scholarly journals Urban Development Through the 2018 FIFA Men’s Football World Cup: Mutated Mobile Policies in the Peripheries

Author(s):  
Свен Дэниель Вольфе

Planners, politicians, boosters and other elites often use mega-events like the 2018 FIFA Men’s World Cup as a strategy for urban development. This was also the case with the World Cup, hosted in eleven Russian cities and designed to modernize Russia’s peripheral host cities. While the idea of developing cities through mega-events is common, the Russian experience displays much that is new. This paper examines urban development in the World Cup as an example of mobile policy, exploring how this mega-event was imported from abroad and how this policy mutated as it was implemented on the ground in Russia. The specificities of the Russian experience were due in large part to the ways in which the World Cup organizing committee was created and operated as an extension of the central government in Moscow. What appeared at first to be a way for Russian peripheral host cities to differentiate themselves through urban development in a form of inter-urban competition, turned out to be a reestablishment of the central state in regional spatial planning. In this way, even as certain material conditions in the host cities were improved, the World Cup represented not an expression of regional democracy, nor even a strategy for inter-urban differentiation, but rather one more instance of development dictated from the center and from afar.

Author(s):  
Alexander Dolganov ◽  
Elena Trubina

This paper employs the multi-scalar approach towards mega-events (Flint, 2003; Peck, Theodore, and Brenner, 2009; Barret, 2013; and Trubina, 2019) to examine the results of fieldwork conducted in Ekaterinburg in the spring and summer of 2018, namely before, during, and after the 2018 World Cup. The multi-scalar approach allows the consideration of how the supra-local and supranational processes crystallize in complex urban systems, and their connections with other systems. The article addresses the question of the dynamics of the global, the national, and the local scales in the implementation and perception of the mega-event. Since the existing studies of the World Cup in Russia tend, as a rule, to focus on isolated topics and the national scale of the event’s preparation, the article expands the focus of existing research. It demonstrates “the game of scales” in the citizens’ perceptions of the World Cup. They, on the one hand, consider this mega-event as a part of the national strategy of development, including seeking investment, while on the other, they are aware that it is the transnational players (FIFA) and the federal and regional governments that predominantly benefit from the event. The authors argue that the respondents’ judgements, on the one hand, are strongly informed by nationalist and geopolitical propaganda, while on the other hand, stem from the respondents’ understanding of the global influences and the significance of economic logic, including the importance of the branding of the nations and cities. The citizens see both the political strategy devised to “force to show respect” and the economic driver of the national and urban growth in the mega-events. They, at the same time, are aware that it is the citizens who will be paying for the sporting festival with their taxes. The mega-events are ambiguous undertakings: while potentially open and bringing joy to everyone, they facilitate a social and geographic inequality.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Lauermann

This article reviews recent scholarship on the urban politics of mega-events. Mega-events have long been promoted as drivers of urban development, based on their potential to generate beneficial legacies for host cities. Yet the mega-event industry is increasingly struggling to find cities willing to host. Political arguments that promote mega-events to host cities include narratives about mega-event legacy—the potential for events to generate long-term benefits—and mega-event leveraging—the idea that cities can strategically link event planning to other policy agendas. In contrast, the apparent decline in interest among potential host cities stems from two political shifts: skepticism toward the promises made by boosters, and the emergence of new kinds of protest movements. The article analyzes an example of largely successful opposition to mega-events, and evaluates parallels between the politics of mega-events and those of other urban megaprojects.


Author(s):  
Maurice Roche

This chapter explores the ‘material embedding’ of mega-event spectacles in the legacies they leave in host cities which can be of both a negative and positive kind, and consist of the creation of new place and space legacies. These themes are illustrated with reference to the modern Olympics, and particularly in the contemporary period. The chapter’s main focus is on Olympic mega-events as urban ‘place-makers’. That is they often involve new constructions, on the one hand of sports and related event facilities complexes, and on the other hand of community-related developments in housing and places of employment. Since the turn of the millennium they are now effectively required by the IOC bidding system to leave such legacies. The chapter explore such legacies in some detail in the influential case of the Sydney 2000 Olympic project which, in some respects, was understood to represent a ‘model’ for subsequent Olympic cities. The case of the Sydney Olympics is seen to show how mega-events can simultaneously be urban ‘space-makers’ as well as ‘place-makers’. Since Sydney mega-events have often been notably associated with strategically important values and policies of both ‘greening’ and humanising modern urbanisation through the provision of open and green spaces in urban centres.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongkui Li ◽  
Yujie Lu ◽  
Liang Ma ◽  
Young Hoon Kwak

A mega-event is an open socioeconomic system characterized by massive budget demands and multiple types of subprojects and their complex interrelationships. Although a mega-event is an opportunity for a country to show its international reputation, management capacity, and societal strength, it demands a long preparation time; an enormous amount of investment; and massive resource mobilization, with far-reaching effects on both the economic and social development of a country. Mega-event projects (MEPs) face remarkable challenges in terms of overrun costs, delayed schedules, and political issues, indicating that the research on such mega-events is still insufficient and that there is a lack of effective theories to support the management and governance of MEPs. Existing studies have also ignored the dynamic evolution and adaptation of governance in a changing environment, particularly in relation to the success of MEPs. To fill this research gap, this study aims to examine the dynamic governance of MEPs on the basis of a new theory—evolutionary governance theory (EGT)—which combines institutional economics, systems theory, and project governance. The study was conducted in three main steps: (1) studying the case of the evolutionary governance of the World Expo 2010 in China during its life cycle stage, including planning, construction, operation, and post-event development; (2) discussing the impact of the hierarchical and cross-functional governance structure of the Expo; and (3) summarizing the theories and best practices of dynamic governance mechanisms for MEPs. The result of the study can deepen understanding of the multi-level governance of mega-events during the life cycle process and can also support the evolution of governance transition over the different stages.


2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Curi ◽  
Jorge Knijnik ◽  
Gilmar Mascarenhas

Sport mega-events were very important for Brazil in 2007. The 15th Pan American Games took place in Rio de Janeiro. It was the largest international tournament held in Brazil since the 1950 World Cup and the 1963 Pan American Games. The latter were held in São Paulo. In 2007, 5000 athletes and 60,000 tourists were expected from the 42 participating countries. Despite being a developing country, Brazil does have a sizable middle class, but in Rio de Janeiro there are also lots of favelas (slums), where millions of poor people live. Despite vast differences in wealth, power and social status, these socially and culturally distinct groups nonetheless utilize common public spaces. We see this social confrontation as a major question for the analyses of sport mega-events and we would like to demonstrate its consequences on a local level . This social tension was such that the Organizing Committee actually constructed a ‘big wall’ around the stadiums which turned them into islands of excellence to be shown on television, thus hiding the unsightly parts of the city, that is, poor neighborhoods and favelas. This wall could be seen as the BRIC-way of organizing mega-events.


Author(s):  
SIV ELLEN KRAFT

Based on local newspaper coverage of a Mandela solidarity concert in Tromsø in June 2005, the article discusses the importance of mega events in relation to place construction, with particular emphasis on ritual aspects. Mega events are shaped by a global discourse, which emphasizes the uniqueness of place and locality. Through the staging of mega events, people are provided with opportunities for thinking about themselves adn their locality, for experienceing the pictures and messages presented, and for representing them to the world. Such opportunities are not limited to mega places and centres of the world order. This was the case of a mega event in a small place, and a place moreover, that has traditionally been designated the primitive backyard of the Norwegian periphery. The concert stories drew upon such established images, but revised them as indicative of uniqueness and authenticity. Constructed in contrast to world centres in general and 'Norwegian-ness' in particular, the concert stories at the same time spoke to the emergent features of a global civil religion. Placed under the midnight sun in northern Norway, Mandela served both as a high priest of this project, and as the bridge between local uniqueness and 'good' globalization.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lingyue LI

This paper contributes to an in-depth understanding of how the mega-event contributes glurbanization of entrepreneurial city through a case study of Expo 2010 in Shanghai. It argues that spatial-related transformation is central to mega-event approach to glurbanization yet the soft power building is uncertain. It implies that the domestic impacts of mega-events are likely to be more profound than their global influences. This corresponds to the capitalist transformation from Fordist-Keynesianism to neoliberalism, in which mega-events such as Olympic Games and World Exposition have increasingly been incorporated into urban development plan to boost urban agenda. Although the profile of world fairs is reduced and does not have the international impacts that they used to have, Shanghai Expo 2010, the first Expo ever held in a developing country, is pinned hope on as the “Turn to Save the World Expo” and is unusually ambitious to bring opportunities in urban transformation. With a well-developed framework of glurbanization entailed by entrepreneurial city, this research enriches glurbanization theory by a thorough examination of Shanghai Expo. It finds that Expo-led landscape reconfiguration, spatial restructuring, and new sources provision effectively transformed Shanghai, propelling glurbanization in diminutive spatial scale. Yet, it remains powerless to impress the world as the voice of domestic propaganda is limited in the Western mainstream media. In all, the Expo case well exemplifies the power of mega-event approach to advancing local agenda, especially in spatial transformation per se, as well as its constraints in (re)shaping a global discourse. 


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 372-390
Author(s):  
Amanda Pruski Yamim ◽  
Marília Bonzanini Bossle ◽  
Sabrina Da Rosa Pojo ◽  
Carlos Alberto Vargas Rossi

Consumer relations that permeate a sportive mega-event are large and should be considered from the consumption of the games, as well as any modification of contextual consumption directly or indirectly caused. In a large extent, it is known that the World Cup impacts international, national and local consumption, even reaching the public not adept to soccer. However, in recent years can be observed in the country a counter consumption chain. Considering that, this study aims to understand the central objectives related to resistance movements to the 2014 World Cup. To achieve the proposed objectives, this research is conducted with a qualitative approach through in-depth interviews and secondary data analysis. The importance of this study is related to the context in Brazil lived in 2014 and mainly in the host cities. We conclude that the resistance is towards power relations existing in the market and not to the World Cup event, which is no longer associated with the symbolic aspect of soccer and is seen as a precondition and opportunity for greater dialogue among consumer, company and government.


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