The Olympic Legacy

More than 37 years after Munich hosted the summer Olympics, the city is in the mix again as a bid for the 2018 Olympics – this time the Winter Olympics, teaming up with Garmisch-Partenkirchen as a bid city. If Munich is to win the bid, it would be the first city ever to host both summer & winter Olympic competitions. This view from the Olympiadorf tower shows some of the legacy from Munich’s Olympic games – the Olympic Village, an area that today houses more than 10,000 residents. Despite the concrete buildings, the area proclaims itself as a green oasis. That’s quite a contrast from the descriptions of “concrete citadel” and “ghost city” when it was built as the only split level community in the world with separate areas for cars and pedestrians. Today Munich is still represented as one of the few cities that can point to benefits from the Olympics years after the event. Munich is thought of as one of the finalists for the event, although the IOC (which selects the city in 2011) has been very reluctant to pick two consecutive Olympics on the same contient (Sochi, Russia hosts 2014). Other candidate cities include Harbin, China; Pyeongchang, South Korea; as well as several cities in France.