ABSTRACT
Creating sustainable legacies for the host city has become an increasingly important aspect for any city intending to host the Olympic Games, especially since positive legacies have been included as one of the core aims of the Olympic Movement, enshrined in the Olympic Charter. To justify significant public investment many host cities have started to develop holistic planning strategies to capture some of the value created through the hosting of the Olympic Games. Since creating lasting legacies has become essential for host cities, research on legacies of mega-events has burgeoned. Studies of Olympic legacies suffer, however, a bias in favour of a handful of case studies, e.g. Barcelona 1992, as the blueprint for successful urban regeneration. Other Olympic cities, such as Munich 1972, might also provide useful insights even though their urban development plans might not have employed the now so ubiquitously used labels “legacy” or “sustainability”.
