ABSTRACT
The institution of the Olympic Village – designated housing and amenities for athletes, coaches, officials and media participating in Olympic and Winter Olympic Games – constitutes perhaps the most significant contribution of the Olympic Movement to urban development and renewal in the cities where the Games have been staged. It has stimulated innovation in planning, architecture, technology, environmental renewal, protection and sustainability, and public and private finance and, in many cases, has been the subject of intense scrutiny, even controversy. But how well has the Olympic Village served participants, especially the athletes, and to what extent has it enabled the intercultural communication and exchange so fundamental to the core aspirations of the Olympic Movement? This paper pursued those questions at a conference organized by the Olympic Study Centre at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1996. I suggested that most athletes experience the Village as a contradiction, frustrating to both their preparations for competition and their desire to be a part of and contribute to a world community devoted to sporting excellence. I argued that every Olympic athlete should be required to live in the Village and encouraged to participate in intercultural activities, but to justify such a condition, the IOC and the organizing committees should give much more attention to the conditions of life within the Village. The paper anticipates some of the considerations that have gone into the design of the Youth Olympic Games.
