diminutive
Active Member
TrickyRicky, would you elaborate a little on what you are referring to as 'organic growth'? A number of high profile beautification, revitalization, development and infrastructure projects have come to fruition in Toronto recently, which is fantastic, but I feel this may distort the bigger picture. The PanAms were actually the catalyst for much of this and so a lot of what you may perceive as organic really isn't. Yes, we've seen some great private BIA initiatives too but these really just skim the surface of the bigger types of issues the PanAms - or Olympics potentially - would address.[/QUOTE]
No, they're not. You keep repeating this obviously ahistorical point as if it is some kind of fact. The overall impact of the PanAms were modest and contained to the WDL. The bulk of city building in TO has had no connection to the Games.
The point here being that we are looking at a total of $12 billion tax dollars for bad transit plans. This is not good organic growth!
In short, we need saving from ourselves, and a new election won't do it given the political urban/suburban polarization that undermines policy in Toronto, and has for decades now. A mega international event such as an Olympics games would have the opposite effect, generating funding and thereby freeing up the infrastructure plans from the politics given that there are no voters to pander to for the money. Oversight from upper levels of government would ensure the right plans.
So, based on this alone you can subtract $12billion from the cost of the games because this it what we would be saving right off the bat in getting the plans the city needs rather than the plans that our politicians need to get re-elected.
Ohhh good Lord, no! In no universe does hosting one event known for corruption and overbuilding help us avoid wasteful spending in other areas.
There's absolutely no reason to think an event like the Olympics would help us "save ourselves from ourselves." That doesn't make any sense at all; the same processes that produce inefficiencies today will guide infrastructure investment through the Olympics. We can see this through the Pan-Am Games which resulted in likely one of the least important regional projects (UPx) jumping over far more useful projects like a new bus garage.
It's not like "oversight from upper levels of government would ensure the right plans" since, in many cases, its upper levels of government who are encouraging wasteful projects (Sorbara Subway, SSE, UPx).
Politicians could just as easily use the Olympics to fast track SmarTracks, for instance. It would connect nearly all of the City to the games venues as well as the airport. On its surface, there's no reason that couldn't get wrapped into the Olympics.
Which isn't to say that Toronto (or other cities) doesn't have real failings in how it funds transit. We do. But, 1.)those failings aren't especially unique or debilitating (again, we have some of the best infrastructure in the world) and 2.)there's no non-political way to address those failings. A flashy event like the Olympics will never be a short cut to city building. If you want to change our institutional failings you need to change our institutions democratically, not empower the status quo to spend tens of billions with no oversight.
QUOTE="Tewder, post: 1033006, member: 259"]back to a more positive discussion and the idea that 'hallmark events' do drive urban development and revitalization the article, 'Post-Event Outcomes and the Post-Modern Turn: The Olympics and Urban Transformation' http://people.ucalgary.ca/~hiller/pdfs/Urban_Transformations.pdf makes the case that this is even more critical for cities in the post-industrial age, a context in which cities, having lost their prime manufacturing/industrial bases, are having to turn more and more towards a) tourism and the service sectors, and b) the creative and tech' industries.
The article actually suggests the opposite.
On tourism/'brand' considerations, the article writes that "There is evidence that there is some kind of residual benefit to having been a host city, but that this benefit drops off dramatically over time" and "in sum, while there is some name recognition for the city of Calgary as a former host city at the global level, it has largely faded and remains only an historic benchmark."(exactly what I and animatronic have been arguing) (p.325) Tellingly, the only Olympic host i've visited which has any obvious 'memory' of the Games is Sarajevo. The Games' mascots are everywhere in tourist shops along with portraits of Tito, both nostalgic of Bosnia's pre-civil war 'golden years.'
Cities often tout all sorts of benefits from the Olympics like "investing in global brand identity," though i'm pretty sure people had heard of London prior to 2012. The point critics would make is that those benefits rarely materialize to a sufficient extent to justify the outlandish costs.
Politicians, after all, will always justify their projects in the most overblown language. The Iraq War "liberated" the Iraqis! Tax cuts produce more tax revenue! Scarborough deserves a subway to stay competitive!
I think you'd be better served by looking at the actual impacts of the games though rather than repeating these self-serving justifications and empty Richard Florida-isms.