animatronic
Senior Member
It's been breaking more in favour overnight. I'm actually a bit shocked that more people on this board aren't comparing the costs & risks vs. benefits and concluding that there are better ways to build the city.
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Question for UTers: Should Toronto bid for the 2024 Olympics?
- Thread starter animatronic
- Start date
It's been breaking more in favour overnight. I'm actually a bit shocked that more people on this board aren't comparing the costs & risks vs. benefits and concluding that there are better ways to build the city.
P23
Active Member
How else do you propose we convince the provincial and federal governments to give ~$10B to Toronto? It's like pulling teeth to get infrastructure funding from them. There's also benefits to business, tourism and dare I say it, a bit of fun. Since it seems like a bid is all but guaranteed why not focus your efforts on ensuring that the games are as well managed as possible?
animatronic
Senior Member
I just don't buy that argument - if our politicians are too spineless to build infrastructure without wrapping it in the Olympics we should replace the politicians. And there is a big difference between mounting a bid and winning the games - this journey is just getting started (hell, it hasn't even officially started). Right now all this Olympics discussion sits at the same level as fantasy TTC maps.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Seriously, how many crops of politicians have we went through? I think counting on politicians to do the right thing on their own is at the same level of TTC subway fantasy maps. Those maps exists for a reason, I suppose.
AoD
P23
Active Member
Which is the perfect time to ensure they don't submit a bid with a solid gold stadium. If you start whinging about costs after plans are drawn up there isn't much to be done, as Tokyo has found out.
animatronic
Senior Member
Not enough?
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
yin_yang
Active Member
i think we should bid. it seems like a good time to do something risky for once, in this conservative city that badly needs infrastructure upgrades. our debt isn't all THAT high. another $10 or $20 billion is nothing we can't repay in time with the technological advances still to come.
AndreaPalladio
Senior Member
I'm in favour of a bid. I think it's worth having the conversation to see how it can be done, and to see if the benefits justify the cost.
picard102
Senior Member
Tewder
Senior Member
It's interesting how the anti-olympics side always resorts to blanket statements, insisting that the experience of every host city is the same. It is a massive flaw in their logic.
... so no, you cannot make a blanket claim that the 'olympics' does not have a positive effect on tourism, case in point London:
Hosted in 2012. In 2015 named the number one visited city in the world:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/t...r-travel-destination-New-York-falls-five.html
... and the growth happened steadily after the games:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...ism-hits-record-12-months-after-Olympics.html
If London isn't good enough for you how about Barcelona?:
Now I do understand that the results are not the same for every host city (please refer to my original comment above) but it is patently wrong/disingenuous to make the blanket statement that the games will necessarily have a negative impact on tourism. Next!
animatronic
Senior Member
I believe the poster is referring to the studies in peer-reviewed journals that come to this conclusion. They aren't mere blanket statements.
Tewder
Senior Member
Care to share the peer-reviewed academic papers that prove every single host city received no positive impact to tourism? Every city please.
pman
Senior Member
I'm a little disturbed by several things about the latest attempt to bring the Summer Olympics to Toronto:
1. Cost estimates never allow for the average overrun either for other Summer Olympics or for other Toronto projects such as the Union Station renovation, Spadina subway extension or Queen's Quay rebuild. Based on this evidence, and considering the quality of our municipal leadership, it seems prudent to double whatever cost estimate the boosters produce.
2. There is absolutely no discussion about how the ten billion or so (sorry twenty billion) investment will create a long-term, sustainable competitive advantage for Toronto. Or about alternative uses for the money. One possibility would be to follow former NYC Mayor Bloomberg's lead and create a new STEM university in the city, in partnership with one or two leading global universities.
3. The notion that our political process is so broken that we can only build needed transit and reacreational infrastructure under the threat of a major world event is disturbing. It's probably true, considering the calibre of the politicians we elect, but it is sad. In any event, Council would probably use the Olympics to fund the stuff they advocate, like subways for folks in super low density areas. There's absolutely no reason to believe the Olympic Fairy would wave her wand and make a suburban-dominated Council allocate associated transit investment to projects supported by hard data and good planning.
4. I have this nagging concern about who really benefits. For example, a member of the Bitove family is involved with the bid. They used to have a monopoly on food service at Pearson, or at least the old T2, I'm not sure which. In any case it's reasonable to assume political connections played a role since the product was unbelievably crappy and overpriced. I've seen nothing about potential conflicts of interest among bid proponents, or about a process to ensure the people trying to sell us this thing aren't going to jump into the public trough with all four feet.
1. Cost estimates never allow for the average overrun either for other Summer Olympics or for other Toronto projects such as the Union Station renovation, Spadina subway extension or Queen's Quay rebuild. Based on this evidence, and considering the quality of our municipal leadership, it seems prudent to double whatever cost estimate the boosters produce.
2. There is absolutely no discussion about how the ten billion or so (sorry twenty billion) investment will create a long-term, sustainable competitive advantage for Toronto. Or about alternative uses for the money. One possibility would be to follow former NYC Mayor Bloomberg's lead and create a new STEM university in the city, in partnership with one or two leading global universities.
3. The notion that our political process is so broken that we can only build needed transit and reacreational infrastructure under the threat of a major world event is disturbing. It's probably true, considering the calibre of the politicians we elect, but it is sad. In any event, Council would probably use the Olympics to fund the stuff they advocate, like subways for folks in super low density areas. There's absolutely no reason to believe the Olympic Fairy would wave her wand and make a suburban-dominated Council allocate associated transit investment to projects supported by hard data and good planning.
4. I have this nagging concern about who really benefits. For example, a member of the Bitove family is involved with the bid. They used to have a monopoly on food service at Pearson, or at least the old T2, I'm not sure which. In any case it's reasonable to assume political connections played a role since the product was unbelievably crappy and overpriced. I've seen nothing about potential conflicts of interest among bid proponents, or about a process to ensure the people trying to sell us this thing aren't going to jump into the public trough with all four feet.
diminutive
Active Member
To begin with, the post you were referring to by picard102 clearly stated "on the whole, the Olympics do not increase tourism long term," which is a fairly accurate summation of the state of academic research. Frankly most public policy is based on probabilistic assessment, so why insert absolutist straw-men?
Here is the conclusion of one author: "On the other hand, other studies that emphasize the effects of Olympics in building up the brand images of the hosting countries may suffer from the possibility of over-estimating the benefits on tourist visits because they are short-lived. Since there are many aspects in the effects of Olympics, our observation indicates that we need to carefully distinguish the long-run and short-run effects of them. " That same author notes that surveys have shown the the vast majority of the public will forget which cities hosted Winter Games within a decade. It's a pretty close match to the statement you were responding to.
A different author remarked that: "Many event organizers take for granted that events will promote their destination in a way that will stimulate inbound tourism. Studies have documented increased awareness of the host city or nation (Oldenboom, 2006; Ritchie & Smith, 1991) and the awareness of the region’s facilities (Bamossy & Stephens, 2003). Other studies have documented mixed or no results concerning changes in image (Chalip, Green, & Hill, 2003; Mossberg & Hallberg, 1999; Rivenburgh, Louw, Loo, & Mersham, 2003).
A megaevent is a flash in history, so the duration of any increased-awareness effects will be limited. This was illustrated by research on the impacts of the European football cup, Euro 2000, in Belgium and the Netherlands (Oldenboom, 2006). Although the event increased awareness of the host cities, as many as 55% of survey respondents did not even remember the names of the host nations 1 year after the tournament. Only 10% of the respondents in France, Italy, and Spain remembered where Euro 1996 had been hosted 5 years prior. These percentages are striking because they demonstrate that the value of events for host-destination recognition is ephemeral.
Organizers of sport events have only limited control over the factors that influence long-term tourism. Production of tourism products and services, as well as the image of the destination, is more strongly influenced by the city’s broader environment, including place-marketing efforts that are not associated with the event (see Figure 4). " (Solberg, Harry Arne, and Holger Preuss. "Major Sport Events And Long-Term Tourism Impacts." Journal Of Sport Management 21.2 (2007): 213-234)
It seems likely that the Summer Olympics do cause a short term bump in tourism visits (~15% in the following year), that result isn't long lasting.
It seems to beggar credibility that anybody would expect a long-run tourism impact. Has anyone here based a trip to Beijing, Athens, Sydney, Barcelona, Atlanta or Seoul on their recent history of hosting an Olympic games? Tourism resources very rarely make note of Olympic histories.
Apparently the whole notion of an "Olympic legacy" is a recent one; hosts as recent as Sydney made no mention of legacy within their bid books. But the growing cost of modern olympics forced the IOC to start emphasizing whatever long term benefits they could scrounge together.