Olympic Games and Global Cities
30 November, 7 and 8 December 2021
Download the full program here.
https://oggc.hypotheses.org/files/2021/11/2021-11-30_ProgrammeOGGC.pdf
Co-organised by the Fondation France-Japon de l’EHESS, Kyoto Seika University, the Campus Condorcet and the Maison de la Culture du Japon à Paris. With the support of the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Paris Nord and the Toshiba International Foundation (TIFO).
Abstract
The decision to postpone the Tokyo Games in the spring of 2020 marks a significant change in the Olympic dynamics. Tokyo has become the very first city to adjourn the Games, after prior experiences of their cancellation in 1940 and their resounding success in 1964. Through its history, Tokyo thus embodies the failure, success of and uncertainty around the preparation of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. But Tokyo 2021 should not merely be viewed as the “postponed Games”. It is also a mega-event whose urban inscription denotes a radical transformation of the transformation of the Olympic urban project. In Tokyo, and even more so in Paris in 2024, the organisers are putting the emphasis on renovations, requalifications and temporary facilities, in order to avoid building new infrastructures and to make the best of the already existing functions of the global city.
This conference proposes to investigate this change, which has unfolded within the Olympic movement since the 2000s; a trend that tends to favour bids from cities that already possess all the necessary facilities, to the detriment of regional metropolises. The aim of this scientific event is to examine the realignments in the International Olympic Committee, its expectations of candidate and host cities, and the evolutions in the types of applications and applicant cities. The Olympic governance, urban governance, as well as the strategies of global cities and their Olympic urban project will be particularly under scrutiny.
Contact: events_ffj@ehess.fr