Hosting the Olympics is no simple task. When Rio won its bid to host the 2016 Olympics, the Brazilian government estimated $3 billion going into running the games. By the start of the games $4.6 billion had already been spent; Rio was already creeping up to 50 percent over budget.
Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon issue and the economic and environmental consequences that come as a result of the games have been far more drastic in previous years. In an economic study done at the University of Oxford SAID Business School, the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics went 289 percent over budget, while the 1980 Lake Placid games went 324 percent over budget, demonstrating how hosting the Olympics can cause more of a financial damage than profit.
Not only do hosting cities face a financial problem but also an infrastructural problem. The Olympics requires many stadiums, arenas, and housing facilities (for the athletes and coaches), which are often times built before the games and sadly, abandoned afterwards. For instance, the 2014 Winter Olympics that were held in Sochi, the city itself needed to build many of the materials needed for the games.
According to the Human Rights Watch, 2,000 families were moved out of their homes, some paid, others not, in order to build forty to fifty-five new hotels, many of which were reported to not have door handles, proper plumbing, and water systems.
Despite Russia’s attempt to build accommodating hotels and arenas, many mocked Sochi’s poverty-filled and polluted city. Now, after the games many of these facilities have been left for ruin, abandoned after the Olympics, despite the number of homeless citizens present in the same city. Many of these Olympic provisions were previously sites that sheltered Sochi citizens. This caused a drastic decrease in housing which in turn presented the city with monolithic problems.
Unlike Sochi’s depressing situation, Rio has announced their Olympics arenas and stadiums are to be converted into schools, community pools, and public parks in order to better support the city. Rio plans to make its venues transformable and has employed “temporary architecture” allowing the facility to be repurposed. Temporary architecture is a concept where one large building is made of small units joined together, and after the large building has been used, it can later be separated into its smaller components, creating multiple smaller buildings to replace the single huge one.
Rio plans to repurpose its Future Arena into four state-run schools; its Aquatic Stadium is to be converted into two community pools, its Olympic Park turned into a public park, and its International Broadcasting Center is to be repurposed into a high-school dormitory.
While Sochi’s Olympic venues are being thrown to the side, Rio’s are being transformed into community assets. While both suffer from the economic and financial burdens of hosting the Olympics they each use their venues very differently. Similarly, other cities face other various positive or negative effects by hosting the Olympic Games.
One thing remains true for all cities, hosting the Olympics is indeed a daunting task. Each event is hosted at a certain (high) cost, and many stadiums if not used to their highest potential, will most likely become trashed and abandoned after the end of the Olympic Games.