Balancing conservation and development in Winter Olympic construction: evidence from a multi-scale ecological suitability assessment

Transforming “white elephants” into positive legacies for cities: An assessment of the sustainability of winter Olympic venues and its implications

As major attractions for host cities, mega‐event venues have the potential to generate revenue and attract new events, create job and business opportunities, and drive urban innovation and transformation. However, they are often criticized for being unsustainable due to high resource and energy consumption, potential environmental pollution, large construction and operating costs, and insufficient usage post‐event. Winter Olympic venues, in particular, are frequently situated in ecologically sensitive areas and are more exclusive, leading to higher maintenance and conversion costs as well as greater ecological risks. Until now, studies examining the sustainability of large‐scale winter venues have been lacking. In this study, a multi‐dimensional conceptual model was developed to include ecological, social, and economic aspects, and the scorecard method was used to quantitatively evaluate the sustainability of venues from six Winter Olympic Games held between 1998 and 2018. The results show that the overall sustainability of the venues is at a medium level, with relatively high ecological sustainability. Additionally, the sustainability of the venues has improved over time, while the economic dimension of sustainability has decreased. Furthermore, indicators that hinder the sustainability of Winter Olympic venues were identified, and strategies from ecological, social, and economic dimensions were proposed to improve their sustainability. This study enriched the knowledge of Olympic legacies and sustainable venues, providing theoretical implications for the assessment of venue sustainability and practical implications for the construction and utilization of sports facilities as sustainable city infrastructure.

Influence of Beijing Winter Olympic Games Construction on Vegetation Coverage around Zhangjiakou Competition Zone

There is a rising concern that Olympic venue construction may affect the surrounding environment. The construction of Winter Olympic venues and competition zones is more likely to degrade the surrounding natural environment than the summer counterpart, considering the prominent land use change and extensive vegetation disturbance during the construction of ski trails in mountainous areas. Scientific assessment of the impact of this Winter Olympic Games construction on the surrounding ecological environment can be of significance for the construction of a Green Olympics. At this stage, the main framework of venue and competition construction in Zhangjiakou for the Beijing Winter Olympic Games is essentially completed, so we assessed the vegetation coverage change conditions based on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from 2000 to 2020. Our results show that the construction of venues, roads, and other facilities for the 2022 Olympic Games led to a remarkable change in land use, but the impacts on vegetation coverage were negligible in the surrounding area. Due to the intensive reforestation activities since the year that Beijing won the race to host the Winter Olympics, vegetation coverage continued to increase in the Zhangjiakou area, even in the core area of Winter Olympic Games construction zones. This study provides support to the belief in hosting a Green Olympics.

Assessing previous land-vegetation productivity relationships on mountainous areas hosting coming Winter Olympics Games in 2022

In order to prevent land degradation in areas before hosting big events such as the Winter Olympic Games (WOG), developing strategic vegetation restoration plans is key. To evaluate four experimental areas with different degrees of human impacts located in the Chongli District, northern Hebei Province, China, where the coming WOG 2022 will take considering: i) the feedback mechanisms between vegetation and soil in the process of future vegetation restoration; ii) the vegetation productivity of land in different land-use types; iii) the management mode considering the sustainable development as the primary goal. To achieve these goals, we applied a minimum soil data set (MDS) to screen the most relevant indicators (soil organic matter (SOM), total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), available phosphorus (AP), available potassium (AK), available nitrogen (AN), soil bulk density (BD), soil porosity (SP), pH, clay, silt, sand and gravel), and the nonlinear scoring method to establish a soil quality index (SQI). For this purpose, 400 soil samples (0-20 cm depth), the total biomass of one natural grassland (NG) and abandoned farmland (AF), and the growing stock of natural secondary forest (NF) and a larch plantation (LP). The results showed that the SQI can be established based on TN, silt, TP and gravel. Under LP and AF land-use type, vegetation showing a poor effect on the improvement of soil quality (SQIs were significantly lower than the NF and NG). It was also observed that above 1700 m, the growing stock of artificial vegetation exceeds the range of vegetation productivity (about 165 m³·h^-1) that the land can carry under the LP. We concluded that the main reason is the excessive depletion of N and P after human impacts. On the other hand, the SQI of NF and NG were higher, which is due to the significant improvement of soil quality by the conservation of the vegetation, so that no longer limited by the spatial distribution law, also showing higher vegetation productivity of land at different altitudes. This demonstrates that it is key to develop effective restoration plans considering the soil-vegetation relationship status of the NF and NG land-use types in this area in the territories used by the activities of the WOG 2022.

Public Perceived Effects of 2022 Winter Olympics on Host City Sustainability

Sustainability is now fully integrated into the entire life cycle of the Olympic Games. The planning, preparation, and staging of the Winter Olympics have opportunities to create a sustainable legacy for the host cities for decades. The tangible and/or intangible impacts of the Winter Olympics on the host city are multidimensional, including economic, social, and environmental aspects. However, there are still few studies on the multidimensional impact of the Winter Olympics on the sustainable development of the host city. This paper aims to investigate the effects of the 2022 Winter Olympics on host city sustainability from public perspective. Using a survey of 806 host residents in Beijing and Zhangjiakou, the authors performed descriptive statistics and regression analysis to analyze the effects of the Winter Olympic Games on the city’s sustainable development. The Winter Olympic Games are divided into three stages, including the pre-game phase, in-game phase, and post-game phase, and the impacts cover three dimensions, including economic, social, and environmental aspects. The results show that the 2022 Winter Olympics integrate sustainability into the whole process of the Winter Olympics; the Winter Olympics have an important catalytic effect on the host city’s sustainable development.

Sustainable use zoning of land resources considering ecological and geological problems in Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, China

The Pearl River Delta Economic Zone is one of the fastest growing areas of China's social and economic development. However, the contradiction between people and land, the deterioration of ecological environment and the damage of urban ecological security have become more serious problems. In previous studies there was single land utilization type in small-area and the evaluation method was not suitable to large areas, this study proposes a new method. Firstly, the study implements ecological land zoning from assessing the importance of ecosystem services functional in four aspects: biodiversity, water conservation, soil conservation and coastal protected zone. Then, the suitability evaluation index system of agricultural and construction land is established from the geological environment perspective, and introduces variable weight-analytical hierarchy process-comprehensive index model to evaluate the suitability of agricultural land and construction land. Re-zoning the type of land that has a special effect on the socio-economic, the mining land, protected area of geological relics and groundwater resources, respectively. Finally, considering the actual condition use status and suitability distribution of land, the results of comprehensive zoning of land utilization is got. The results of this study can provide some geological basis for the future land utilization zoning.

The Spatial Pattern of Ski Areas and Its Driving Factors in China: A Strategy for Healthy Development of the Ski Industry

The development of ski areas would bring socio-economic benefits to mountain regions. At present, the ski industry in China is developing rapidly, and the number of ski areas is increasing dramatically. However, the understanding of the spatial pattern and driving factors for these ski areas is limited. This study collected detailed data about ski areas and their surrounding natural and economic factors in China. Criteria for classification of ski areas were proposed, and a total of 589 alpine ski areas in China were classified into three types: ski resorts for vacationing (va-ski resorts), ski areas for learning (le-ski areas) and ski parks to experience skiing (ex-ski parks), with proportions of 2.1%, 15.4% and 82.5%, respectively, which indicated that the Chinese ski industry was still dominated by small-sized ski areas. The overall spatial patterns of ski areas were clustered with a nearest neighbor indicator (NNI) of 0.424, in which ex-ski parks and le-ski areas exhibited clustered distributions with NNIs of 0.44 and 0.51, respectively, and va-ski resorts were randomly distributed with an NNI of 1.04. The theory and method of spatial autocorrelation were first used to analyze the spatial pattern and driving factors of ski areas. The results showed that ski areas in cities had a positive spatial autocorrelation with a Moran’s index value of 0.25. The results of Local Indications of Spatial Association (LISA) showed that ski areas were mainly concentrated in 3 regions: the Beijing-centered Yanshan-Taihang Mountains and Shandong Hill areas, the Harbin-centered Changbai Mountain areas and the Urumqi-centered Tianshan-Altay Mountain areas. The first location was mainly driven by socio-economic factors, and the latter two locations were mainly driven by natural factors. Ski tourism in China still faces many challenges. The government sector should strengthen supervision, develop a ski industry alliance, and promote the healthy and sustainable development of the ski industry in the future.