ABSTRACT
An extensive body of existing literature has shown that mega-events cause major physical, legal, and social impacts on their host cities. The degree to which these impacts are the result of any one event in places where several have been hosted, however, remains less clear. Accordingly, this chapter demonstrates how second-tier mega-event impacts are best understood longitudinally, by assessing how host localities build up their portfolios of event infrastructure over time. The chapter looks at cases from the post-socialist ‘Global East,’ a region that has recently staged several internationally acclaimed first, second, and third tier events with significant urban impacts. The work provides a thorough analysis of one second-tier event—the European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF)—hosted in Tbilisi, Georgia (2015) and Baku, Azerbaijan (2019). It argues that future research on the urban impacts of mega-events should consider more holistically a host city's past, present, and future hosting trajectories.
