ABD RABBO RODRIGUEZ NADIA SHERIF

CITIES’ COMPETITION TO HOST INTERNATIONAL EVENTS THAT BRING ECONOMIC BENEFITS.

One of the major concerns of the UN- Habitat Committee are the urban environment issues which
are related to poverty, environmental degradation and unsustainable development, problems that
can only be defeated through the simultaneously efforts of a coequal partnership between the
citizens, private sector and governments. In line with that aim the UN- Habitat has developed a
World Urban Campaign, which promote dialogue, sharing, and learning about improving our urban
future1.

Despite the different challenges that urban managers face around the world, it is an irrefutable fact
that the urban policies applied by each government have a direct impact on the economy and the
urban quality of life in every city. One of the biggest deals that most of the cities face towards this
matter, is the finding of critical resources such as talents, funds and public support to implement
the necessary changes in management, policies and objectives to enhance a sustainable urban
development.2

In this context some modern cities launch innovative initiatives that bring them tangible benefits. A
Mega- Event is one of such projects, since they contribute to the urban development through the
provision of some of the necessary resources for the implementation of beneficial changes such as
new infrastructure, transportation improvement, or even the rebuilding of a city neighbour. There
for, the successful hosting of a Mega- event captures and increases public value enabling the city to
rely on talents, international efforts and investments.

A Mega-event works as a trigger for the upgrading of urban infrastructure as they often require the
transformation of urban space (whether trough landmark structures’ erection, renewal of existing
urban space or the new infrastructure development)3. In this way, the short and long- term impacts
on urban transformation can be considerable, and it is vital that the hosting cities implement the
proper strategies and policies to achieve a worthwhile long-term legacies not only concerned to
urban matters, but also to an economic growth produced by the productive investments made upon
the city, leading to a capital internationalization due to the marketing spends in media exposure
through corporate sponsorships, media audiences and the commodification of entertainment.

The UN defines a Mega- event as a “large-scale, internationally sponsored, public entrepreneurship

activity engaging a long-term multisector organization within the host city and nation with the
double goal of supporting overall local and regional development and advancing universal values
and principle to meet global challenges”.4 From this definition we can identify and infer the main
characteristics and implications of these events:

 They promote the reposition of the host city allowing the introduction of novel business
opportunities involving international multi-stakeholders, besides the default international
investment injection designed to the event itself, concentrated in a short period of time.

1
http://unhabitat.org/urban-initiatives/world-urban-campaign/
2
http://www.mi.camcom.it/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=a9ac0fca-975b-41a6-aab5-
36bb9b4e0610&groupId=10157
3
http://people.ucalgary.ca/~hiller/pdfs/Olympic_Bid.pdf
4
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/susdevtopics/sdt_pdfs/shanghaimanual/Chapter%2010%20-
%20Mega%20events.pdf
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 Mega-events contribute to fulfil the hosting city urban improvement challenges, as they
expand the quality and quantity of public goods as constituting a platform to design
innovative infrastructural operations.
 There is a long-term planning process behind each Mega-event that encompasses from the
bidding process made by the international bodies that choose the deserving hosting city, to
the resources management and the implementation of a logistics strategy that contemplate
the impacts that may be generated and capability of the city to adjust them.

Despite the multiple advantages the Mega- events may cause in a city, it is crucial for each city
manager to review the areas that may suffer the impact of the events, in order to avoid causing a
contraproductive result. Even though the urban life is affected by different ways according to the
type of event, its size, duration, budget, public participation, etc. there are some key benchmarks
to considerate:

 Economic development: The cities are the strongest players in the world’s economic engines. In
today’s world the transition to a sustainable economic development is one of the most
important challenges for each city, and Mega-events accelerates its achievement, in fact, the
National Bureau of Economic Research reported that a mega-event like the Olympics or the FIFA
World Cup boots trade by a 30%.5
 Infrastructure and service improvement: These macro events must be held in a city that
guarantee the access to public services for all its attendants; this involves transportation
facilities, security increase, lodging supply, etc.
 Environmental practices and education for sustainable development: Environmental protection
and education towards the matter, contribute to an economic viability based on sustainable
development. Making site on the infrastructure planning for the implementation of greener
requirements is one of the biggest steps for urban managers to make environmental practises
part of the urban concepts of the city.
 Internationalization opportunities: Nowadays, urban marketing and city branding are primal for
a tourism promotion, foreign investments attraction and the creation of an image of a stable,
trustful and steady state.
 Red focuses: It is important that through the development of the event, the resources
management be thoroughly review in order to avoid dealing with possible issues such as the
higher taxes to pay the cost, the post event functionality of the infrastructure built, or even the
potential of negative publicity if anything goes wrong.6

Building on all the aspects that must be considered to gather all the requirements to host an event,
it is a significant and meticulous task to take the decision to bid. Advanced planning on the
contribution or impacts the event could cause in the city is indispensable to determine whether it
has the entrepreneurial capacity and stability to reconcile intern and international support. In this
line, there needs to be a fluent coworking organization between the organizing committee of the

5
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/susdevtopics/sdt_pdfs/shanghaimanual/Chapter%2010%20-
%20Mega%20events.pdf
6
http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/4909/economics/advantages-of-hosting-a-major-event/
ABD RABBO RODRIGUEZ NADIA SHERIF

event and the national government entities to stablish the commitments, arrangements and urban
organizational strategies needed to perform the Mega-event.

In the case of Olympics and other sporting events, there is a much higher degree of standardization
based on the technical requirements for each sport venue. The Organizing Committee is
recommended to organize a Main Operations Centre, which provides a centralized system to
manage the Games effectively in terms of information, coordination, reporting and decision-
making. The Main Operations Centre should be comprised of the Organizing Committee executives,
the representatives of the city and the Government involved in the events operations.7

The aspiring host cities for the Olympics most stick with the specific technical requirements of the
main stakeholders, making it necessary to better balance the costs and benefits associated with the
urban and infrastructural refurbishment for the games. Despite the investment in Olympic
infrastructure is often viewed as means to leveraging the games for broader economic growth and
urban redevelopment8, it also implies a high financial and political risk. There for, the design of a
strategical rethinking of the size and composition of the infrastructure would help reducing its cost
and complexity.

This year, Rio plans to use 35 competition venues, of which 7 are intended to be temporary, and 18
already exist. Although many were built for previous mega-sporting events over the past decade,
including the Pan Am Games in 2007 and FIFA World Cup in 2014,9 the organizers fret over bloated
budgets, unsold tickets, mass transit pitfalls, and series of incidents that are casting doubt on the
viability of holding the Olympic Games this year. The situation Brazil is facing is alarming. They are
not only suffering a recession marked by unemployment, rising inflation and shrinking GDP, there’s
a political crisis that obstacles the economy’s revival. Although Carlos Nuzman, president of Rio’s
organizing committee says “everything is almost ready” more than half of the 4.5 million domestic
tickets are still unsold, and this fact is worrying not only because the reflection of the low economic
capacity of Brazilian residents, it is worrying because ticket sales represent the 17% of predicted
budget and furthermore, they are sluggish a vital subway extension to the Olympic Park may not be
completed without hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding from Brasília, which is distracted
by a major corruption scandal and impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff.10

Besides the economic and political crisis, there are health implications that are affecting people:
Epidemics. While serious mosquito-borne diseases like Zica and Chinconcuya are rapidly spreading
having affected to more than 1.5 million people, the country is expecting to welcome hundreds of
thousands of visitors.

Yet this background of uncertainty has not been solved, on the contrary it has led to the inattention
to other aspects equally important:

7
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/susdevtopics/sdt_pdfs/shanghaimanual/Chapter%2010%20-
%20Mega%20events.pdf
8
https://lsecities.net/media/objects/articles/rethinking-olympic-infrastructure/en-gb/
9
http://www.wsj.com/articles/rio-2016-faces-a-carnival-of-unusual-problems-1452558081
10
http://www.wsj.com/articles/rio-2016-faces-a-carnival-of-unusual-problems-1452558081
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 Local authorities haven’t yet finalized a contract to provide backup electricity for the
Olympic event sites in a city that regularly experiences outages.11

 One of the biggest pledges made in support of the Games was to clean up Guanabara Bay,
where the sailing competition will be held. Like most of the waters around Rio, it’s polluted
with garbage and human waste. Plans for sewage treatment never materialized.

 Accommodation services are not ready yet. A crude example can be found in the fact that
more than 10,000 of the athletes staying in the Olympic City will have no television sets in
their rooms.

“Right now, sustainability is the key element in the Olympic movement,” says Emilio Fernandez,
“The subject of organizing less expensive Games, more respectful of the environment and definitely
more sustainable, will become more consistent in the next few years because that’s enshrined in
the spirit of the times”.12

The UN Habitat Committee in accordance with its World Urban Campaign in promotion of a
sustainable urban development signed in 2014 an agreement with Brazil regarding the mobility,
urban transport, housing, environment, poverty, social inequality and metropolitan governance that
compose the urban management of the city. In 2015 the committee signed another agreement to
promote actions and projects for the benefit of urban and metropolitan governance.

In this UN Habitat Conference the debate is encourage to determine the benefits that Mega-events
bring to the hosting cities, but also the implications that they demand on each city, focusing and
taking as a guide line the case of the Olympic Games that are going to take place in Brazil this year.

12
http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/01/06/inenglish/1452089368_727508.html