"The summer of 1996. In nineteen days, six million visitors jostled about in a southern city grappling with white flight, urban decay and the stifling legacy of Jim Crow. Six years earlier, a bold, audacious partnership of a strong mayor, enlightened business leaders and Atlanta's Black political leadership dared to bid on hosting the 1996 Olympic Games. Unexpectedly, the city won, an achievement that ignited a loose but robust coalition that worked collectively, if sometimes contentiously, to prepare the city and push it forward. This is a story of how once-struggling Atlanta leveraged the benefits of the Centennial Games to become a city of international prominence. This improbable rise from the ashes is told by three urban planning professionals who were at the center of the story."--Back cover.

Olympic Games are sold to host city populations on the basis of legacy commitments that incorporate aid for the young and the poor. Yet little is known about the realities of marginalized young people living in host cities. Do they benefit from social housing and employment opportunities? Or do they fall victim to increased policing and evaporating social assistance? This book answers these questions through an original ethnographic study of young people living in the shadow of Vancouver 2010 and London 2012. Setting qualitative research alongside critical analysis of policy documents, bidding reports and media accounts, this study explores the tension between promises made and lived reality. Its eight chapters offer a rich and complex account of marginalized young people’s experiences as they navigate the possibilities and contradictions of living in an Olympic host city. Their stories illustrate the limits to the promises made by Olympic bidding and organizing committees and raise important questions about the ethics of public funding for such mega‐events. This book will be fascinating reading for anyone interested in the Olympics, sport and social exclusion, and sport and politics, as well as for those working in the fields of youth studies, social policy and urban studies.

What drives cities to pursue large-scale events like the Olympic games? Investigating local politics in three U.S. cities-Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City-as they vied for the role of Olympic host, this book provides a narrative of the evolving political economy of modern megaevents.

When a city wins the right to hold the Olympics, one of the oft cited advantages to the region is the catalytic effect upon the urban and transport projects of the host cities. However, with unparalleled access to documents and records, Eva Kassens-Noor questions and challenges this fundamental assertion of host cities who claim to have used the Olympic Games as a way to move forward their urban agendas In fact, transport dreams to stage the "perfect games" of the International Olympic Committee and the governments of the host cities have lead to urban realities that significantly differ from the development path the city had set out to accomplish before winning the Olympic bid. Ultimately it is precisely the IOC’s influence – and the city’s foresight and sophistication (or lack thereof) in coping with it – that determines whether years after the Games there are legacies benefitting the former hosts. The text is supported by revealing interviews from lead host city planners and key documents, which highlight striking discrepancies between media broadcasts and the internal communications between the IOC and host city governments. It focuses on the inside story of the urban and transport change process undergone by four cities (Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, and Athens) that staged the Olympics and forecasts London and Rio de Janeiro’s urban trajectories. The final chapter advises cities on how to leverage the Olympic opportunity to advance their long-run urban strategic plans and interests while fulfilling the International Olympic Committee’s fundamental requirements. This is a uniquely positioned look at why Olympic cities have – or do not have – the transport and urban legacies they had wished for. The book will be of interest to planners, government agencies and those involved in organizing future Games.

This 2nd edition of a highly successful book (published in 2000) provides a comprehensive, critical analysis of the Olympic Games using a multi-disciplinary social science approach. This revised edition contains much new data relating to the Sydney 2000 Games and their aftermath; and preparations for Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008 Games. The book is broad-ranging and independent in its coverage, and includes the use of drugs, sex testing, accusations of power abuse among members of the IOC, the Games as a stage for political protest, media-related controversies, economic costs and benefits of the Games and historical conflicts between organizers and host communities.

Mega-events represent an important moment in the life of a city, providing a useful lens through which we may analyse their cultural, social, political and economic development. In the wake of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC’s) concerns about ’gigantism’ and wider public concerns about rising costs, it was imperative in the C21st to demonstrate the long term benefits that arose for the city and nations from hosting premier sporting events. ’London 2012’ was the first to integrate the concept of legacy from the moment a bid to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games was being considered. London proposed an ambitious programme of urban renewal for East London. Subsequent host city bids have adopted the ’legacy narrative’ and, as this book demonstrates, aligned this to major schemes of urban development and renewal. Bringing together scholars, practitioners and policy makers, this book focuses upon the legacies sought by cities that host major sports events. It analyses how governments, the IOC and others define and measure ’legacy’. It also focuses upon the challenges and opportunities facing future host cities of mega-events, looking at their aspirations and the intended impact upon their domestic and international development. It questions what the global shift in geographical location of mega-events means for sports development and the business of sport, what the attractions are for cities seeking to harness the hosting of a mega-event, and whether there may be longer term consequences for the bidding and hosting major sporting events in the wake of the widespread social unrest that accompanied the preparations in Brazil for hosting the FIFA World Cup (2014) and the summer Olympics (2016) and in Turkey, where there was significant opposition to bid for the 2020 summer Olympiad.