By Pete Fussey, Jon Coaffee, Gary Armstrong, Dick Hobbs

Frequently obvious because the host nation's biggest ever logistical venture, accommodating the Olympics and its attendant safety infrastructure brings seismic alterations to either the actual and social geography of its vacation spot. on account that 1976, the defence of the spectacle has develop into the relevant characteristic of its making plans, one who has assumed even better prominence following the bombing of the 1996 Atlanta video games and, most significantly, Sep 11. certainly, the quintupled expense of securing the 1st post-9/11 summer time video games in Athens demonstrates the massive scale and complexity presently implicated in those operations. Such bills will not be merely financial. The video games stimulate a tidal wave of redevelopment ushering in new gentrified city settings and an linked funding that could or won't soak via to the incumbent group. Given the bizarre step of constructing London's Olympic Park within the middle of an latest city milieu and the said commitments to 'community improvement' and 'legacy', those represent fairly acute matters for the 2012 video games. as well as sealing the Olympic Park from perceived threats, 2012 protection operations have additionally harnessed the executive criminological staples of neighborhood security and crime aid to generate an ordered house within the surrounding parts. Of principal value listed here are the problems of citizenship, engagement and entry in city areas redeveloped upon the topics of safety and trade. via interpreting the social and group influence of the 2012 video games and its protection operation on East London, this publication concludes by way of contemplating the major debates to whether utopian visions of legacy might be sustained given the calls for of supplying an international securitised occasion of the significance of the trendy Olympics

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Extra resources for Securing and Sustaining the Olympic City

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Burbank, Andranovich and Heying also indicated that, typically, ‘piecemeal resistance’ focusing on specific developments linked to environment destruction and simple ‘Nimbyism’ are recurrent themes in Olympic bids. For example, protest arising from Toronto’s bid for the 2008 Games was organized primarily through the symbolically named ‘Bread not Circuses’ coalition, which argued for what they called ‘socially responsible Games’ (Bread not Circuses). This protest drew, in part, on work by Lenskyj (2002) that focused on the way the organizers of Sydney 2000 suppressed the real costs and impacts of the Olympics and the exacerbated social problems in the area by suppressing citizen voice and reducing funding to non-Olympic projects.

Most notably the development of showcase architecture and property development in order to create a ‘modern high tech metropolis’ (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors 2004). In Beijing most investment was channelled into a 1,215-hectare Olympic Park, including the main stadium, associated venues and training facilities and the athletes’ village, all surrounded by a 760-hectare forest and green belt (Cook 2007). The argument was that ‘the commercial, residential and infrastructure developments that will accompany the Games will effectively act as a catalyst to change the entire physical structure and planning of the city’ (Van de Berg cited in Royal Institute of Secure Regeneration and the Olympics 31 Chartered Surveyors 2004).

In more emotive terms, such a process has also been viewed as attempts to ‘civilize’ or ‘cleanse’ an area through processes related to gentrification and high-profile policing in order to reassure the ‘incoming’ residents that they are relocating to a safe neighbourhood. Commonly, this search for enhanced community safety has resulted in the eviction or removal of ‘offending’ groups or unwanted businesses that do not suit the legacy criteria for the regenerated neighbourhood, or who are simply deemed ‘in the way’ of planned change.

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