Speaker: Judith Grant Long, Associate Professor, School of Kinesiology, University of Michigan

As the cost and complexity of delivering the Olympic Games appears to arc ever upward, the global urban policy community and the International Olympic Committee are searching for ways to rethink their scale.  Olympic host cities are also under pressure to better balance the costs and benefits associated with building the event infrastructure, as lofty promises of generating widespread urban development have routinely fallen short.  In this public talk, Judith Grant Long surveys the century long history of building for the Olympic Games.  Offered from the perspective of host cities, she argues that host city outcomes have been both better and worse than commonly understood, and points to the changing fortunes of global cities and the evolving business model of the Modern Olympic Movement as key influences in a story that encompasses the origins of the “Olympic legacy” concept and contemporary efforts to “right-size” the games.  Calling for more responsible leadership on urban impacts from both host cities and the International Olympic Committee, Long makes recommendations to recalibrate the scale of Olympic infrastructures, and to guide host cities planning for the Olympic Games and other sports mega-events.