Introduction to the special issue – cultural mega-events and heritage: challenges for European cities

ABSTRACT

The future of mega-events has never been more uncertain. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has introduced an unparalleled level of doubt regarding the kind of mega-events that will take place in the coming years. While the 2019 call for papers could not predict such a radical shock, this special issue arrives at a quite unique moment of reflection. Prior to 2020, cities were already questioning the traditional format of mega-events (e.g. Olympics and Expo) while other cultural mega-events have been spreading and gaining popularity, thanks in part to typically lower costs of infrastructures and venues, far more adaptable arrangements, spatial distribution and time frame for hosting. In these ways, they have already been demonstrating higher flexibility in which to respond to future health and safety constraints. When it comes to the relation to the existing city, cultural mega-events have been planned, implemented and studied far more than any other. By leveraging the richness of cultural mega-events, this special issue deepens the intersection between events and cultural heritage in particular. This introduction provides a theoretical framework that cuts across mega-event and heritage research fields. It introduces the questions and approaches of the following contributions, arguing that the nexus between mega-events and heritage is a key challenge for many cities in Europe and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural heritage
• cultural mega-events
• European cities
• European Capital of Culture

Introduction: cultural mega-events and heritage

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, criticism toward sport and expo mega-events was on the rise, pushing several cities to rethink the traditional mega-event rationale. From multiple sides (including environmental, civic and public finance concerns), the typical boosterist approach has been under attack as large infrastructures and new facilities, which promise a stronger global image for the city and consequent increase in tourism, often fail to deliver (Gold and Gold 2008; Kassens-Noor 2012; Müller 2015a; Zimbalist 2015; Flyvbjerg, Budzier, and Lunn 2020). In terms of urban planning, experts and scholars alike have come to criticize the creation of brand new self-standing platforms in city outskirts that have become common in past decades (Di Vita and Morandi 2018). Significant and systematic withdrawals of cities from bids to host the Summer and Winter Olympics Games (e.g. Boston, Rome, Hamburg and Budapest – see Lauermann and Vogelpohl 2017) have accompanied more widespread sensitivity toward sustainable and long-term intervention – both motivated by serious and widely-acknowledged financial, planning and political problems. These developments led the International Olympic Committee (IOC) towards encouraging smaller budgets, temporary structures and the re-use of pre-existing infrastructures and facilities to be adapted not only for the mega-event itself but for the future of the city. Meanwhile, FIFA has also expanded the traditional hosting model. For example, three countries in North America will share the 2026 World Cup to reduce the expenditure on any single host country. These attempts at making, particularly sport, mega-events more diffused, acceptable and sustainable will inevitably face the complexities of planning and delivering such events in the context of historic, modern and contemporary cities. These new approaches increasingly rely on existing facilities that are typically located within more lived-in urban environments. Controversies may particularly arise in European cities, especially when one considers the important role of both tangible and intangible heritage in terms of land-use planning, political consensus building and city image, to mention a few. However, cultural mega-events have remained or even grown in popularity in recent years, in large part due to their reduced costs and regular re-use of existing venues (Di Vita and Wilson 2020 provide an interesting insight into smaller events).

This nexus between heritage and mega-events might be a double-edged sword, one clearly dependent upon specific planning contexts and processes. On one hand, mega-event planning dynamics may streamline resources and new projects for heritage policies, places and facilities. On the other hand, the strategy of hosting a mega-event and related goals (e.g. attracting high volumes of visitors for short periods, with the intention to boost long-term tourism trends – see Liu 2014) can commodify and irreversibly affect the physical qualities and social uses of an area and its heritage value. Despite the opportunities and threats that mega-events tend to generate in heritage-rich cities and the importance of related planning matters, limited research is available (Jones and Ponzini 2018). Also, as events come to adapt to COVID-19 restrictions, the spreading out of event spaces and locations is becoming a prominently proposed solution which may also suggest a greater interaction between historic/heritage spaces in cities and mega-events.

The contributions in this European Planning Studies special issue looked at specific mega-events that have been dealing with similar problems. The attention of the authors focuses on one or more of the following aspects:

• the use and transformation of historic sites and urban landscapes (including tangible and intangible heritage, as well as the city image) for/during the mega-event, and their longer-term implications and effects;

• the response of heritage policy making to the planning of mega-events that – due to necessity – interacted with heritage actors and measures, projects or ways of operating;

• the short-and-medium-term implications for city planning, governance and politics in terms of participation (e.g. involvement of local communities at different stages, empowering of tourism-and-event constituencies, political lock-ins and the continuing support to the local event industry);

• the discovery of or focussing attention on less obvious heritage, narratives and sites in the city or in relation to the mega-event and for the more general goal of boosting media exposure and tourism;

• mega-event policy discourses, rationales, planning tools and impacts are discussed in relation to heritage and heritage policies and vice versa.

All papers focus on an in-depth case-study but touch upon a range of issues and often explicitly refer to other relevant examples. The contributions cover cities across all quadrants of Europe and the ways in which one or more mega-event affected their development in the medium to long-term, primarily concerning their heritage. In some cases, specific plans and projects at the core of the mega-event proved to be relevant to heritage matters, in others the momentum and substantial investments in terms of infrastructure and complementary events surrounding the mega-event itself affected heritage the most. Given the variety of experiences in Europe, it is not possible to expect overarching and generalizable theories, while the diversity of such experiences allows multiple lessons for future host cities to learn from. The idea underpinning this collection of articles is that academic research can help inform the international debate and anticipate some of the emerging urban problems and solutions (Ponzini 2016) and that, in particular, one can learn across different types of mega-events, without the need for one-on-one comparisons or generalizable theories (Ponzini 2020). This introductory paper provides a brief theoretical and methodological framework regarding the crossroads between mega-event studies and heritage policy studies, outlining the key concepts and main questions that the contributions address.

Considering cultural mega-events

This special issue ‘Cultural Mega-events and Heritage: Challenges for European Cities’ brings together international scholars to discuss the diverse experiences of mega-events such as the city of culture initiatives (European Capital of Culture – ECoC – and the UK City of Culture) and Expo, paying close attention to the relationship with tangible and intangible heritage. As the work of Jones and myself showed (Jones and Ponzini 2018; Jones 2020), this area of overlap between mega-events and heritage policy has been clearly understudied in literature and there is now a great opportunity for Europe, in particular, to reflect upon the potentiality of cultural mega-events. With over 35 years of continuous planning and experimentation in over 60 cities in Europe, the ECoC programme has fostered significant changes not only in terms of cultural policy but also in urban facilities and city image. It has touched different cities at the heart of as well as across all corners of Europe, from global capitals to medium-size and smaller cities, welcoming from hundreds of thousands to millions of visitors during the year of celebration. In many cases, the programme pushed host cities to repurpose, re-use and rethink their existing cultural facilities, cultural places and public realm altogether while generating a new future for these assets as part of the city. These and other reasons make the ECoC an interesting laboratory for observing the relationship between mega-events and cultural heritage more generally, as well as an important testing ground for the research and planning of mega-events to consider. In fact, the ECoC has become a reference model for a number of national and international programmes with varying features, e.g. the Ibero-American Capital of Culture, the Culture City of East Asia, the UK City of Culture, Italian Capital of Culture (Ponzini et al. 2019). These events further expand the experimentation and situations where cultural mega-events interact with cities and heritage, thus providing a quite large untapped field of observation for both research and policy learning.

The Expo has a much longer history and perhaps requires a broader cultural acceptance than the ECoC as it includes technical achievements as well as more general innovations with typically a more stringent commercial orientation. Its cultural dimension remains relevant, but perhaps the Expo’s relationship with the city and its existing fabric and heritage are less intense than the ECoC, due to the size, functional and security standard requirements of its site. On many occasions, Expo sites were self-standing platforms that became the opportunity for cities to drive significant expansions or additions of their structure, or radical transformation of brownfields through a ‘tabula rasa’ approach, rather than the renovation of the existing fabric. The length of Expos can reach six months and the budgets vary significantly according to the need for infrastructure. It is undeniable that there are significant differences among the manifestations of these cultural events as compared to sports events like the Olympic Games.

Despite the fact that sport has a cultural component (as argued in the special issue edited by Gammon, Ramshaw, and Waterton 2013) and although sport mega-events are often accompanied by a rich calendar of cultural events that amplifies the media exposure and other expected effects (see Garcia 2012; Low and Hall 2012), this special issue keeps ‘sport’ mega-events separate from ‘cultural’ mega-events. It is worth reflecting briefly on existing literature in order to discuss how and to what extent the common ‘mega-event’ label may help mutual learning across types of events, especially when discussing their relationship with cities and heritage.

Mega-events beyond measures

The international academic debate generated a high number of definitions, distinctions and arguments regarding mega-events, large events, hallmark events, festivals and others (Hall 1989; Horne 2007; Müller 2015b). In many cases, the discussion concentrates on quantitative thresholds that help in classifying events by the needed budget and actual costs, duration, number of visitors and the like. Urban scholars expanded the observation toward city impact (Garcia, Melville, and Cox 2010; Müller 2015b) and suggested ways to measure the effects. Surely the hundreds of millions of euros spent for a cultural mega-event cannot directly compare to the multi-billions needed to host a world-class mega-event such as the Olympics or the FIFA World Cup. Also, the six-month celebration for the Expo or the year-long celebrations of an ECoC varies drastically from the few weeks dedicated to the Olympics/Paralympics. However, when one focuses their attention on the range of urban effects and broader changes induced, separating types of events by quantitative figures may end up preventing a certain level of learning permeability across cities and events. For this reason, there are widely used and more flexible definitions of mega-events to refer to when discussing the matters in this special issue (Jones 2020). Among them, the one proposed by Roche (2000, 1) ‘ … large-scale cultural (including commercial and sporting) events which have a dramatic character, mass popular appeal and international significance’ seems specific and at the same time flexible enough to include sport and cultural mega-events. In his discussion of cultural mega-events, Jones (2020) argues that the boundaries between different types of mega-events have become more and more blurred, even when one looks at specific ways of measuring mega-events (e.g. attendance, public and private expenditure).

In addition, considering the proportion of the event and its urban effects in relation to the size and functioning of the host city is crucial. European cities hosting large events span from global capitals like London or Paris to smaller cities of 50,000 inhabitants or less, which have greatly reduced media visibility, economic structures and opportunities more generally. In this sense, the quantitative requirements to qualify as being ‘mega’ may be discussed in terms of its meanings, expectations, impact and legacies depending upon the context. While recognizing the substantially different situations, one may see how programmes such as the ECoC or the Expo, with their different budgets or attendance, may yet ultimately result in paramount urban changes in relation to the size and operating of the host city. The importance of both tangible and intangible effects within European cities make cultural mega-events interesting and relevant as experiences to observe (Richards and Palmer 2010; Ponzini et al. 2020), despite the fact that the comparison with other types of mega-events or another geographical context may not be linear or simple.

European cities, mega-events and heritage

In this special issue, cultural heritage (as opposed to natural) and built heritage form the core, with several articulations in terms of historic areas, heritage places and urban landscapes (Jones and Ponzini 2018; Ponzini et al. 2019). Intangible heritage is also important in our discussion, as the narration and processes of development and strengthening the city image involve symbols, customs and imaginaries that buildings and urban spaces do not necessarily embody. There are different ways of interpreting the importance of heritage depending on the national and regional planning systems, different agencies and measures or approaches.

Firstly, the explorations in this special issue approach the case-study city without expecting it to be the manifestation of any single and general model of a ‘European city’. It is even less expected that the complex relations between mega-events and heritage will necessarily work in identical manners across cities, given the differences in terms of institutional and planning systems, heritage policy and powers. However, there are a number of similarities to consider, such as the political models and democratic governance applications in different cities of Europe, when it comes to important political decisions like the bidding for a mega-event. Yet one cannot expect a duplication of processes or their outcomes. In some cases, the mayor decides, in others, a referendum or other ways of gauging public opinion are required to support decisions at critical turns. The power is given to heritage authorities and even their existence and institutional location also vary across Europe (centralized at the national level, articulated at the regional level, present as part of the local government or eventually heard as an autonomous nongovernmental body). Despite these differences, there remains a common understanding of the importance of the past in making planning decisions for the future, at the bare minimum in terms of tourism exploitation of given sites and identity-bearing objects and values.

Secondly, in connection to the previous point, one must recognize that the EU has effectively worked to reassert certain political values centred on democratic governance within and outside its member states. Since the 1990s, the spreading of urban policy ideas and governance models – championed by pilot projects, Structure Funds, policy recommendations and white papers – led planning scholars to discuss the Europeanisation of planning (Dühr, Stead, and Zonneveld 2007; Colomb, Dühr, and Nadin 2010). The ECoC itself can be considered as a motor of this partial convergence in terms of urban planning and cultural policy making as it has been one of the many ways in which the circulation of international expertise within Europe was made easier by means of competition. More generally, the introduction of common standards for services (e.g. the 1995 General Agreement on Trade in Services and the 2006 Bolkestein Directive) and the creation of a large set of intra-European networks of experts and decision-makers for common learning and best-practice transfer contributed to this process. The existence of common values regarding heritage and the European Landscape Convention by the Council of Europe started to build bridges among quite different situations since the early 2000s.

Thirdly, the richly layered physical and symbolic presence and political relevance of heritage are particularly relevant in European cities, making the interventions for and delivery of mega-events typically more complex within the historic city rather than in a blank-slate setting. The potential frictions and disruptive effects seem amplified by the presence of the past in given areas of European cities. In this sense, there is not any single ‘European city’ or European city model to be searched for in this special issue. The intention is to use the common features as well as the variety of cases to discuss critical issues that are experienced when planning mega-events in heritage-rich cities in Europe and beyond. Other regional explorations of similar as well as different mega-events have also been carried out, to which this special issue builds upon (see, among others: Sykes 2011; Müller and Pickles 2015; Ponzini and Jones 2015)

Making the case about cultural mega-events and heritage

The articles in this special issue discuss different problems regarding the mega-event/heritage nexus that has the potential to become an increasingly important issue for European cities. By using the in-depth analysis of cases and more descriptive examples, the articles allow for informed and research-heavy views of different local experiences, rather than composing the building blocks for a systematic comparison or a general theory. Several topics in this introduction intertwine and find their own discussion in the following articles.

In his ‘Short-term Gains and Long-term Challenges to Learning from Mega-event Planning in the City of Genoa’, Zachary M. Jones presents the long-term strategy of the city of Genoa that combined mega-events and the regeneration of one of the most extensive historic city centres in Europe to re-activate its de-industrialized yet, at that time, publicly inaccessible waterfront. Within 12 years, Genoa hosted three large events (1992 Expo, 2001 G8 Summit and 2004 ECoC) and experimented with new governance styles and arrangements, involving the cultural policy sector and heritage preservation in particular. The achievement of the title of UNESCO World Heritage Site confirms the results of this innovative period, but at the same time marked a turning point where subsequent stages of planning rapidly lost the earlier momentum encouraged by the mega-events.

The strategic importance of the ECoC for spatial planning and for reactivating heritage places and policies is documented in the article ‘A Mega-event in a Small City: Community Participation, Heritage and Scale in the Case of Pafos 2017 European Capital of Culture’ by Εvanthia Dova, Angeliki Sivitanidou, Natia Anastasi and Julia Georgi. Clearly, the small size of the Cypriot host city amplified the dynamics and effects of the international event, in terms of urban space and local involvement. In all phases of bidding, event planning, implementation and the post-event, urban heritage played a crucial role in bringing together different actors to give new life to cultural and public places while addressing dissonant or long-silenced stories.

In their article ‘A Heritage-inspired Cultural Mega-event in a Stigmatised City: Hull UK City of Culture 2017’, Enrico Tommarchi and Franco Bianchini explore how a cultural mega-event mobilized built heritage to process the difficult past of a medium-sized city in Northern England. Authorities implemented different strategies to engage visitors and citizens in the historic urban environment through collective learning experiments, the use of art installations and performances as well as the rediscovery and spectacularisation of heritage. The positive effects of the mega-event however delivered only part of the expected changes to the city.

Stefano Di Vita explores the role of cultural programmes that complemented the Expo while linking to heritage. In ‘Cultural Events and Heritage Policy for the Milan Expo 2015: Experimental Intersections between Mega-event and City’ he argues how the combination of the mega-event and a coordinated calendar of smaller events benefited the image and tourism attractiveness of the city over the long term. Despite the limits in terms of spatial planning vision, the availability of additional resources for the city and the hard deadline of 2015 unlocked previously blocked heritage projects. The smaller events and their widespread locations allowed for a synergetic and regenerative interaction between heritage buildings and sites in the city centre and beyond.

Joanna Sanetra-Szeliga’s article ‘Culture and Heritage as a Means to Foster Quality of Life? The Case of Wrocław European Capital of Culture 2016’ connects the mega-event planning with projects and initiatives levering urban heritage. Wrocław’s history and approach to mega-event planning implied significant experimentation with participation and different forms of tangible and intangible heritage. The mega-event marked an important moment in the recognition of given heritage places and developing a sense of belonging at multiple scales, from the urban to the very local.

Tamara West questions the use of cultural programmes, heritage and the building of city image in ‘Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture Legacy Narrative: A Selective Heritage?’. The connection between heritage and economic development affected the planning and delivering of the ECoC as well as subsequent phases. In West’s view, this approach short-circuited the imminent threat of delisting of the city’s UNESCO World Heritage Site after the event. The article calls for further attention to the narratives and unintended consequences of widespread pro-growth approaches that permeate mega-event politics and planning.

Marina Rotolo’s ‘Internationalising Small-sized Cities through Mega-events: The Case of Matera-Basilicata 2019 European Capital of Culture’ explores the controversial links between the ECoC and the fragile urban heritage of Matera, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world (also a UNESCO World Heritage Site). The transformation of the city image and the difficulties of transforming its environment become increasingly evident in the different phases of the mega-event.

In his commentary, Jacek Purchla problematizes the conception and role of heritage and of the urban landscape in historic European cities. By discussing the trajectory of the European Capital of Culture programme, his article brings to the fore challenges regarding the accelerating and increasing need for heritage and subsequent expanding demand from multiple socio-economic interests at play in contemporary cities and more broadly.

The original call for papers back in 2019 could not have anticipated the dramatic global changes that would soon occur and particularly their impacts on mega-events and cultural policy. In 2021, it remains difficult to predict how long and in-depth the pandemic will continue to affect cities and events. It is however undeniable that European cities hosting a mega-event will have to deal with many of the problems discussed in this special issue, starting from the future European Capitals of Culture like Kaunas 2022, Veszprém 2023, as well as the Olympics to be held in heritage-rich cities like Paris in 2024 or Milan in 2026. Moving from an academic perspective towards the policy realm, the Charter for Mega-events in Heritage-rich Cities¹ provides a set of policy principles and recommendations to assist decision-makers preparing for events at different levels. The papers in this special issue can contribute to the broader research and policy discussion of the future of mega-events and of their interaction with cultural heritage, particularly within European cities.

Acknowledgments

The core ideas for this special issue derived from long-term research conducted in collaboration with Zachary M. Jones at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano. In particular, sections of this paper are based on the research conducted within the JPI Cultural Heritage research project ‘HOMEE – Heritage Opportunities/threats within Mega-Events in Europe’ (with a grant issued by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research) that explored similar problems and involved a number of the contributors to this issue. An earlier version of this introductory article was commented by Stefano Di Vita, Evanthia Dova, Zachary M. Jones, Jacek Purchla, Marina Rotolo, Angeliki Sivitanidou, Enrico Tommarchi and Tamara West whom the author wants to thank for their substantial input. The usual caveat applies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The full text of the Charter can be downloaded here https://mck.krakow.pl/homee-charter.