Guangdong Olympic Tennis Center

The organizers have, since 2008, launched large-scale promotions of these sports on campuses and through cooperation with TV stations and broadcasting stations as well as newspapers.

Sustainable utilization

The Guangzhou Asiad will be held in 70 venues located in 10 districts and two county-level cities in Guangzhou's jurisdiction and three nearby cities.

"We want to turn Guangzhou into a multi-center city and that's why we have multiple centers and functions in the network of venues," said Gong Haijie, Deputy Director of GAGOC's Venue and Equipment Department.

The four cities where the venues are located are linked by an urban rail system and 80 percent of the venues in Guangzhou will be accessible via subway.

"We took into consideration both the needs of the Games and Guangzhou's urban development blueprint during venue planning and construction. We hope to improve the city's supporting infrastructure with all these new venues," Gong said.

The GAGOC has a team working on feasible plans for new venues' post-event utilization, as commercial operation of large and comprehensive sports venues following the events for which they were built remains a tricky problem worldwide.

The government-funded Asian Games Town serves as a nice footnote to Guangzhou's practicality in venue arrangement. With a focus on post-Games functions, the project was designed as an all-function satellite city.

Buildings and facilities in this housing complex will mainly serve as non-competition venues, including the athletes', technical officials' and media villages and the main media center, the logistics area, the gymnasium and the Asian Games Park. They will be turned into apartments, shopping malls, hospitals, kindergartens and parks after the Asian Games.

With a lot of eco-friendly technology employed in construction and interior decoration, the town will become a pilot living community for the city's southward expansion strategy.

The GAGOC was reported to have sold all buildings of the projects, except for public facilities, to an alliance of property developers for future commercial operation at 25.5 billion yuan ($3.7 billion).