scholarly journals A Mega-event Approach to Glurbanization: Insights from Expo 2010, Shanghai

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lingyue LI
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Spatial Transformation ◽  
Mega Events ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Entrepreneurial City ◽  
The World ◽  
World Expo ◽  
Global Discourse ◽  
Mega Event ◽  
World Exposition

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. 

Evolutionary Governance for Mega-Event Projects (Meps): A Case Study of the World Expo 2010 in China

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongkui Li ◽  
Yujie Lu ◽  
Liang Ma ◽  
Young Hoon Kwak
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Governance Structure ◽  
Life Cycle Stage ◽  
Reputation Management ◽  
Mega Events ◽  
The World ◽  
World Expo ◽  
Mega Event ◽  
The Impact

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.

scholarly journals Place Making, Mega Events and Ritual Effervescence: A Case Study of the Nelson Mandela Concert in Tromsø, 11th June 2005

2006 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
SIV ELLEN KRAFT
Keyword(s):  
World Order ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Mega Events ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
Local Newspaper ◽  
Emergent Features ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Discourse ◽  
Mega Event

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.

Indonesia's Position in Asia: Increasing Soft Power and Connectivity through the 2018 Asian Games

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Friederike Trotier
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Political Capital ◽  
Global Flow ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Domestic Affairs ◽  
Mega Event ◽  
Regional Character

Abstract Hosting a sports mega-event strengthens connectivity with the world and provides opportunities to establish or increase networks and to build soft power. These events operate as hubs for the global flow of capital, people, knowledge and technology, and they perform important rituals and symbolic functions. In particular, they become coveted opportunities to enrich the soft power portfolio of governments or individual leaders. Despite its regional character, the Asian Games have developed into such a mega-event. In 2018 – only for the second time in the history of the Asian Games – Indonesia staged the event in Jakarta and Palembang. This paper scrutinises the ways in which Indonesia used or failed to use the Asian Games as a platform to increase the country's soft power and reputation and to strengthen intra-Asian connectivity. Three aspects serve as examples to assess Indonesia's soft power initiatives: (1) the “spirit of 1962”, (2) the host country's emergence on the Asian stage and (3) Indonesia's cooperation with other countries and intra-Asia connections in the context of the sports event. Examining the prominence of domestic politics reveals shortcomings and untapped potential. The analysis shows that the inward-looking foreign policy approach of the Jokowi administration limited the initiatives to increase Indonesian soft power and to establish and address Asian themes and debates; consequently, this approach downgraded the sports event to a tool to generate political capital for domestic affairs.

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

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 23-41
Author(s):  
Свен Дэниель Вольфе
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Spatial Planning ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Central State ◽  
World Cup ◽  
Mega Events ◽  
Developing Cities ◽  
The World ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Mega Event

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.

scholarly journals Recurring Dreams: Mega Events and Traces of Past Futures

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Gardner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Olympic Games ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Mega Events ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come ◽  
Mega Event ◽  
Modern Era

Investigating several modern ‘mega events’, including World’s Fairs and Olympic Games, this paper discusses the complex relationship such events and their sites have often had with ‘the future’. Such events are frequently associated with demonstrating progress towards future ‘utopias’ (for example ‘The World of Tomorrow’ theme of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York) or leaving a tangible positive social and economic ‘legacy’. However, other uses of mega event sites have also frequently manifested darker, more anxious ideas about that which is yet to come. In this paper I discuss three forms in which mega events’ sites relate to the idea of the future: before, during, and after they take place. In discussing these relationships, I demonstrate how traces of ‘past futures’, when investigated archaeologically, provide a diverse means by which to understand how societies have related to the idea of the future through the modern era.

scholarly journals The Global, the National, and the Local in the Citizens’ Perceptions of the 2018 World Cup

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 227-255
Author(s):  
Alexander Dolganov ◽  
Elena Trubina
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
National Scale ◽  
World Cup ◽  
Strategy Of Development ◽  
Mega Events ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Mega Event

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.

Mega-events, globalisation and urban legacy: events in China in the early twenty-first century

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice Roche
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Western World ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
The West ◽  
Urban Green Spaces ◽  
Mega Events ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
Mega Event

The contemporary period of globalisation involves various economic and other ‘global shifts’ from Western to non-Western societies. This chapter explores the idea that these deeper social changes are reflected in the world of mega-events, notably in the ‘global shift’ in mega-event locations away from the West to increasingly include non-Western world regions. The chapter views contemporary mega-events as ‘multi-theme legacy park’ projects for their host cities. Their shift to new non-Western contexts is illustrated by reviewing mega-events in contemporary China, particularly the cases of the Beijing 2008 Olympics, the Guangzhou 2010 Asian Game and the Shanghai 2010 Expo 2010. The chapter shows that, in spite of many differences, at least one notable commonality between the Sydney 200O Olympic model and event legacies in Beijing and Shanghai in particular is the construction of major new urban green spaces. These urban park-building and park-renewing projects have typically aimed to embody, on a permanent basis, environmental and recreational (rather than sporting) values and vision of urbanism. In addition these mega-event projects all aimed, in comparable ways (even if to greater or lesser extents), to use these new urban parks as hubs and catalysts from which other (social and economic) mega-event legacy influences might also be developed.

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