CHINA: BASKETBALL - Beijing's Olympic stadiums have improved residents standard of life, say officials

Record ID: 606771

  • Title: CHINA: BASKETBALL - Beijing's Olympic stadiums have improved residents standard of life, say officials
  • Date: 20th February 2008
  • Summary: SINGLE CAMERAMAN FILMING HEAD OF MAN
  • Embargoed: 6th March 2008 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: China
  • Country: China
  • Topics: Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVAD2QFGI9XG9BMBNULFARW1HX2X
  • Story Text: The Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium, which was completed last month, opened to the foreign media on Tuesday (February 19).
    The 18,000 seater gymnasium lies in the west of Beijing, alongside the Olympic Baseball site, in Wukesong Culture and Sports Centre.
    These, and other sports and commercial facilities will remain after the Olympics as a sports area for Beijing residents.
    Officials were keen to emphasise the importance of careful urban planning and the sustainablity of Olympic venues, allocating housing for those residents who would be displaced by the building.

    "The question of location is a important one: the location must address the needs of people's life and work. It must be better than before," said Zhang Jiaming, vice-director of Beijing Municipal Construction Committee.
    Authorities said the choice of location for the Wukesong Centre and that of the Olympic Green and were in part due to the comparatively low population densities of the areas, thus requiring fewer people to be relocated.
    Official figures state the construction of the Olympic Green area has lead to the relocation of 10,355 individuals from 4,614 households, accounting for 80 percent of the 14,901 people displaced by all Beijing's Olympic venues.
    This figure goes against those put forward by human rights groups who claim hundreds of thousands have been evicted as vast areas of Beijing have been cleared as part of Beijing's dramatic Olympic facelift.
    The Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) said last year that up to 1.5 million Beijing residents would be evicted from their homes in the run-up to August's Games, often in a brutal and arbitrary manner with little compensation.
    However, the Chinese authorities were speaking specifically about those areas where the homes were replaced by actual venues, not the other areas of the city where thousands of people have been evicted to make way for the skyscrapers of the new business districts.
    The gymnasium, which will hold a women's basketball test event on the April 19th, is just another in the series of 31 Olympic venues to be completed. The iconic 'Bird's Nest' national stadium, the only unfinished venue, is due for completion in March.
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