Rio de Janeiro
Photo: Getty
Major Events
The BRT express bus system is at the
heart of Rio’s transport strategy for the
2016 Olympic Games.
Above: Control center;
below: The Alvorada BRT terminal.
drove Paes to run for the mayor’s job.
He believes it was a similar impulse
that spurred thousands of marchers
to flood city streets across Brazil last
summer to protest corruption, poor
quality of life, and unequal distribution of the benefits from Brazil’s decade-long economic boom. President
Dilma Rousseff responded by announcing a raft of measures, including the promise to spend US$23 billion on local mass transit projects.
“It’s not a movement that’s particular
to Brazil. You see it in the USA with
18 urbanDNA · Issue 3 / December 2013
Occupy Wall Street. In Spain, it’s the
economic crisis and youth unemployment, and in the Middle East, we
are still witnessing the Arab Spring,”
says Paes. ”People feel they are not
being represented. They want to
participate more, and be part of the
business of politics.”
Visionary Politics
Born into a nonpolitical family in
Rio, Paes became involved in student
politics as a high school student in
the mid-1980s, when Brazilians were
clamoring for an end to military rule.
His talents were recognized on a local
level, and he was appointed deputy
mayor of Rio at age 22. He then went
on to serve in the city council, in the
National Congress, and as Rio de
Janeiro state minister of culture and
sports.
Paes says mayors have increased responsibility to forge visionary policies for the welfare and happiness
of their constituents because of everincreasing urbanization and the
devolution of power to city governments. “Mayors are the ones who will
get things done,” Paes believes.
“Issues that previously were not the
responsibility of mayors, like economic development, are becoming
more so. The reason is that everyone
is coming to the cities. I saw from the
moment I became deputy mayor at
age 22 that the best way to help people was to become mayor.”
The World Cup and the Olympics
“are going to call a lot of attention to
the city” – and put Rio and its urban
infrastructure under intense scrutiny, a challenge that the mayor clearly
relishes: “Despite all the problems
we still face in Brazil and in Rio, we
are going through the best moment
in our history.” p
When
the Party’s
Over
Are major international events worth
their high cost in terms of the tourist dollars,
image boost, and “legacy” public infrastructure
that they generate for the host city?
Olympic Games, FIFA World Cup tournaments,
and Expo World Fairs are opportunities for
governments to promote and “rebrand” their
cities for vacation and business travelers.
These mega events accelerate the construction
of mass transit, housing, and other urban
development projects that otherwise might take
decades to get done.
Text: Chris Kraul
Chris Kraul is a freelance journalist with many
years of experience covering news from various South American countries. He was formerly
a foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles
Times in Mexico and Colombia.
urbanDNA · Issue 3 / December 2013 19
Major Events
Major Events
I
20 urbanDNA · Issue 3 / December 2013
Above and previous page: The Coliseum, venue of the opening ceremony
at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
The 1984 Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles, USA, were the first Games financed by private funding.
Olympics serve as catalysts
– as long as they help a city
develop what needs to be
developed.
promising those glitzy structures
is often what it takes to win, states
economist Victor Matheson, a professor at the College of the Holy Cross
in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Formerly known as the World Fair,
the World Expo movement also nearly died – but has been given a new
lease on life by the success of the
Shanghai World Expo 2010, which attracted an astounding 73 million visitors and refashioned the Chinese
city’s image. Probably as much as any
mega event in recent history, the
Expo achieved for Shanghai what
most cities target as their Olympics
“legacy” goal – the jump-starting of
sustainable energy, urban renewal,
and mass transit projects that planners see as shortcuts to improved
quality of life (Siemens, in its role as
the Expo’s Global Partner,
contributed more than US$1.3 billion
worth of clean lighting, air, and
water technology to the exhibition).
The debate is heating up in Brazil
as the country prepares for a double
dose of global exposure, starting
next summer, when Rio de Janeiro
and 11 other cities play host to the
2014 FIFA World Cup matches. Then,
in 2016, Rio goes it alone to put on
the Summer Olympics, the mother
of all sporting extravaganzas. The
Games will attract billions of TV
viewers and as many as 3 million foreign and domestic visitors, many of
whom will be seeing for the first time
this gorgeous city, which is synonymous with beaches and bossa nova.
The following snapshots of three
Olympics host cities and the Shanghai World Expo illustrate past lessons
and future expectations.
Los Angeles Olympics 1984
Photos: Getty, Aurora / José Azel
s the acceleration of a city’s
development agenda, and the
public spending that goes with
it, worth the cost of hosting mega
events such as the Olympic Games?
As recently as the early 1980s, when
the Olympics movement nearly died
after a succession of Games marred
by economic and public image setbacks, the answer was a resounding
no. But now, after sterling experiences in cities such as Los Angeles,
Seoul, Barcelona, and London, the
consensus among economists is that
Olympics are “catalytic” events for
their urban hosts – as long as they
“help a city develop what needs to
be developed,” according to Holger
Preuss, an economist at the University of Mainz in Germany.
With the skyrocketing costs attached
to the events – upwards of US$50 billion in the case of Russia’s Sochi Winter Olympic Games in February 2014
and more than US$45 billion for the
Beijing Summer Olympic Games in
2008 – residents have a right to demand a close accounting of risks and
benefits. The Games themselves typically generate no more than US$3 billion to US$4 billion in tourism, advertising and broadcast revenue over
the 17 days they are held, says Alan
Abrahamson, a journalism lecturer
at the University of Southern California and award-winning sportswriter
and TV analyst. Therefore, the huge
investment in structures, public
transportation systems, and other
“legacy” items must promise a longterm benefit. And while urban dwellers can readily comprehend the value
of new mass transit and expanded
airports to ease the path for visitors,
they increasingly resist the idea of
“white elephant” buildings like stadiums and swimming complexes that
fall into disuse after the closing
ceremonies.
The dilemma is that, with competition
among cities reaching fever pitch
to win host status, bidders find that
Los Angeles won the right to host the
1984 Summer Olympics by default.
There were no other bidders, so profound was politicians’ disenchantment with the event. The 1972 Olympics in Munich had been stigmatized
by a terrorist attack, the 1976 event
in Montreal by massive public debt,
and the 1980 Games in Moscow by
the boycott of 45 countries, including
the USA. “The movement was truly in
danger of extinction,” says Olympics
expert Abrahamson.
To the rescue came California businessman Peter Ueberroth, who organized a completely privately financed
Olympics. But it wasn’t easy: The refusal of the LA city council to accept
municipal responsibility for putting
on the Games meant the IOC had to
change its charter to allow for private
management.
Ueberroth then signed up 70 companies that paid US$130 million to be
sponsors in exchange for Olympics
branding and endorsement rights.
Except for a velodrome and swimming facility, the 1984 Games used
only existing structures, many of
which, including the Memorial Coliseum, had been built for the 1932 LA
Olympics.
Due to the low overhead and tight
purse strings – Ueberroth signed off
on all expenses over US$1,000 – the
Games returned a US$215 million
operating surplus, which Ueberroth
donated to youth sports organizations and other charities across the
USA. In addition to the corporate
sponsorship model that host cities
follow to this day, Ueberroth also
introduced the concept of Olympic
torch relays, a unifying event that
builds fan excitement.
If the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics is
vulnerable to criticism, it’s for the
almost total lack of legacy mass transit infrastructure that Los Angeles
was and still is so badly in need of.
But Abrahamson says that very omission is what made the Games economically feasible. “It’s misleading
to say there is no legacy because the
infrastructure was already here. The
legacy that really matters is that the
LA Olympics saved the Olympics
movement.”
u
Los Angeles
Olympics 1984
• July 28 to August 12, 1984
• 140 participating nations
• Boycotted by Eastern Bloc
nations in retaliation for
the West’s 1980 boycott
of the Moscow Olympics
• Generated an operating
surplus of US$215 million
• Carl Lewis is most successful athlete with four gold
medals in the long jump
and the 100-m, 200-m, and
4x100-m relay races, setting a new world record in
the relay.
urbanDNA · Issue 3 / December 2013 21
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Major Events
Barcelona
Olympics 1992
22 urbanDNA · Issue 3 / December 2013
Barcelona Olympics 1992
By all accounts, the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 set the gold standard
for a successful event. The city leveraged its “moment in the sun” to
achieve the prominent position in
global tourism that it enjoys today.
But the success was due in large
part to a propitious moment in the
city’s history and because the local
government had an existing development plan that the Games helped
accelerate, says Andrew Zimbalist,
an economist at Smith College in
Massachusetts.
When Barcelona got the nod to be
host city in the mid-1980s, it was still
a tourism backwater and recovering
from 40 years of poverty and dictatorship under the Franco regime. “It
was a city of great charm and hidden
gems that had not been exploited,”
Zimbalist says. That was before hundreds of millions of viewers were exposed to the city and its culture. Now,
Barcelona is among the top five European tourism destinations.
The designation as host city set in
motion Barcelona’s ambitious urban
“regeneration” plan that has remade
the face of the city. The Olympic Village was built in a run-down, 130-hectare industrial area near the waterfront and became the catalyst for
redevelopment of a 5-kilometer
stretch of docks and warehouses that
opened the city up to the sea. Barcelona commissioned world-famous architects to build landmark sports
structures that are still in use by locals, as well as a trade and convention center in the port area designed
by noted architect I. M. Pei. The
Above: The “Pez y Esfera” sculpture by US architect
Frank O. Gehry is a landmark of Barcelona’s Olympic
Port district at Passeig Maritim.
complex has helped make Barcelona become by some measures the
world’s preferred international
convention site.
“The Barcelona city fathers saw the
Olympics as a way of accelerating the
modernization they already had in
mind,” Zimbalist notes, adding that
historic zones such as the then-rundown Gothic Quarter and Montjuïc
areas were spiffed up to make them
tourist-friendly.
To smooth the flow of visitors, Barcelona modernized its El Prat international airport and built a new tram
system to connect the redeveloped
port area as well as a ring road
around the city to ease congestion.
And once the athletes went home, the
city didn’t drop the ball. It formed
the Turisme de Barcelona marketing
entity that helped promote the city
as a convention and visitor destination even during the post-Olympics
doldrums.
u
The Montjuïc
Communications
Tower, designed by
Santiago Calatrava, transmitted
TV signals from
the 1992 Summer
Olympics.
Photos: Getty, Laif
• July 25 to August 9, 1992
• 170 participating nations
• Marked the beginning of
Barcelona’s ascent to become one of Europe’s major
tourist destinations
• The Games accelerated a
waterfront development
and ambitious architectural
program that transformed
the face of the city.
• Long-term benefits include
construction of trade and
convention center, tram
network, and ring road.
urbanDNA · Issue 3 / December 2013 23
Major Events
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Shanghai really
injected new
energy into
the Expo
movement.
More than 200 countries and organizations
took part in the World
Expo 2010, many of
them with their own
pavilions.
24 urbanDNA · Issue 3 / December 2013
Photos: Getty, Laif, Expo 2010 Press
Shanghai World Expo 2010
If Olympics and World Cups are designed to attract individual tourists
and sports fans, promoters of the
Shanghai World Expo seemed to reach
for whole countries and corporations
as its target audience. On a national
scale, the Chinese got maximum use
from the Expo as an instrument of
public and cultural diplomacy. On a
local level, Shanghai’s six-month exposition was seen as a coming-out
party for a rapidly growing city of
19 million with ambitions of becoming a global economic hub.
All indications are that Shanghai effectively used the Expo’s “soft power”
to convey self-confidence, business
friendliness, international cooperation, and environmental awareness.
The numbers tell the story. The Expo
lured 192 countries and 50 organizations as exhibitors and a staggering
73 million visitors, including more
than 1 million on a single day.
Holger Preuss believes Shanghai
transformed the century-and-ahalf-old Expo concept by virtue of
the sheer dimension of exhibits, its
theme of environmental consciousness, and extensive additions to
public infrastructure, especially
mass transit.
“It was the largest Expo ever and will
remain so for some time to come,”
Preuss says. “In terms of conceptualization, Shanghai really injected new
energy into the Expo movement.”
As the Expo’s Global Partner, Siemens
played a central role in conveying the
Expo’s primary theme of environmental responsibility. Among Siemens’
Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika (second from left)
views the model of the China Hall of the 2010 Shanghai World
Expo in March 2008.
“green” contributions was energysaving technology at the coal-fired
energy plant at Waigaoqiao that supplied the Expo with one-third of its
electricity. The company also supplied
to pavilions a total of 150,000 LED
light bulbs that consume 80 percent
less energy than conventional incandescent bulbs. To streamline and
economize mass transit for Expo visitors, Siemens delivered key components for 100 high-speed trains running on the newly dedicated Beijing
to Shanghai line.
In addition to the energy-efficient,
ultramodern exhibits and upgrades
of its two major airports, the six new
subway lines that Shanghai opened
between 2006 and the Expo’s inauguration sent a message that China
as a nation is much more than just
supplier of cheap labor for global
manufacturers. It is also a country
that knows how to deal with a rapidly
urbanizing population.
u
Shanghai
World Expo 2010
• April 30 to October 31, 2010
• 73 million visitors from
around the globe, 192 participating countries, 50 participating organizations
• Over 1.7 million volunteer
staff
• Shanghai experienced a
13 percent increase in tourist
visits during the Expo 2010.
• Costs of day-to-day operations: 11.964 billion yuan
(US$1.96 billion); operating
profit: 1.05 billion yuan
(US$170 million)
• Major development
projects: airport upgrades,
six new subway lines
urbanDNA · Issue 3 / December 2013 25
Major Events
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Rio de Janeiro Olympics 2016
• August 5 to 21, 2016
• The 34 event venues are located in four main Olympic
clusters: Barra da Tijuca,
Copacabana, Deodoro, and
Maracanã.
• Opening and closing
ceremonies to be held at
the Maracanã Stadium,
the largest Olympic venue
with a capacity of 90,000
spectators
• Several of the venues will
also host events at the 2014
FIFA World Cup and the
2016 Summer Paralympics.
26 urbanDNA · Issue 3 / December 2013
Above left: Model of
the renovated Maracanã stadium, site
of the opening and
closing ceremonies.
Above right and below:
3D renderings of the
Olympic Village.
transportation problems across Latin
America. Rio is just one of 26 Brazilian cities that operate BRTs.
Rio is also taking Barcelona’s port redevelopment scheme as the template
for its own harbor-side renewal project Porto Maravilha. The 1,200-acre
area that once consisted of grimy
warehouses and abandoned factories
is being converted into a multiuse
housing-office-museum district in
hopes of drawing businesses, tourists, and more residents. A 5-kilometer overhead viaduct that cut off the
port zone from the rest of the city
is being torn down and replaced with
a tunnel. Connecting the redevelopment area with the nearby commuter
airport will be a European-style light
rail tram. The city is also pouring
money into improving living conditions at Rio’s 60 favelas in hopes of reducing the segregation of low-income
residential districts and better integrating residents from vastly differing socioeconomic backgrounds. p
Photos: Rio 2016, Erica Ramalho
Rio de Janeiro
Olympics 2016
As host of the Summer Games in
2016, Rio de Janeiro is following the
successful playbook established by
Barcelona in 1992 in pushing forward
long-deferred mass transit and urban
development projects, Mayor Eduardo
Paes freely admits. The overriding
purpose of having the Games is ultimately to make Rio a more livable
city for cariocas, as local natives are
called, and if the mega event fails to
accomplish that goal, the Games will
not have been worth hosting, he said
in an interview.
Barbara Kotschwar, a research fellow
at Peterson Institute for International
Economics in Washington, is convinced the World Cup and the Olympic Games will “promote Brazil’s
new stature” as a regional power
and emerging economy that by 2020
could be the world’s fifth largest. But
to join the global elite, Kotschwar
says, Brazil must improve its public
infrastructure, and the pressure on
the government created by the Olympics may help. Brazil’s airports rank
134th out of 142 countries in terms of
efficiency and its road system ranks
123rd out of 142. “In both categories,
Brazil falls short of what you would
expect of a country that wants to be
an influential global player,” she
notes: “If the infrastructure development that’s being spurred by the
Olympics allows people in Rio to get
to their jobs faster and less expensively and with less congestion, that
could be a real boost to Brazil’s overall economy.”
The city is placing big bets on improving mass transit by the time the
Games open in June 2016. Projects include a new subway line and three
new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) routes
set to open before the opening ceremonies. The bus lanes will ease visitors’ access to four Olympic event
“nodes” and ease Rio’s crushing traffic problems in the longer term. BRTs
are dedicated bus lanes for highcapacity vehicles running on cleanburning fuels and carrying up to
200 passengers. They have become
highly favored answers to urban
urbanDNA · Issue 3 / December 2013 27