I was able to participate in a fantastic set of sessions on megaevents planning at the 2014 Association of American Geographers. As usual, I’m impressed by the high caliber of urban studies/geography scholarship on megaevents, much of it presented in these two sessions.
My paper, which is attached below, focused on the role of policy ‘failures’ in urban development planning. Specifically, I examine the role of unsuccessful Olympic bids in urban land planning. While there have been several excellent case studies on failed Olympic bids in individual cities like Toronto, Berlin, and Istanbul; Dr Robert Oliver’s work on the long-term impacts of failed bids to host events in Toronto is a particularly impressive example. However, less comparative analysis has been conducted on this phenomenon (aside from my own work). As such, I draw on archival records from bid committees and municipal governments, analyzing a sample of 80 Olympic bids from 57 cities (bids to host Summer and Winter Games from 2000-2020, with bids dating 1992-2013). I catalog land investment projects proposed in each of the bids, trace relevant stakeholders (e.g. who is funding/designing/implementing each project) across bids, and evaluate if and why some ‘Olympic’ land projects are completed even in cities that fail to secure Olympic hosting rights. I couple this with material from one of my ongoing case studies: the long term land planning outcomes of a failed bid to host the 2012 Olympics in New York City.
The implication of the paper is that unsuccessful Olympic bids are often still significant policy tools: they often serve as a platform for pushing through individual land investment projects and/or building a long term development plan over the course of multiple events/bids.