Bidding for Olympic and Paralympic games, a tool for transportation investments and tourism? The case of Istanbul

Abstract

Since the start of the modern Olympic Games, and more recently the Paralympic Games, urban development linked to this mega-event has changed: the mono-stadium model typical of the early modern Games has been replaced by the model of an Olympic district. Because the events take place across multiple sites, the Games are often associated with investments in transportation. The paper aims to explore how, even in the case of a failed bid to stage the Olympic and Paralympic Games (OPGs), bidding for the Games can give rise to urban developments. In particular, bidding to host the Games can contribute to the reinforcement of transportation infrastructure. This study draws upon the case of the Istanbul bid. The Istanbul case is analyzed from the perspective of the bidding process before and after the reference to the Olympic Committee. The study examines the changes in the capacity of the transportation and tourist infrastructure through the official reports, statistics and annuals, as well as related literature. The case shows how bidding for big events such as the OPGs can drive investment and directly or indirectly impact economic activities, in particular in the tourism sector, whatever the result of the bidding process.

Keywords:

• Bidding Olympic
• Istanbul
• mega events
• tourism

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by AGU and Lab’URBA that provides necessary requirements (office, computer, online access etc.) to prepare this paper. We would like thank to AGU and Lab’URBA for their providing.

Notes

1 Chapter 5, Rule 34 – by-law to Rule 34. The Olympic Charter (OC) has been revised multiple times, most recently in 2019. In this study, OC 2007 is used, since it was the last charter before 2012 when Istanbul bid to host the Games.

2 Tourism is not always, however, the primary motivation for hosting the Games in developed countries (Rocha & Fink, 2017); the development of sports and urban regeneration are other motives.

3 However, the Covid19 pandemic has severely affected the tourist sector and the number of visitors fell by 12 million in 2020 compared with 2019 (Ministry of Culture & Tourism, 2021b).

4 And also, more recently an increase in the supply of temporary housing on platforms such as Airbnb (Delaplace, 2020)

5 Ankara-Eskişehir HST line established in 2009 and the line extended to İstanbul-Pendik (Asian side) in 2014 and İstanbul-Halkalı (European side) in 2019.