Beijing's Olympics legacy still vibrant lasting asset

On July 13, 2001, when then International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch announced that Beijing would host the Olympics, the city erupted in cheers.

Beijing not only fulfilled its promise of an "unprecedented" Summer Games in 2008, but went on to become the world's first dual Olympics city when it hosted the Winter Games in 2022.

Beijing's experience demonstrates how the Olympics legacy can evolve into lasting assets. The city has embedded the Games' principles of green, high-tech and people-oriented into its urban development through spatial restructuring, technological empowerment, ecological coordination and institutional consolidation, offering wisdom for the sustainable development of major sports events.

The Olympics propelled the restructuring of Beijing's layout. The Beijing Olympic Park stretched the city's central axis northward to form an integrated hub of sports, culture, tourism and commerce that balanced development between the northern and southern districts.

To ensure that venues did not lie idle after the Games, Beijing adopted a forward-looking approach and chose multifunctional designs. The Water Cube, for instance, has been innovatively transformed into the year-round "Ice Cube" that caters to both aquatic and ice sports. The Bird's Nest has become a bustling venue for tourism, sports events and commercial performances, unlocking commercial value as a new urban landmark. Transport upgrades for the Olympics broke urban-rural barriers, facilitated resource flow across the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and boosted coordinated development.

The Games were a stage for advanced global technologies, but their impact goes beyond temporary stadium displays. Beijing's dual Games have led to rapid technological iteration and paved the way for sports technology to be adapted for civilian use.

The 2008 Olympics introduced HD live broadcasts, smart event management and intelligent security systems that boosted digital public services nationwide. Green venue technologies such as photovoltaic power, ground-source heat pumps, and water recycling, alongside fleets of new-energy buses, laid a solid foundation for China's new-energy and smart-city sectors. The long-span steel structure of the Bird's Nest and the energy-saving membranes of the Water Cube filled multiple gaps in domestic construction engineering and raised industry standards. The high-tech Olympics transferred high-end sports technologies into daily practical tools and turned event-level standards into lasting benchmarks for public well-being.

For the 2008 Olympics, Beijing launched comprehensive pollution control measures and established a Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei joint management framework covering industrial emissions, vehicle limits, dust suppression and ecological shelterbelts. This blue-sky program remained in place post-Games, steadily improving air quality and increasing the number of blue-sky days.

Ecological standards pioneered at venues have also been popularized in public spaces. The biodiversity standards of the Olympic Forest Park are now widely adopted in urban parks and suburban green belts. Meanwhile, the Games boosted the construction of pocket parks and green corridors alongside urban expansion. Shifting from short-term air quality guarantees to permanent mechanisms that secure urban ecological security, Beijing's Olympics experience shows that major sports events can drive urban green transformation.

Perhaps the least visible, yet most enduring, Olympics legacy lies in governance. Beijing's Olympics preparation and successful execution provided valuable experience for megacity governance, transforming many measures into institutionalized arrangements. The city formulated local regulations and established a full-cycle volunteer service system. Following the Games, this framework extended to community services, emergency rescue and public activities, standardizing and legalizing volunteer services nationwide.

Beijing issued relevant safety rules and established a cross-departmental coordination platform involving public security, transportation, fire protection and health authorities. Olympics-derived experience, such as crowd density early warning and cross-regional joint response, has been codified into universal protocols for National Day celebrations, international summits and commercial performances. This demonstrates that major sports events can help enhance urban governance capacities.

Twenty-five years on, Beijing has forged a unique path of benefiting people and revitalizing the city through the Games. A sustainable Olympics grants the city lasting assets: expandable urban spaces, universal public technologies, improved ecology, and continually upgraded governance.

The author is a professor at Wuhan Sports University.

The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.