Cultural Mega-Events

Opportunities and Risks for Heritage Cities

Zachary M. Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000028089
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Mega-events have long been used by cities as a strategy to secure global recognition and attract future economic investment. However, while cultural mega-events like the European Capital of Culture have become increasingly popular, cities have begun questioning the traditional model of other events such as the Olympic Games with many candidate cities cancelling bids in recent years. This approach to planning and developing cities through mega-events introduces a broad range of physical effects and nuanced institutional changes for cities, particularly for the more sensitive heritage areas of cities. This book explores these issues by first examining the dynamics of cities' attempts to reduce overall costs and increase the sustainability of these large events by further embedding them within the existing fabric of the city and second by studying in depth the impact on the heritage of host cities. This book investigates three World Heritage Cities: Genoa, Liverpool and Istanbul, each of which have hosted the European Capital of Culture and introduced a variety of opportunities and risks for their heritage. The book highlights the potential benefits and challenges of integrating event and heritage planning to provide lessons that can help future historic cities and heritage decision makers better prepare for such events.

1 Introduction

Mega-events and the city

A decade of preparation led up to this momentous day. Even before its start the event had been framed as the key step in the regeneration of the city, yet the initial mass celebration of the city being awarded the event was followed by years of the all too typical back and forth political posturing. Key projects were delayed or cancelled while, in the final months, works went into overdrive and overtime to complete the most visible projects, including the city’s new iconic transit hub, designed, of course, by a renowned architect. Though public support waxed and waned over the years, in the final days leading up to the grand opening, the city was filled with banners and posters emblazoned with the event logo as locals and visitors alike filled the streets. After years of anticipation, the long-awaited moment had finally arrived. International participants were ready for their moment in the spotlight and residents seemed equal parts nervous and excited for their city’s moment on the global stage. The main preparations were accompanied by the setting up of camera crews, confiscating parts of the city to attain the perfect shots for television audiences. Walking the streets, the excitement and festivity, as well as the weight of expectation, were palpable.

This simple anecdote, or one nearly like it, could easily describe the experience of almost any global city on the eve of the opening ceremony of the Olympics, Expo or World Cup. Instead, it is a glimpse into the story of Matera, an ancient small town in southern Italy with just over 60,000 inhabitants on its nearly decade-long journey to host its very own cultural mega-event, the 2019 European Capital of Culture (ECoC), inaugurated on January 19, 2019. While the international participants were musicians and artists from around Europe instead of world-renown athletes and hundreds of millions¹ rather than some billions of euros were spent in preparations, many of the basic elements of this story are shared by different types and sizes of cities hosting varying types of mega-events. Rather than an intensive two weeks of events like the Olympics, the city of Matera, along with Plovdiv in Bulgaria, co-host the title of European Capital of Culture for the entire year of 2019 with events spread both throughout the calendar and across the city. The full story of Matera is far more complex than can be conveyed in just a few paragraphs, but just as with other mega-events in other cities, the European Capital of Culture has brought much national and even international attention to the city since first being announced as the host in 2014. Accompanying this announcement, tangible as well as intangible transformations have been taking place across the city in the years leading up to the event. The image on the cover of this book in fact shows the city of Matera and, while it is not one of the main case studies of this book, serves as a useful example to illustrate the two goals of this book. First, the book dives deeper into this mega-event anecdote to more closely examine the evidence and better understand the actual similarities and differences between mega-events like the Olympics, Expo or World Cup and the emerging phenomenon of cultural mega-events in Europe and around the world. At the same time, the book will also investigate the impact such events have on a surprisingly often overlooked aspect, the heritage of cities.

Cultural mega-events like the European Capital of Culture have expanded significantly in the past several decades but are often left out of or put to the side of discussions on mega-events, despite having very similar impacts on the cities that host them. This book looks into the similarities and differences between various types of mega-events to reflect upon what really defines a mega-event, whether it is just a vaguely defined notion of being ‘mega’ or rather due to its more particular and complex way of relating and contributing to the development of cities. As they have been less discussed and researched than other mega-events, the range of impacts they can have on host cities requires further investigation, one such aspect being the way these events can come to interact with a city’s heritage. Surprisingly, despite the vastness of both the literatures of mega-event and heritage studies, neither field has specifically addressed nor defined cultural mega-events as a distinct and emerging type of mega-event (as differentiated from sporting or other types) nor how these or other mega-events in general relate to and impact heritage. While there have been mentions of specific instances of the restoration or demolition of various zones in preparation for some mega-events, these are often not framed specifically in relation to the role such events can play in potentially supporting heritage as part of long-term city agendas.

The division of heritage and mega-events

One argument for this division between sporting mega-events like the Olympics and cultural ones like the ECoC claims the content of sport and culture to be too unconnected or unrelated. However, several recent Olympic Games have come to embrace a cultural program as part of their events, with London hosting a four-year Cultural Olympiad leading up to the games (García & Cox, 2013). The 2008 Olympics in Beijing as well as the 2016 Rio Olympics were also noted for their cultural programs, though these cities followed the example set far earlier by Barcelona in 1992 (García, 2008, 2017), not to mention the precedent set by the ancient Olympic Games where culture and sport were fully integrated. Therefore, despite its primary focus on sport, there has long existed a cultural component to mega-events like the Olympics. Likewise, cultural mega-events can also include sport within their programs as seen in the cases presented in this book. The Liverpool 2008 ECoC program included a number of sporting events in order to focus on the importance of the local sport culture and the city’s relationship with its two football teams. Additionally, Istanbul hosted the World Basketball Championship during 2010 as one of the main events within the year of culture program. Therefore, in terms of content at least, there can easily be overlap between sport and culture and need not serve as an exclusive reason to view them separately.

More specifically, the work of Jones and Ponzini (2018) has provided explanations for the gaps in the literature between the study of mega-events and heritage. They identify five key reasons based on their review of the existing literature. They note the main factors as being the potentially conflicting goals and approaches between mega-event planning and heritage preservation; a certain degree of tunnel vision in both fields; a focus on sport mega-events rather than cultural ones; long-term post-event considerations being limited for mega-events while vital for heritage studies; and, finally, that the traditions of study between the two fields have evolved differently over time. This first point regarding conflicting goals concerns the often high ambitions of mega-events in terms of pursuing growth and development. Conversely, the protection of built heritage has often been misleadingly labelled as an anti-growth movement that works against the development of cities. From such a perspective, it can be easy to see how a pro-growth understanding of mega-events and an anti-growth view of heritage would impede or render useless investigations into the overlapping effects of mega-events and built heritage. Chapter 4 of this book will specifically address this issue by highlighting the existing synergy between planning and policies for built heritage and mega-events through a series of examples. Though both literatures are quite broad and expansive, and in fact address similar issues, they have done so in an introverted fashion and neglected the links between one another.

The second issue concerns differing research scopes and methods. Within the conservation/preservation field, the literature has already called out the particular level of tunnel vision that exists (Ryberg-Webster & Kinahan, 2014). The level of extreme specialisation within the field has especially contributed to this factor, in part because of the highly technical nature of preserving and protecting built heritage. Research conducted within the preservation field also tends to focus on external threats facing the built historic environment, though in recent years the promotion of reuse and rethinking the role of heritage in society has become a more common strategy. Meanwhile, studies of mega-events are similarly limited by a certain degree of tunnel vision where events are primarily framed for the positive economic impact they may potentially have on host cities. The social sciences have expanded research by looking into the wider societal changes these events can introduce, from quality of life to perceptions of place and identity. Such research tends to rely upon questionnaires, surveys, newspaper and media coverage as well as tracking social media trends. While such investigations provide a strong indicator of the intangible changes brought about by mega-events, rarely do they measure the actual physical changes that may have taken place and the potential impact on heritage.

Another factor in this gap in the literature and research pertains to a significant majority of event literature focusing on the Olympic Games and Expos. Within these studies, greater attention tends to be given to newly built mass infrastructure, venues or the economic performance of the events. In part due to their disconnect from the urban fabric of the city, which is discussed in greater depth in following sections, the city and heritage link has been largely overlooked. However, the recently growing attention given to cultural mega-events within the literature should be noted. Though not dealing specifically with heritage-related issues, a number of important studies have already been conducted on the European Capital of Culture program. Several official reports completed for the European Commission were carried out by Palmer/RAE Associates (2004) and García and Cox (2013). These works have provided invaluable quantitative statistics over an extended period of time and have served as important resources for this research as well. Olivier Sykes (2011) edited one of the first highly visible special editions on the ECoC program in Town Planning Review, which provided several in-depth studies of a number of case studies followed by the series in the online Tafter Journal in 2011 (Ponzini & Ruoppila, 2011) and later in Urbanistica in 2015 (Mareggi, 2015). The European Commission also now requires each host city to publish a post-event impact evaluation. The most thorough of these in terms of its scope and duration of investigation is the Liverpool Impacts 08 report led by Beatriz García (García, Melville, & Cox, 2010) along with the Impacts 18 report (García, 2018). While the ECoC is not the only cultural mega-event, it is until now the largest and most studied. The second chapter further looks into the burgeoning phenomenon of Capital/City of Culture events that is by no means limited to Europe but has now spread globally.

A fourth factor in the lack of connection between heritage and mega-events in literature is the difference of time frame within the two fields. Mega-events tend to be quite popular topics to study and discuss during the few years immediately leading up to and during the event itself. However, following the close of events, there is rarely an equal level of attention or investigation. While the pre-event research considers many of the potential impacts, it is unable to ascertain with any confidence the ultimate outcomes. Therefore, a short-term study in advance of a mega-event, or even immediately afterward, is unlikely to capture the full range of implications for built heritage, as it may require many years or decades to completely study and understand the effects. Finally, the distance between the two fields of study must be recognised as they derive from greatly different traditions of studies that have not previously been linked. There have been some initial attempts to theoretically link heritage and mega-events through the study of mega-event sites and potentially recognising them as heritage sites themselves. The special edition of the International Journal of Heritage Studies (Gammon, Ramshaw, & Waterton, 2013; Pinson, 2016) studied a series of cases of Olympic sites later coming to be recognised as heritage sites, but they did not specifically expand into the scope that this book undertakes to consider the impact or relationship between these events and the existing heritage of cities.

This book takes the first step in addressing this gap by demonstrating the many existing overlaps found both in existing research and through a set of three in-depth case studies. The planning perspective adopted allows the book to consider a wide range of issues relating to both events and heritage and avoids a too narrow focus, or tunnel vision, that addresses just one or the other. The cases presented further expand the growing literature on cultural mega-events though the book also uses other examples to illustrate its points. While the rest of this first chapter further considers the spatial relationship between mega-events and their host cities, ultimately defining four typologies, Chapter 2 presents the ECoC program in more detail and discusses more thoroughly how the success of this program in Europe has led to various spin-off event programs that have spread around the world through regional, national or even city-scale cultural events. While there has been a clear growth in the spread of these cultural mega-events, there have as of yet been no attempts made to properly frame or define cultural mega-events within larger discussions on mega-events.

The potential for overlap

The goal of this book is not to set a definitive nor create a new definition of mega-events; neither does it consider cultural mega-events like the European Capital of Culture as being in equal standing as the Olympics in all respects, by no means. Rather, this book aims at highlighting the changing nature of mega-events over time, the broad differences between iterations of the same type of event and the difficulty in establishing a strictly quantitative definition of mega-events. While the scope of this book does not include the direct comparison of cultural mega-events like the ECoC to the Olympics through the cases studied, it does consider how future research might do so and what kinds of shared learning could take place. As mega-events evolve and adapt to the changing needs and interests of cities, it seems more evident than ever to note and study the similarities and potential points of connection between different types of events so that future research can make careful considered comparisons and improve the transfer of learning between cities. Chapters 2 and 3 take these arguments further to show that the second main study of this book, the opportunities and risks for heritage, stands as a relevant issue for events beyond just cultural mega-events, as several examples demonstrate.

This initial discussion brings us to the second aim and main research of the book concerning the relationship between cultural mega-events and heritage and the opportunities and risks this overlap presents and why the research presented in this book is of such importance for cities. The potential impacts of events should be considered both in terms of physical alterations to the heritage structures and spaces of a city as well as changing roles of heritage in reinterpretations of the identity of the city or even in changing definitions of heritage itself. In both cases, heritage is particularly sensitive and susceptible to drastic changes brought about by mega-events. The introduction of mass tourism, often one of the intended consequences of a mega-event, into a sensitive context can greatly impact the physical and the social qualities of these historic places and spaces. The decisions made as part of these events can alter the physical appearance and substance of a place, either through conservation and restoration efforts or in some cases through the demolition of heritage to implement new infrastructures. These changes can therefore significantly, or even irreversibly, alter the physical and social qualities of historic areas, greatly affecting their authenticity and heritage value. The historic nature of a place can also inversely impact the planning of the event through existing protections and restrictions regarding what changes can be made and where.

On the other hand, the large budgets afforded to mega-events could serve as much needed sources of funding for the preservation of heritage. Likewise, events may even come to inspire new functions for unused structures and be used as tools to revitalise underdeveloped areas of cities. Whether a city chooses to highlight and promote its built heritage as an integral asset can continue to determine how the city regards and protects its heritage long after the event has ended. While physical changes may be the most immediately visible, it can also be the changes to the management and governance networks...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• 1 Introduction: mega-events and the city
• 2 The rise of cultural mega-events and shifting mega-event trends
• 3 Defining cultural mega-events and the mega-event process
• 4 The potential synergy between built heritage and mega-events
• 5 Genoa European Capital of Culture 2004: a cultural mega-event embedded within a strategic vision for heritage development
• 6 Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008: a cultural mega-event within a strategic regeneration overlooking heritage
• 7 Istanbul European Capital of Culture 2010: competing visions for heritage in a cultural mega-event
• 8 Key issues emerging from the overlap of heritage and mega-events
• 9 Conclusions: considerations for future historic cities hosting mega-events
• Index