Erin HughesWriting Sample

Gentrification in Sydney and VancouverPaper Written for Gentrification: Chinatown; Graduate Class at Hunter College

The chance to host the Olympic Games, or any event on an international scale, is

often seen as a city’s chance for revitalization. As the Olympics garner increasingly

intense media coverage around the world, the host city seizes the opportunity to present

its absolute best face. Thus, host cities will often engage in partnerships with private

corporations to develop the neighborhoods where the tourists will flock. This idea of

tourism gentrification, or the “transformation of a neighborhood into a relatively affluent

and exclusive enclave in which corporate entertainment and tourism venues have

proliferated,” however, only lasts while the Games are underway.1 Even before the

Olympics begin, host cities must plan for the uses of the new construction after the flame

is extinguished. The Olympic Villages, constructed for the hundreds of athletes

participating in the Games, are often converted into luxury apartments after the Games

are over. These luxury apartments, often built on neglected land in the host city, then

become examples of what gentrification scholars refer to as new-build gentrification.2

Between 1993, when Sydney was selected as the host of the 2000 Summer

Olympics, and 1998, rents in the city increased by 40 percent.3 Melbourne, the Australian

city with the next largest increase in rent, only saw an increase of 9.6 percent in those

five years. When development for the Olympics (specifically new sports venues and the

1 Loretta Lees, Tom Slater and Elvin Wyly, Gentrification (New York: Routledge, 2008), 131.2 Lees et. al., 138.3 Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, Fact Sheet - Forced evictions and displacements in past Olympic cities, Fact sheet (Geneva: COHRE, 2007).

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Olympic Village) began, Sydney was already experiencing an increase in housing stock

and gentrification; this event on the world stage only exacerbated the rising costs of

living in the city.4 A report published in 1998, two years before the Olympic Games,

found that approximately 160,000 households in Sydney had little choice but to live on

the fringes of the city, leave Sydney altogether or pay more than 30 percent of their

income to remain in the city.5 This pricing out of the housing market, as opposed to the

direct displacement caused by traditional gentrification, is what Davidson and Lees refer

to as “exclusionary displacement.”6

The land chosen for the site of the Olympic venues and Village was government

wasteland; as such, there was no displacement of permanent residents of the area.

Temporary residents such as university students and those residing in boarding houses,

however, were displaced when construction began.7 Given their proximity to the sports

venues, approximately three-quarters of the boarding houses were used for

accommodations for the masses that descended upon the city as the Olympics were

underway. After the flame was extinguished at the end of the Games, the boarding houses

continued to be used for visitor accommodations.8 The Olympic Village was developed

by Mirvac Lend Lease Village, as part of a public-private partnership. As such, the

developer had full control over what would happen to the property at the close of the

games, and there was never a promise made for affordable housing in the complex.9 The

4 Center on Housing Rights and Evictions.5 Center on Housing Rights and Evictions.6 Lees et. al., 140.7 Sarita Kapadia, Olympics and Housing: A Looking into the Treatment of Underserved Populations Before and After the Games, Senior Thesis, Haverford College and Bryn Mawr College (Haverford: Haverford College, 2008), 32.8 Kapadia, 33.9 Kapadia, 34.

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Games began on September 16th of 2000, but potential buyers were being courted as early

as July of 2000. Promised that the units would be outfitted with a kitchen (they had none

initially in order to make more room for the athletes), the buyers paid anywhere between

369,000 and 775,000 Australian dollars.10 What began as government wasteland soon

became the Newington Apartments, the anchor of the upscale Homebush Bay. Although

there was no direct displacement of lower-income residents with the construction of the

Olympic Village, the units in the complex were prohibitively priced, meaning that many

would never have been able to afford the opportunity of living there. Additionally,

Sydney’s spot as the center of the world’s athletics for those two weeks in 2000 drove

prices in the entire city up, pricing many low-income residents out of the housing market.

The indirect displacement of lower-income residents, or displacement of residents living

in surrounding neighborhoods are key factors in Davidson and Lees’ argument for the

acceptance of new-build gentrification as a legitimate field of observation by

gentrification scholars.11

Vancouver won the bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympics in the middle of 2003;

by 2006, plans for the life of the Olympic Village after the Olympics were over were

underway. Until 2006, Vancouver’s Official Development Plan for the Olympic Village

was for approximately one third, or 400 units, to be designated as low-income housing.12

The Olympic Village was constructed in South East False Creek, adjacent to the

previously gentrified False Creek (which had previously been the industrial heartland of

Vancouver). With these initially proposed low-income housing units, the greater False

10 Kapadia, 34.11 Lees et. al., 140.12 False Promises on False Creek, 20 2 2011 <falsecreekpromises.wordpress.com/false-promises>.

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Creek area would have a more mixed income level, which would be more in-line with the

vision of many Vancouver planners. However, in 2007 (still three years before the

Olympics officially began in Vancouver and Whistler), the city council voted to reduce

the number of low-income, or non-market, units to only 250.13 The decision to reduce the

number of low-income units, in tandem with the decision to build next to an already

gentrified neighborhood could be interpreted as a plan to allow super-gentrification to

overtake the region. As gentrification is no longer seen as a process with a clearly defined

end, the government of Vancouver recognized that it could be possible for False Creek to

build upon its improvements, and become an even more exclusive neighborhood, should

there be an equally gentrified neighboring community.14 In April of 2010, a plan was

unveiled calling for an increase in taxes paid by residents, in order to finance the subsidy

for the low-income units in the former Olympic Village.15 The city hopes the remaining

units in the Village will be rented at market-rate (between $1,600 and $2,400 a month) to

public service employees, such as police officers and nurses.16

When construction began on the Olympic Village, the International Olympic

Committee was told that the units would all be used for low-income housing when the

games came to an end. As the city continued to cut back on affordable housing in the

Village, an outcry erupted from the homeless and displaced, and those advocating for the

rights of these marginalized populations.17 In order to secure the low-income and social

housing units that were promised in these buildings, advocacy groups have been

13 False Promises on False Creek.14 Lees et. al., 149.15 Jeff Lee, "Half of Vancouver Olympic Village social housing may go to market-rate rentals," Vancouver Sun (Vancouver, 20 April 2010).16 Lee.17 False Promises on False Creek.

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protesting through the Athletes’ Village Tent City. This is to raise awareness to the fact

that there is a housing crisis in Vancouver, and so many are either being completely

priced-out of the units or denied the promised social housing in these newly-constructed

buildings.

The process of converting the Olympic Villages from their original intended use

to the upscale private apartments they became is an example not only of new-build

gentrification, but also of the increasingly large role the state plays in the gentrification of

neighborhoods. This increase in state control in gentrification is a hallmark of what some

gentrification scholars call third-wave gentrification.18 The host cities of the Olympic

Games are always expected to undertake massive projects to improve their infrastructure

to withstand the influx of tourists and athletes they will have in the weeks before, during,

and after the Games; in this sense, it seems redundant to say that the Villages were

financed at least partially by the local and national governments. However, the decision

to turn the Olympic Villages into market-rate apartments, and turn the surrounding land

into an equally gentrified neighborhood, reveals that the government in both Sydney and

Vancouver were more “open and assertive in facilitating gentrification.”19 The Newington

Apartments in Sydney, luxury apartments that stand on what was once government

wasteland, especially highlight the state’s interest in spreading gentrification to more

remote locations, which would not have been explored without the push from both

governmental bodies and corporate partners, another hallmark of third-wave, state-led

gentrification.20

18 Lees et. al., 178.19 Lees et. al., 178.20 Lees et. al., 178.

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The cases of the gentrification around the Olympic Villages in Sydney and

Vancouver highlight the state’s involvement in new-build gentrification. Although the

cases are unique among other examples of state-led, new-build gentrification in that the

complexes were initially built to house visiting athletes, the fact that the state and

developers were so keen on appealing to future renters and owners before the Olympics

had begun reveals that the government in both cities was ready to take the initiative and

aggressively lead the gentrification of neighborhoods throughout the city. The case in

Sydney may have proven to be more successful; the choice to build on government

wasteland (a classic tenet of new-build gentrification), meant that fewer people were

directly displaced from their homes by incoming construction, thus, little to no resistance

to the gentrification efforts. The looming shadow of gentrification, however, did price

many families out of the city up to seven years before the Games even began. The case in

Vancouver, however, proved to be an example of state-led gentrification that was

unsuccessful. Although the decision to build the Village next to a neighborhood that had

already been gentrified might have been appealing to the state and the developer, the

construction of a large apartment complex with only a small number of low-income units

in this neighborhood was met with fierce opposition. Housing advocates argue that now

low-income residents are completely priced out of a large part of downtown Vancouver,

even as half of the apartments stand vacant. Thus it shows that two governmental bodies

can undertake the same project, make the move to state-led gentrification, and have two

completely different sets of results.

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