 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

The thing is, London 2012, as bad as it was is almost a best case scenario compared to almost all other Olympics. The money that went into upgrading the Central and Jubilee lines, the upgrades to the Overground in Northeast London, The St Pancras rebuild, and all the little bits and pieces of funding that were used to make more stations step free accessible were genuinely well spent. The Olympic village is usable, good quality housing. It's almost an impossibility proof - if even this Olympics had such a mixed legacy, it may just be impossible to do it right.
posted by atrazine at 8:53 AM on April 4, 2018 [18 favorites]

The 1984 Summer Olympics remains the gold standard. Hardly any new facilities built, and those enjoyed decades of subsequent use, as did the improvements to existing facilities, employers managing schedules so that traffic — at time with no internet enabled telecommuting, and no rail mass transit — was better than average.
posted by MattD at 9:16 AM on April 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Like with any other major, public-funded construction projects, sliding costs are one of the biggest problems. Things must be ready by June/July/August x, and developers can effectively divert construction material or twiddle their thumbs until the OCs relent and pay to get things on track again. This has less to do with the IOC, but on how construction companies have made acceptable to pull those stunts without more than a shrug.

The other major problem is that the Olympics ideally should be hosted in cities where there's a balance of needed infrastructure (either new but preferably refurbish existing facilities), further demand for them after the Olympics close either for sport or conversion to other uses, and financial power to support the Games, but those seem to be incompatible.
posted by lmfsilva at 9:27 AM on April 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Breakdown of what London 2012 spent their money on
posted by atrazine at 9:35 AM on April 4, 2018

in a microcosm, it seems like it's pretty much always true that heavy pedestrian/transpo development combined with the building of giant public arenas will almost always result in displacement. Atlanta's Beltline is a great example of this: a pedestrian, green-friendly path built along disused rail lines that surround the city sounds like an amazing idea but it turns out that people with wealth thought it was a great idea too and that resulted in the shoving out of older, lower-SES residents and massive gentrification. the same happened when Atlanta took down all of its public housing and then proceeded to cut a deal with a developer that resulted in even more gentrification

if you have capital, you have power. if you have power, you can live wherever you want. and if a city makes itself more livable, it follows that the powerful push out the existing residents. it would be surprising to me that any developer or municipal government is unaware of this
posted by runt at 9:56 AM on April 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

“For example, affordable housing after 2010 we introduced something called an ‘affordable rent model’ where rents were linked to market rents, market prices. That had a huge impact on the level of affordable housing.”

I think that if your "affordable rent model" is linked to market rents, you no longer have the "affordable" part.
posted by clawsoon at 10:18 AM on April 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

Yeah, way to choose pretty much the worst possible proxy value. "Affordable" doesn't actually mean anything if you define it like that. It needs to be calculated based on median income and cost of living. You know, what people can afford.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:26 AM on April 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

My feeling is that the London Olympics gave as good value as any of the other times multiple billions of pounds get spent on London: the usual 1.1:1 benefit: cost ratio. It's the number of tens of millions of pounds that could've been spent elsewhere in the UK with a 3:1 BCR that got missed that are the real shame.

That and the fact that it gave Boris Johnson enough credibility to become a cabinet minister on his return to parliament.
posted by ambrosen at 10:35 AM on April 4, 2018

Need a Washington DC approach. DC was set up so that no state could brag it contained the national capitol. So we find 4-5 areas in the world, officially declare them to be not part of any country, build Olympics facilities there, and cycle through them (in use one year, being upgraded or used for training purposes other years).

This will never happen though because money and human nature.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:45 AM on April 4, 2018 [4 favorites]

And caution live frogs with the "Animalympic Island" idea. Which, frankly, is one whose time has come.
posted by mephron at 11:17 AM on April 4, 2018

Would also accept Laffalympics.
posted by asperity at 11:29 AM on April 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

All I know is that I am still singing hosannas for the day Massachusetts voters rejected Boston's 2024 Olympic bid. Of course, the developers turned right around and started trying to get the new Amazon HQ2.
posted by briank at 11:30 AM on April 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

Of course, the developers turned right around and started trying to get the new Amazon HQ2.

That, too, is unlikely. So many of us are already saying, "there's no housing, the T's crowded already."

It's really frustrating when these business folks "from Boston" (they all live in the suburbs) try to make things happen in Boston.
posted by explosion at 11:42 AM on April 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Need a Washington DC approach. DC was set up so that no state could brag it contained the national capitol. So we find 4-5 areas in the world, officially declare them to be not part of any country, build Olympics facilities there, and cycle through them (in use one year, being upgraded or used for training purposes other years).

This will never happen though because money and human nature.
posted by caution live frogs at 1:45 PM on April 4 [2 favorites +] [!]

Until a couple of months ago I lived in Washington, DC and now I live about two miles away and I can tell you that having a place that is not officially part of a state is bad enough because of the lack of voting representation, among other things. A place that is outside any country? I think the legal and human rights issues would be unimaginable, especially considering how terrible the IOC is. The closes example I can come up with is FIFA in Qatar. I see where you think this is a good idea but I think it would be very, very bad.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:04 PM on April 4, 2018 [4 favorites]

> it follows that the powerful push out the existing residents. it would be surprising to me that any developer or municipal government is unaware of this

As long as municipal government financially depends on how wealthy its citizens are I'd say the safe assumption is they are very well aware and condoning.
posted by Laotic at 12:31 PM on April 4, 2018

I wonder to what extent the 2012 Olympics are to blame for a lot of the problems discussed. The biggest problems - rising rents, poor quality housing - are happening all over London and have been particularly acute in the last 5 years. There was certainly some very localised displacement of people, but broadly the problem of gentrification, of wealthy people moving into expensive 2 bed flats built where families used to live, is happening all over London right now and is probably a product of some broader macroeconomic effects (the increasing concentration of highly paid jobs in major cities, the rapid rise of Chinese money looking for property to invest, the availability of very cheap money to the already wealthy etc)
posted by leo_r at 1:55 PM on April 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

The 1984 Summer Olympics remains the gold standard. Hardly any new facilities built, and those enjoyed decades of subsequent use, as did the improvements to existing facilities, employers managing schedules so that traffic — at time with no internet enabled telecommuting, and no rail mass transit — was better than average.

At the same time, you can draw a direct line from the '84 Olympics to the militarization of the LAPD, the subsequent brutal subjugation of South Central, and ultimately the Rodney King riots. When the Olympics come back in 2028 their new plan is to put the Dept. of Homeland Security/ICE in charge of the police (for a theoretical sanctuary city!) for the duration of the Games.

It's all part of putting on a pretty face for the global community, no matter what it takes. There is no way the city will allow Skid Row to exist as it currently does when the world's cameras are in downtown LA. And that doesn't mean "take money earmarked for the Olympics and find the 2,000 homeless people there housing." Like the South Central residents of the 80s, the people living there will just be conveniently disappeared to jail.

I know people point to things like what what happened with London's public transit for positive after-effects of the Games. And yeah, LA metro projects like the Purple Line extension will get a boost from the Games. But the positives that came from the handful of successful games come with a track record of so much extra bullshit (and I didn't touch on the massive displacement/gentrification issues intimated in TFA) that I think they're ultimately never worth hosting.

Thankfully, most cities are wising up. There's one reason LA won the 2028 bid - literally every other city had backed out.
posted by joechip at 2:38 PM on April 4, 2018 [4 favorites]

As long as municipal government financially depends on how wealthy its citizens are I'd say the safe assumption is they are very well aware and condoning.

This is simply not the case in London (as compared to the rest of the UK), though . See this tweet thread and linked article: Why do London boroughs charge such low council tax?
posted by ambrosen at 4:10 PM on April 4, 2018

Certainly gentrification in itself has separate causes and isn't specific to the Olympics. Rather, hosting the games is probably best seen as a microcosm of how society functions right now. The common theme of ignoring tax payers' needs, in favour of untested, often spurious benefits is indeed wearing very thin now. The Tokyo 2020 plans, especially the new stadium fiasco, have met with a lot of protests, though not quite as energetic as what happened in Brazil. Short of boycotting coverage and sponsors, I don't know how to say no thankyou much more. When major public infrastructure projects like electrification of the Midland Mainline get cancelled, and Cornwall has to put up with pretty poor connections to the rest of the country, it's hard to find justification even in the benefits of real improvements in London.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 5:42 PM on April 4, 2018

It seems incredibly disingenuous that anyone with any policy chops would claim to be surprised by the outcome of the London Olympics. This is the same thing that always happens with the Olympics - and they're not even talking about the stuff I remember reading about in 2012, like roundups of the poor and homeless and the enormously shitty and dangerous working conditions for the people who were building the Olympic infrastructure. Which was all completely predictable because it paralleled what had happened in Beijing, and in other cities before that.

The whole point of this type of "expert" is to have someone to - frankly - lie on television about how great these things are going to be and then lie-apologize afterward when it's a disaster. The type of sham "experts" quoted in the article are just people who make their money apologizing for power....that or they're worse urban planners than one pink collar American sitting in front of a computer.
posted by Frowner at 7:52 PM on April 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

who are the real Olympic winners?

For 2012? John Morton and Jessica Hynes.
posted by BWA at 8:36 AM on April 5, 2018 [1 favorite]