olympic dreams

Olympic Dreams: The Impact of Mega-events on Local Politics by Matthew J. Burbank, investigates local politics surrounding Mega-events and their impact on politics on American cities particularly three U.S. cities - Los Angeles (1984), Atlanta (1996), and Salt Lake City (2002). The first three chapters the author focuses on Mega-events in general and their benefit to cities and the influence of politics and economic growth behind it all. Then the authors breaks it down into three case studies and investigate in-depth each Olympics that took place in the following US cities. One of the big questions is, what drives cities to large scale events such as the Olympics and what are the benefits. Considering the influence of politics, economics and image and there connection to urban politics as a whole. The authors also explain the importance of the coalition of public and private elites, and how the opinions of citizens are over shadowed profoundly known as “Urban Regime”. Looking beyond the benefits and losses it also looks at how it affect local governance and social conditions in the particular city.

The authors portrayed their information and findings through many different sources, most profoundly statistical numbers and situations that occurred that were visible through the media. Most of the evidence used to backup the author’s beliefs and or thoughts were secondary sources, a more reliable source could have been direct interaction with the residents of the cities and or personal observation rather than strictly number crunching. The author’s conclusions were merely based on numbers and secondary sources. However the book strategically broke down into how the plan was initiated and what lead up to the idea of hosting such a Meg...

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...ally focused on why cities pursue large scale Mega-events such as the Olympics. The book provides a connection between local politics and economical factors into modern day Mega-events. The author focuses on mainly three recent Olympics that all occurred in the US, breaking it down into three separate case studies answering many such questions as why cities seek such an event their outcome and policy decision. In a well organized manner from the begging of the bidding process to the final outcome the cook gives great incite on concluding if the event was successful or a loss to the city. Overall the book gives great incite of preparing for such a Mega-event like the Olympics and its major issues, the authors do a great job explain and proving their points in a clear and organized manner, all in all a great read helping to understand the politics behind such events.