The long-term urban impacts of the Sydney Olympic Games

Abstract

The longer-term urban impacts of the year 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney can now be discerned, and are reviewed in this paper. The Games were responsible for the regeneration of their focal site at Olympic Park. Wider urban impacts are at once both significant but also less than anticipated in 2000. Development at Olympic Park created several stadia that struggled financially but have become venues for major sporting and entertainment events. Olympic Park is now being developed into a major hub for urban consolidation and commercial activity. The Olympic village resulted in a demonstration suburb with new levels of sustainability, while the Games also spurred the creation of a major regional park nearby. New Olympic venues elsewhere in Sydney have had highly variable post 2000 usage. Motorway and rail infrastructure between the CBD and airport was brought forward for the Games, and streetscape improvement projects were initiated in the CBD itself. Hotel capacity was significantly increased up to 2000, but was then static for a decade. Olympic-induced increases in tourism and business investment after 2000 have failed to materialise, partly because of state complacency that the Games would by themselves generate a continuation of the late 1990s boom conditions.