Building World City Amenities in Vancouver, and the 2010 Olympic Games

In 2003 the “The Globalization and World Cities - Study Group Network” ranked Vancouver at the bottom of the top 80 of world cities. More recently, under the Campbell administration, Vancouver was successful in its bid for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.Mega-events, such as Olympic Games, are known economic development tools. Political entrepreneurs leverage out public funds to engage private investors to increase local employment and develop new infrastructures, which then serve the city long after the games are over. The development of new sport venues, athletes' villages and the city's upgrading of tourist accommodations also serve to overhaul and expand other public infrastructures, while media and advertising serves the world-wide public image of the city. This is not a new strategy. It is something Vancouverites implemented with great success when in 1986 they staged Expo 86 and turned downtown industrial wastelands into spiffy waterfront amenities and housing. With the 2010 Olympic Games, both Whistler and Vancouver are relying again on a “mega-events strategy” to attract public funding to serve corporate sector's interests and to further enhance their world image. Such mega-event strategies are not new to Canadian cities because they have been repeatedly used to change their world stage image. Montreal and Calgary, however, had very different experiences and results.This paper, which is part of a large project on Vancouver World City, describes the bid for the Olympic Games, and analyses and questions the strategy. It asks whether such mega-events lead to better infrastructures and amenities, which in the Vancouver case, would strengthen its World City ranking