ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the implications and significance of being an Olympic city against this background. The first part provides context by recognising the Olympics as the leading example of the genre known as mega-events, while being simultaneously subject to the distinctive financial and logistic characteristics that planning researchers associate with so-called ‘megaprojects’. The second part provides a brief chronological survey that shows how host cities have only recently attached wider ambitions, such as the pursuit of large-scale urban regeneration, to the staging of the Games. The early Olympics were relatively small festivals staged in existing stadia. The supreme malleability of the Olympic festival, readily able to absorb the varying agendas held by the municipal authorities ruling the cities in which the Games are held, continues to be a feature of planning for future events. The question of legacy, so important for London's bid for the 2012 Games, is also central to any research agenda deriving from the modern Olympics.
