Mega sporting events have become an urbanization trend that affects the urban equilibrium and the sustainability of their economies, especially considering their impacts and complexity in organization and delivery. By reviewing the literature on the features of such events and, drawing particular examples from the recent Olympic Games in Athens 20014, we can identify the nature and extent of their impacts on the host country and its community. The former can range from political, social, economical, physical and cultural and can be negative as well as positive. Even though the prospect of economic growth is the driving force behind bids for hosting the Olympic Games or other Mega sporting events, the legacies that follow their hosting are difficult to quantify, prone to political interpretation and multifaceted.

In recent years, the Olympic Games have developed into one of the most significant mega-international sporting events. The increasing number of cities bidding to host the Olympics and the increasing funds invested in Olympic bids indicate that local leaders perceive the securing of such an event as an opportunity to improve economic and social aspects of a city or region through the accumulated investment triggered by staging the Games. As a result, in the course of the past two decades there has been increased interest on the impact of the Olympics on the socio-economic and political life of the host city, region and country. The Olympic Games are therefore examined in relation to other mega-sporting events, such as the football World Cup and world championships but also in relation to commercial and cultural events, such as Expos and festivals, since it has been claimed that regardless of their character, events such as the aforementioned generate similar dynamics for the host cities or regions.

Mega events are defined as events of spatial, temporal and thematic concentration of city policy with regards to one marketing project and can be cultural (Expo, Shanghai 2010), political (World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg 2002) or sporting (Olympic Games, Athens 2004). They are large-scale competitions, which have a great appeal, bring a broad interest and ensure international significance to the hosting cities and countries. The motivations of hosting such events, beyond the significant economic investments, are image- building driven. Most cities use these events as an instrument of image-building, in the context of competition among them, in order to position themselves as global cities, or even more as global economies. In such a way, they transport an image of an “event-city” (Bittner, 2001) and in some cases, such as in the case of cities in the Global South, they intend to symbolize their way out of the underdeveloped category (FIFA World Cup, Brazil 2014), regardless of the numerous threats that come along with hosting such events. Other motivations that are usually considered when hosting mega events are the opportunities of legitimizing several urban policies. Local politics concentrate on the development of short-term projects, which displays a development dynamic and delivery competency to citizens. In that manner, they seek to legitimize in the long run the intended planning politics.

However, the threats of hosting mega events, such as the Olympic Games, are several and multifaceted and in most cases they disturb the socioeconomic sustainability not only in a local scale, but also in a global one. In most cases, organizing such events triggers a downward spiral, as in general costs exceed benefits; “providing festivals when people need bread is a dubious use of public resources” (Andranovich et al 2001). The economic growth and investments as well as new job opportunities, are to a great extend temporary. Moreover, mega events are the cause of many evictions and relocations (e.g. Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996, Athens 2004, London 2012), in order to show a slum free image to the world. Thus, mega events reinforce numerous socioeconomic inequalities, such as fragmentation, exclusion of specific communities, informalities and precarious housing. In addition to this, investing in politics of big events, leads to selective implementation of short-term urban projects that lack appropriate speculation and coordination. As a result, the new host city developments and infrastructures are related to the visitor class, due to time pressure which results in prioritization of projects for image-building rather than for citizens. All in all, the phenomenon of “Disneyfication of cities” (Roost, 2000) is vastly witnessed, as the urban policies are being “festivalized”; public space is eliminated due to the fact that urban design is being subject to consumption and leisure.

The Olympic Games in Athens in 2004, was not a different case. From the late 1990s until 2010, Athens was completely transformed from an economic, as well as an urban point of view. “Olympic Athens” was the result of the Olympic projects along with other massive infrastructural projects that took place in the same period. The major projects that were realized during those years; the new Venizelos Athens International Airport by Hochtief Construction Company, the new 65 km Attiki Odos toll highway, the new Metrolines and a new Tram line, the new archaeological park which joined the dispersed major archaeological sites of Attica, various sports venues along with the Olumpic Park landmark by Santiago Calatrava, transformed Athens into a modern, diffused metrolopitan area. Apart from the sports venues, other new large scale objects of consumption and culture appeared in the periphery of the Olympic infrastructures- several shopping malls, the new Benaki Museum and the new Acropolis Museum by Bernard Tschumi. The high employment rates that followed the former construction projects, together with the banners, urban art installations and happenings heralding the unique event generated an atmosphere of optimism in which citizens intermingled in a new spirit of communality. This served to cover the problems and tensions arising from an increasing and uncontrolled influx of immigrants, which made the Athenian identity more obscure than ever before.

Olympic Athens marked the beginning of a new diffused urban landscape in Athens and the wider Attica region. Large scale interventions and ruptures in the form of a new dense network infrastructure were superimposed on the homogeneous, ever-expanding layer of the Athenian polykatoikias. This was an initial step towards an infrastructural city, one based on networks and not on architecture and urban design. The new mobility provided by the various networks and the easy credit offered by the banks that operated within a growing and rather uncontrolled economy, quickly led to the development of a consumer culture. In the years following the Olympic Games of 2004, new, ever-larger places of consumption sprang up on large plots of relatively cheap land along or near the networks on the edge of the city, or along the city-center axes linking Athens to the sea, replacing the small to medium scale neighborhood retail and leisure businesses. During the post-Olympic years, the state’s interest in the public spaces inherited from the Games quickly faded. The vast Olympic Park, the Hellenikon site and the Faliron Waterfront zone, are particularly inaccessible and abandoned; city center public spaces shared the same fate. The neglect was compounded by the rapid and uncontrolled influx of illegal immigrants, which smuggled across Greece’s extensive coastline, a border practically impossible to police. The immigrant population landed straight onto the city’s squares and streets, making these spaces increasingly dirty and rough, places of peddling, homelessness, drug-dealing and prostitution. Thus, public space was eliminated and extensively interiorized in the private retail buildings that were dispersed in the Attica region.

The new consumerist culture which was established by the easy bank loans during that period, seemed untouched by the ominous signs regarding the future of the global economy sent by the collapse of the Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2008. A year later, however, the revealing of the Greek debt crisis signaled the burst of the Greek economy bubble and led to the country’s affiliation to the EU-IMF rescue mechanism. The rapid deterioration of all financial data, especially the dramatic rise of unemployment and the shrinking of the population’s consumption capacity, as well as the state’s continuing inability to control the unceasing  immigration influx, accelerated the decline of city center public space and led to a sharp increase of crime and petty crime , while the repeated demonstrations against the applied austerity measures led to recurring clashes with the police  and the severe destruction of buildings and public spaces. In this new landscape of economic recession, the new city, a hybrid of the modernist Athens and the post-Olympic heterogeneous infrastructural city based on  the recent mobility networks, the phenomena of   fragmentation, spatial segregation and socioeconomic inequalities among the Athenian citizens, extend beyond all imagination, especially compared to the expectations that were cultivated during the Olympic Games period.

Every time, as architects, we focus our attention on things around us, on the complexity of precesses that build our analysis system, we refer to elements and datas collected by experts who elaborated them. These data are useful because they enrich our projects and let us modify and play with the evolutional sequences of events and relations of the environment.

Today, most of the datas that we need, are available on line; internet has totally disrupted the analytic process which is the base of every design intervention, at small or urban scale. Design’s value exists thanks to  the choice that we know, more they are coherent and agree with different factors (i.e. economic, environmental, relational…), more the project will positively influence the condition of the existing site.

Gathering that I asked myself: if we base a really important part of our design process studying datas that we found on the net in order to use them to design more sustainable and advanced project, which is the net’s architecture? Which are the ways that let us connect with the world? Are they sustainable or not?

Our necessity to share information induced the growth of a big infrastructure made by submarine cables that wrap the whole planet creating a great network

This physical, tangible network spreads throughout the globe which stores memories, words, images and actions already represents two percent of the world’s electricity use. Therefore the way that allow us to improve our knowledge and made better projects actually has a considerable impact on the environment, both energy and environmental because of its setting in submarine’s habitat.

Our necessity to research and share datas give birth to a proper industry supported by the need to own –so buy- devices to receive, develop and share datas. But this is not just an industry, is a fundamental transition in the history of knowledge. Over the last decade, scientific and academic institutions, government departments, and organisations that are forging new languages for communication have had a growing sense that behind the data explosion lie new ways of solving problems and formulating questions that will lead us to radically rethink how science is practiced, how value is generated in the economy, and how we organise ourselves politically and particularly as a society

Two of the most famous networks that changes our way of sharing and collecting datas are Google e Facebook.

Assumed that, according to the energetic consumption, network infrastructure is “not-sustainable”, how did the architecture support this revolutionary changing at urban scale? Were the solution as much innovatory? Did they respect the environment or they were designed merely as datas’s machines containers?

Something that we can assume is that data centers are typically shrouded in secrecy because they are the brains behind tech companies.

One of the first solution for data-centers were to put the shipping containers welded together atop a large flat barge.

Also if not declared this first non-building solution was adopted by Google which built in America his prototype floating data centers using the ocean’s water to regulate the intense heat put out by the mass of servers.

These floating platforms are described as an environmentally-friendly sea-powered telecommunications and storage system whose look like the vessel in which are installed high-tech equipment.

Google’s patent describes ‘a system includes a floating platform-mounted computer data center comprising a plurality of computing units, a sea-based electrical generator in electrical connection with the plurality of computing units, and one or more sea-water cooling units for providing cooling to the plurality of computing units.’

This solution has the only purpose to provide the access to abundant water that helps cool the large number of servers stocked together.

But this is only one typology. Google own different data-canters: Google’s data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa; Oregon data center; Douglas County, Georgia; Google’s data center in Finland.

Google’s “physical internet” buildings are efficient, take advantage of renewable energy, and are as environmentally friendly as possible.

But what about the other industry of communication? Facebook has recently built its new center which is one of the most energy-efficient data centers ever.

Facebook’s Prineville Data Center has a simple and minimalist design, similar in spirit to the social networking giant’swebsite. The center of one of the most important comunication’s platform  is expected to be close to a really important city but actually has no relation with any city landscape: the only relation is with his surroundings. The building, which exterior is clad in nearly 50,000 square feet of Metal Sales T2630 wall panels that perfectly complement its neutral-colored concrete is totally integrated with Prineville’s enviroment.

According to the energy requirements the façade of the building is made by panels selected for their reliability and sustainability, they’re joint together in order to build a clean and functional façade for the energy-efficient structure housing tens of thousands of Facebook’s servers, containing infotmation.

Aluminium panels create a screen wall that provides controlled access to the yard; the panels have a custom perforated pattern to facilitate ventilation for the diesel-fueled generators. Given the specific requirements for the LEED Gold structure, quality materials were needed to meet performance and functionality expectations.

“This enterprise data center in central Oregon is designed around a 164,000 square foot computer equipment room topped with an innovative 100,000 square foot mechanical equipment penthouse. A 23,000 square foot office area organized around an interior courtyard and parking court adjoins the computer equipment room. This project was recognized by ENR as 2011’s “Best of the Best” and Editor’s Choice.“

According to this analysis it’s interesting to understand that, as this two examples explain us, the core of the industries of comunication, places fundamental for the life-state of the whole system, are the examples of the most efficient contemporary buildings.

These companies are focused on building the most efficient and functional structure, construct to be only an isolated container. These giant of the information prefer to set their most important buildings far from any context different from nature in order to strictly preserve their contents.

The deal for the future will be to integrate these system together, to improve the construction of efficient and self sufficient buildings ,with a really important role in our society and in our economy, to add them value to our cities.

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. While this definition relates to conventional economics and social objectives of development, the second part of the definition talks about the long term view including consideration of environmental issues. It has become common to isolate four factors that determine sustainable development : Natural capital, Physical or produced capital, Human capital and Social capital. Sustainability of future generations to meet their needs, is ensured when the total stock of these assets remains constant or is increased in the production process. Development theory has commonly acknowledged that economic and social developments are interrelated. Economic growth is desirable because it makes poverty alleviation easier.

Social development , is also means to increase economic growth. Extension of basic education , better health care, more effective land reforms and greater access to provisions of social security would enable the marginalised sections of society to lead a less restricted life. The expansion of the social opportunity calls for public action from the state and the local governments. But lack of economic growth and fiscal crisis often affect the political will of governments to invest in social services such as health and education. NGO’s and community organizations have limited resources and reach for replacing crucial state services. What is needed for sustainable economic development is both an active state enhancing social oppurtunity and a strong economic base . Social sustainability includes the strengthening of community- based collective action for achieving the goal of sustainable development.

Environmental sustainability includes the upkeep or improvement of essential ecological processes, biological diversity and the natural resource base. Environmental sustainability is important for for developments because we humans are, through our bodies, part of nature, thus the environment is important for our survival, health and social life. Human life relies on natural capital for food production, drinking water, energy. Air and water quality have significant impact on human health. In developing countries the relation between health and environment are particularly strong because growing agro-industrial pollution and risks added to the environmental health problems roots in underdevelopment.

The Indian state of Kerala, with a population of 29 million (larger than Canada’ s), has become an enigma to analysts of international development, social progress and peaceful social change in the Third World. In less than 30 years, Kerala has made a transition from a society with high infant mortality rates, high fertility and population growth rates, and a high crude death rate to one with a low infant mortality rate, very low population growth, and a low crude death rate. While growth-based and planned development programmes did not make a dent in reducing poverty, population growth, inequalities in income and resource distribution, and ecological destruction in the Third World, Kerala has stood out in demonstrating through democratic means that radical improvements in the quality of life of ordinary citizens are possible without high economic growth and without consuming large quantities of energy and other natural resource Kerala is far more progressive than many other Indian states for a variety of reasons. It has the highest human development index, has had large economic growth and increasing GDP, and has recently decentralized its government. In 1992 Kerala added the 73rd and 74th amendment to their constitution to decentralize government by creating a third, local form of government called Panchayats. Creating local governments throughout the state of Kerala has made development processes more sustainable by allowing local residents to participate in those processes. Forty percent of the states’ budget is now allocated to these local governments! This increased revenue has furthered sustainable efforts by creating jobs, uplifting women, and including citizens in community development.

Experts look to several factors to explain Kerala’s successes.  One is the state’s natural and human resource distribution.  The fact that its population density is among the highest in the world has, in some ways, worked to Kerala’s advantage.  The proximity of people has made it easier to provide quality health care and education.  It has also helped to prevent an urban-rural economic gap from developing.

Water, an important natural resource, has not been a problem for Kerala; the state has traditionally had sufficient rainfall.  However, increasing deforestation has resulted in decreasing precipitation; if this trend continues, water may cease to be abundant.  Clearly, this would have a major impact on a largely agrarian society.  Kerala is dependent on its coconut groves, rice fields, and garden produce for food.  Other agricultural products, from spices and teak wood to tea and rubber, are important cash crops.

Even more important than natural resources, however, is Kerala’s history as a place with strong activist leaders and organizations and public agitation for equality.  The state has never experienced communist or socialist revolution, but has instead worked through a strong democratic system.  Regardless of who is in office, peasant and worker movements have organized and won many radical reforms.

One very important reform has been Kerala’s land policy.  In 1969, tenancy on cultivated land and on house compounds was abolished.  The landed classes thereby lost a great deal of power.  Before the reforms were passed, tenants were often forced to pay exorbitant rents, sometimes upwards of 75% of their incomes, under the threat of losing what little income was left them from their cultivation of the land. The reforms bought land from large landowners (at below market-value) and distributed it to some 1.5 million families.  Not only did this eliminate the eviction threat and allow additional produce to former tenants, but it also pushed many former landlords into useful professions such as teaching, government administration, and medium-sized farming, whereas before, they had lived off rents.

Kerala has instituted a number of striking reforms with widespread benefits in other areas as well.  The state has had a number of pension, unemployment, and welfare programs since the early 1980s.  High spending on health services—from proper sanitation to hospital maintenance to construction of housing for the poor—has dramatically decreased levels of infant mortality, malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases are still prevalent in much of India.  The state subsidizes rice and other necessities for the poor and provides free lunches for all children in schools and nurseries. None of these reforms were easy to win; all of them took years of struggle on the part of Kerala’s citizens.  Many scholars attribute the high degree of political mobilization in Kerala to the high levels of education and literacy.  The many libraries and remarkably wide circulation of newspapers keep people informed and promote political involvement.  There has also been a history of strong grassroots organizations and labor unions in Kerala, which continues to the present day.

Kerala’s development experience shows several things.  First, it disproves the theory that economic growth must precede relatively high standards of living and equality.  Its counter-example is especially important in the wake of the 1997 collapse of the much-lauded “Asian Tigers.”  These countries attempted to follow the model by which Western industrialized nations developed over the last two centuries, focusing on growth.  Initially, the level of inequality increases sharply, but eventually, growth should reach everyone, resulting in increased equality and wealth for all.  Perhaps it worked at one time, but in the present context of foreign investment and export of profits, among other factors, the model fails.

There are still many proponents of the neoliberal development ideal, but it seems that another model is necessary.  Kerala provides such an alternative.  The state’s focus on achieving equality through redistribution of wealth has worked to raise the standard of living for the vast majority of its people.  High numbers in areas such as life expectancy and literacy prove this.  Per-capita GNP can be high, but such a number will not reflect what may well be a small but very rich group balancing out a large number of poor.  Percentage of literate adults, however, can only rise when literacy has spread across a large number of people.

Of course, Kerala has its problems.  Perhaps the worst is its chronically high rate of unemployment.  This statistic has stayed at approximately one fourth of the labor force for several decades, three times the all-India average.  High levels of education have helped the country to export professionals, many of whom send portions of their income back to Kerala, but they also seem to be leading many youth to scorn the labor-intensive work that is most readily available in the state itself.  The state therefore imports unskilled labor despite high unemployment.  As a consequence of this and other related factors, the state’s economy is floundering, and many programs are stagnating.

There is still work to be done, but overall, Kerala does present an incredible example of a state which has achieved a high standard of living with very limited financial resources.  The activism of Kerala’s people has played a large part in this, and it must continue if the remaining problems are to be solved.  Popular engagement with politics across class, and a focus on equality over economic growth, are concepts that other states, both inside India and out, can certainly learn from.

Project Legacy Hospital designed to withstand flood risks, by Doug Paris.

This paper aims to acknowledge and decipher the discourse between two very different languages for purposes of a mutual understanding, bridging spatial terms between economists and architects (and similar urban design and planning professions).

In addition the driving factors of economic growth of human activities, through risk awareness and mitigation enables a framework that promotes spatial implications.

It appears to facilitate the architectural role of form-finding and boundary-making undertakings. This paper will focus on emerging market, developing countries.

Click to view PDF below:

Does/ could architecture stimulate economic growth? (Economics & Sustainability)

References:

- Human Development Report: Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience,  UNDP 2014

- Risk and Opportunity: Managing Risk for Development, World Bank 2013.

- On Rationality and Foreign Policy: The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Doesn’t Know Soviet History [Forbes],  http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2012/01/13/on-rationality-and-foreign-policy-the-foundation-for-the-defense-of-democracies-doesnt-know-soviet-history/

- Luxury Wars: Explaining the Value of a $70,000 Watch [Forbes],  http://www.forbes.com/sites/valeriejack/2014/11/17/luxury-wars-explaining-the-value-of-a-70000-watch/2/

- http://www.arch.columbia.edu/files/gsapp/imceshared/Conference%20Program.pdf