{"id":13459,"date":"2012-08-13T14:31:43","date_gmt":"2012-08-13T12:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/08\/olympics-london-2012-signals-end-of-white-elephant-curse\/"},"modified":"2012-08-13T14:31:43","modified_gmt":"2012-08-13T12:31:43","slug":"olympics-london-2012-signals-end-of-white-elephant-curse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/olympics-london-2012-signals-end-of-white-elephant-curse\/","title":{"rendered":"Olympics-London 2012 signals end of white elephant curse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>By Brenda Goh<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">LONDON<\/span> Aug 13 (Reuters) &#8211; Future host cities of the world&#8217;s<br \/>\nbiggest sporting events will look to emulate the London<br \/>\nOlympics&#8217; use of temporary venues and stadia as the global<br \/>\nfinancial crisis heightens the danger of building expensive<br \/>\nwhite elephants.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Rio de Janeiro, which took the 2016 host baton from London<br \/>\nin a star-studded closing ceremony on Sunday, and 2022 World Cup<br \/>\nhost Qatar are among cities taking notes from the UK capital,<br \/>\nwhich held the most &#8216;temporary&#8217; Olympic Games in history.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;London is being used as a blueprint and we&#8217;re working with<br \/>\na number of Olympic and World Cup bidding cities or host cities<br \/>\nto take a similar approach,&#8221; said Christopher Lee, director at<br \/>\narchitecture firm Populous, which designed the London Olympic<br \/>\nstadium.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>They include Rio, Sochi in Russia which is hosting the 2014<br \/>\nWinter Olympics, and Nanjing in China where the 2014 Youth<br \/>\nOlympics will be held.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>While the Beijing, Athens and Sydney games relied heavily on<br \/>\npermanent sites, 257,000 out of 745,100 seats in London&#8217;s 34<br \/>\nOlympics venues will be dismantled after the Games leave town,<br \/>\nequal to the total number removed in the three previous games<br \/>\ncombined, Populous data showed.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Of the 34 venues, only eight are permanent new-build<br \/>\nstructures and will be scaled down, including the 80,000-seat<br \/>\nOlympic stadium which can be reduced to seat 25,000.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Seven venues, including the 12,000-seat basketball arena,<br \/>\nare temporary, while the rest already existed.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The difference between London and others is that we&#8217;ve<br \/>\ntaken amazing care with our legacy preparations,&#8221; London Mayor<br \/>\nBoris Johnson told reporters last Thursday. &#8220;We are unlike other<br \/>\nhost cities at this stage, where six of the eight venues already<br \/>\nhave their futures assured.&#8221;<br \/>\n\u00a0 <span class=\"label\"><strong>Continued&#8230;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Brenda Goh LONDON Aug 13 (Reuters) &#8211; Future host cities of the world&#8217;s biggest sporting events will look to emulate the London Olympics&#8217; use of temporary venues and stadia as the global financial crisis heightens the danger of building expensive white elephants. Rio de Janeiro, which took the 2016 host baton from London in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-13459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}