The sustainable and entrepreneurial park? Contradictions and persistent antagonisms at sydney\u27s olympic park

Urban parks have long been used by policy makers to achieve specific policy goals. In recent years, two sets of policy goals have become commonly associated with park planning. The first set of goals can be characterized as being neoliberal, where parks have been built and reformed to generate certain economic and governmental outcomes. The second set of policy goals is associated with sustainability, where parks have been utilized as tools in such things as the mitigation of climate change and community building. The aim of this paper is to examine how these two sets of policy goals have come to coexist. The paper draws upon the case study of Sydney Olympic Park, a self-proclaimed exemplar of both entrepreneurial urban development and sustainability. The paper traces out the functional and institutional changes at the Park in order to read the relationship between neoliberal and sustainability policy goals. While predictable inconsistencies are found between the two sets of policy goals, the paper argues in conclusion that their contradictions have not generated a necessity to resolve their antagonistic relations. © 2013 Taylor & Francis