What Now for Games Venues?
Friday, October 29, 2010
Hosting an international sporting event is as much about theatricality as it is about sport and the run up to the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi was certainly filled with its own share of circus acts.
While evaluating the success of the Games, inevitably the question of their cost arises, and a battery of commissions has already been formed to look into potential financial wrongdoing. The initial budget of a few hundred million dollars escalated exponentially in the last seven years, with figures as high as $15 billion doing the rounds. Whether the city will ever be able to recover this investment is yet to be seen. However, if precedent is anything to go by, it could take the city anywhere from 20 to 30 years to pay for it.
A good deal of money was spent on upgrading the city’s infrastructure, something the Games have undoubtedly been a catalyst for. The new airport terminal, the metro, an expanded road network system are some of the more apparent infrastructural improvements in the city that will make it a more attractive destination. But the question begging to be asked is: How can the vast amounts of money spent on the sports stadiums and associated infrastructure be recovered?
Cities from developing nations may not benefit that much by hosting mega-sporting events. High infrastructure and development costs, the inability to attract a large number of tourists and spectators and the fact that the facilities languish after the event all make compelling arguments for not hosting events like the Commonwealth Games.
Stadiums, like skyscrapers and museums, follow an economic model unique to themselves. Often touted as citadels of modernity, the expression of human will over a landscape, these structures contribute to the making of national pride. But for New Delhi to fully exploit its spanking new sports facilities and indeed re-invent itself through the Games, it now needs to re-envision the stadiums as public or semi-public spaces and open them up to public-private participation.
The twin objectives of public architecture is that it is socially engaging and uplifting while creating cultural markers in a physical landscape. Together, both of these instill civic pride, something self-deprecating Delhi urgently needs.
So far, many in the city have only experienced these edifices through reports in the media, while for the street vendors and others who were displaced in the name of a larger cause, the two weeks of the Commonwealth Games represent institutionalized marginalization. It is imperative that the city transfers ownership of these structures back to its populace through an active engagement with it.
The hosting of events that define and engage with popular culture such as concerts could be one such way. Tapping into India’s love for all things Bollywood would provide the star power required to draw crowds in once again and locate these stadiums back within the public realm.
Sports stadiums are used to accommodate thousands of people with their attention focused on a select few— like concert halls. Located across the road from both the large exhibition grounds of Pragati Maidan and the National Museum, in the heart of the city, the Dhyan Chand National Stadium is ideally located for an adaptive re-use project. Its transformation into a hybrid building, one that houses both a modern-day opera house or concert hall and a convention facility would exploit its potent location while contributing to the cultural and economic development of the city.
In the winter of 2005, the conductor Zubin Mehta brought the Bavarian State Orchestra to New Delhi. They played to a sold-out audience at the nearby Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, which was also host to a number of Commonwealth events earlier this month. The Delhi government at the time recognized the need for such a venue and made the otherwise under-utilized stadium available. Undoubtedly, the need for such a facility does exist and merits a location as prominent as the termination of the ceremonial Rajpath axis.
The continuation and establishment of a worthy legacy for Commonwealth 2010 hinges on the successful engagement with communities that reside within the vicinity of the stadiums as well as those that are spread across the city. Just as Barcelona in 1992 used the Olympics as a means of transforming itself from a manufacturing city, New Delhi too needs to seize the opportunity it has now and tap into the same spirit that transformed the Games Village from near-disaster in a week.
On another level, just as Bollywood has the means to capture the imagination of a people, the stitching together of a geographically disparate Delhi (something that the metro has made a tremendous contribution towards), the creation of civic pride and a sense of urban connectedness is best achieved through collective community engagement.
“Come Out and Play, New Delhi,” a league of street-level sports with neighborhood teams could be a worthy legacy of the Games. A citywide government effort to give structure to street cricket or any sport for that matter would benefit tremendously from the spaces created for the Commonwealth Games.
Do let us know your ideas on how the staging area can be used in the comments section below.
–Rahoul Singh is an award winning architect and principal of the design firm RSDA. He is a columnist for various magazines and newspapers and author of the book, “Gardens of Delight”.
Labels: Commonwealth Games, India
posted @ 9:51 AM,
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