I recently had the privilege to review Andrew Smith’s 2012 book on Events and Urban Regeneration: The Strategic Use of Events to Revitalise Cities. The book review is published in Urban Affairs Review (there is a paywall on this journal, if you’re interested please email me for a copy).

Smith draws on an extensive dossier of his megaevents-related research projects, and writes for audiences in urban planning, tourism studies, and geography. The core argument is that there is a temporal mismatch between event planning and regeneration planning: events are temporary planning projects, whereas regeneration is by definition a long-term/indefinite planning objective. Events and regeneration are linked temporally, and they are both agents for territorializing urban policy commitments into the city region:

Designating spaces as event sites or regeneration projects marks them and reclaims them as official spaces . . . the two concepts [of event and regeneration] are synonymous. Regeneration can be viewed as an event—a planned spectacle which takes place at a certain time. (p. 10)

If event planners are to avoid this conflict between short-term event and long-term regeneration, they need to distinguish between “event-led” projects and “event-themed” regeneration. The former are narrowly focused on “the development of new facilities, or the upgrading of existing facilities,” while the latter “uses an event within a broader strategy driven by goals that exist over and above the event” (p. 11).

As detailed in the book review, Smith’s book stands out for two reasons. First, he writes at the interface of policy and scholarship, and the book would be of use to planners, policymakers, and scholars. Second, he views megaevents comparatively, drawing on case studies in Barcelona, Cape Town, Gothenburg, Manchester, New Orleans, and Singapore. This helps the reader interpret megaevents not just in their specific city contexts, but as part of broader policy design strategies.