Failed Olympic Bids and the Transformation of Urban Space

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Why Bid? The Logic of Pursuing Sports Mega-Events

   • Robert Oliver, John Lauermann

   Pages 1-25

3. Bidding and Urban Development

   • Robert Oliver, John Lauermann

   Pages 27-47

4. Policy Mobilities and the Bid

   • Robert Oliver, John Lauermann

   Pages 49-67

5. Planning Across Bids

   • Robert Oliver, John Lauermann

   Pages 69-86

6. Post-bid Legacies?

   • Robert Oliver, John Lauermann

   Pages 87-106

7. Post-bid Rescaling

   • Robert Oliver, John Lauermann

   Pages 107-128

8. Anti-bid Politics

   • Robert Oliver, John Lauermann

   Pages 129-146

9. Conclusion: Rethinking the Horizons of Failed Bids

   • Robert Oliver, John Lauermann

   Pages 147-151

10. Back Matter

    Pages 153-156

    PDF

This book evaluates why cities choose to bid for the Olympics, why Olympic bids fail, and whether cities can benefit from failed bids. Attention is shifted away from host cities (or winners), to consider the impact of the bidding process on urban development in losing cities. Oliver and Lauermann show that bidding is often a politically strategic exercise, as planning ideas are recycled from one bid project to the next. As Olympic bids become more deeply embedded in urban development and bid teams engage in legacy planning, Oliver and Lauermann demonstrate that bid failure is rarely definitive and is often a desirable result.  This volume adds a new and innovative perspective to Olympic Studies and mega-events more broadly, with appeal to a variety of other disciplines including geography, urban planning, spatial politics and sport and civic policy.

• Failed Olympic bids
• Urban space
• Transformation of Urban Space
• Urban Planning
• Urban Economics
• Olympic bids
• legacy planning
• Olympic Agenda 2020
• Olympic candidature process
• event-led development
• urban governance
• networked entrepreneurialism
• entrepreneurial city
• development logic in cities
• neoliberal reordering
• multi-scalar collaboration
• politics of contingency

“We know that hosting the Olympic Games causes changes in cities. But Robert Oliver and John Lauermann show that failed bids also have the possibility of generating new urban narratives and creating new urban structures. Focusing on bids that fail, rather than just the winners that host, the book extends our understanding of mega events.” (John Rennie Short)

• Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, USA

  Robert Oliver

• City University of New York, New York, USA

  John Lauermann

Robert Oliver is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Virginia Tech, USA. His research examines the intersections of public space, symbolism, and entrepreneurial urbanism, with a particular emphasis on how various claims to urban space are rendered visible during mega-event planning and hosting processes.

John Lauermann is an Assistant Professor of Geography at Medgar Evers College in the City University of New York, USA. His research examines urban political economy, mega-events and mega-projects, and urban sustainability.

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