Much-needed housing
Built in response to the city’s post-war housing shortage, Innsbruck’s Olympic Village is now a thriving multi-cultural neighbourhood that is popular with its residents.
Around 7,000 people of over 50 nationalities currently live in Innsbruck’s Neu Arzl Olympic Village district. As multi-cultural now as it was when it hosted the world’s leading athletes, the Village boasts kindergartens, schools, sports and cultural clubs, health clinics, shops and a recently built five-floor nursing home. Its indoor swimming pool is much used by local families, while the walkway on the banks of the nearby River Inn is another popular recreation spot.
A 2015 study conducted by the University of Innsbruckrevealed that the Village’s residents rate it as clean and safe and are happy with the quality of life there. The study’s findings are at odds with newspaper articles that have portrayed the area in a negative light because of the low average incomes of its residents and reported increases in crime and drug trafficking. The district is popularly known as the O-Dorf, an abbreviation of Olympische Dorf (German for “Olympic Village”). It is linked to rest of the city by a bridge over the River Inn and is well served by buses, the city’s tram network and the regional rail network.
The Olympic Village was built in two phases, the first for Innsbruck 1964 and the second for Innsbruck 1976. The first-phase section was constructed with the aid of two private non-profit housing cooperatives on an undeveloped site in the south of the city. It consisted of eight 11-floor buildings comprising 689 apartments and also featured a multi-purpose recreation centre.
Housing was in short supply in Innsbruck in the 1960s. More than half of the city’s residential buildings had been destroyed during the Second World War, and the effects of this devastation were still a major issue in the 1960s. The plan was, therefore, for the inhabitants of substandard accommodation in another part of the city to move into the Village after the Games were over. By 1965, 6,000 people were living there.
Completed in 1975, the second phase of the Olympic Village was an extension of the 1964 development and added 642 apartments to the city’s housing stock. These too were made available to residents following the Games.