ABSTRACT
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) can have a significant effect on urban and transport developments of host cities. Essentially, the IOC is an agent of urban change, because it has an Olympic vision about how the city should function during the Games and possesses the institutional power to implement necessary changes to achieve such vision. City governments play the significant counterpart in realizing Olympic ambitions. As bidders aspire to win, they might introduce new urban goals and promise legacies that seem to be aligned with Olympic requirements yet never entered the planning process till the dawn of the Olympic candidature. Regardless of either influence in shaping actual legacies, the Olympics and other mega events hold significant power in restructuring cities. For example, Harvey (1989) suggested that urban spectacles have become a key element of urban and economic policy. A decade after his observation, Chalkley and Essex (1999) found similar tendencies and argued that mega events have turned from a tool to an agent that plays a significant role in urban policy. In line with their suggestions, Short (2004: 107) believes that “the Games act as an important tool to literally reshape the city, in both discursive and spatial terms.”
