There are two main categories of Village (Location and Amenity) and sub-sets of each:
Location
Campus
These are usually to be found in the USA where they tend not to build new Villages but use the huge campuses of big Universities in the city/state - Atlanta 1996 (Georgia Tech) and Salt Lake 2002 are good examples. They pack the expensive student housing to accommodate more athletes, often bunk-bedding them to get more in. They usually have a good focal point around the Student Union-type services but they struggle for additional big open spaces for some of the key elements - dining, transport mall, operations areas. In Atlanta they used a multi-storey car park for the main dining and one never really got over the taste of fuel with everything!!
City
This is where the village is co-located in the heart of a community in close proximity to the host city and the venues. Barcelona 1992 is the best example of that and it is difficult to see on a City map now where the ‘Vila Olympica’ started and ended as it is so integrated into the community. Because such villages are developed on brownfield sites as green space is usually at a premium, their origins are usually as a legacy of the industrial revolution - dirty, polluted, forgotten areas of the city which would have taken decades to regenerate but which are accelerated through a single decade once a city gets the idea to bid for the Games and is successful. London and Barcelona have this heritage. 'City' also defines the amenities as you will see below.
Urban
This is where for either social, political or economic reasons the Village is built outside the city. Space is at a premium - the local communities don’t want 3,000-plus houses in an area at one go with all the impact on infrastructure and services such as roads and schools.
The difficulty for athletes residing in the more remote of these is that they are very dislocated from the host city and lack connection to the Games - they also tend to be spread out, making the Village very impersonal. There are no tower blocks but rather small apartment blocks and houses, a good example being Athens 2002: 20km outside the city, nowhere near the venues and 110 hectares in size!
A smaller example would be Sydney 2000 built near Homebush - compact at 60-plus hectares but a little remote from the city and on the edge of an industrial area so no local community. They are now spending a lot of time and money building houses in Homebush and trying to link the Village in.
Another example would be Berlin 1936 - probably one of the best ever examples of an urban, resort Village. It was to accommodate men only as the women stayed in a hostel down town. Some Olympic commentators suggest that the location was determined for political reasons, being more than 20km from Berlin.
Amenity
Barrack
Some of the earlier Villages were very basic - food and lodging and not much else.
Hotel
A category one step up the ladder from ‘barrack’: but one can't really say that of the first Village, Los Angeles in 1932, as it was very much a hotel-type Village with outdoor cinema, post office, laundry, shops and so on.
Resort
A Village which has everything because it is remote from the community and the host city, usually urban in location. In some circumstances the rationale for the location is that for security reasons the host city is fearful of incidents with the athletes so they want to discourage them to go far, or there are propaganda issues, as in some earlier Games, and they want to keep athletes in the Village and not get caught up in wider non-Games issues.
City
This is where the basics are provided to a very high standard and there are some general amenities.However, the emphasis is on integration with the local community, main venues and Village in a wider context, and with very close proximity to the host city itself with its own significant amenities, such as London/Barcelona.
Why does this type of Village tend to work best in my opinion?
First, the proximity of the community and major city provides 'meaningful distraction' to the athletes in those days before the Games. In other words, they are not lying on their beds getting stressed and nervous prior to competition but have something meaningful they can be doing.
Once they have competed, and this applies to 50 per cent of athletes at the end of the first week, the last thing an Organising Committee or National Olympic Committees want is tourist-athletes who are hanging around the Village having 'party-time'. The city, with its events, large screens and the various national houses - Heineken House, Casa Italia, is easy to get to, leaving the Village a place that can concentrate on those residents still in competition and work hard to maintain the serenity of the place when the party athletes return late in the evening.
