Resisting urban spectacle: the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition and the contradictions of mega events

This paper examines the planning and staging of the 1984 Louisiana Exposition, the last world’s fair in the United States, and makes comparisons with other US world’s fairs, to provide insight into the sources of opposition and resistance to urban spectacles. Drawing on the work of Guy Debord and his concept of the ‘society of the spectacle’, this paper advances a conception of mega events as spectacles of contestation that embody contradictory tendencies and articulate conflictual and opposing meanings of urban space and reality. Rather than obscuring and camouflaging urban problems, mega events like world’s fairs express social inequalities and display highly contradictory urban representations that can spawn resistant agendas, complicate élite redevelopment agendas and divide pro-growth coalitions. Through a critical interrogation of the Debordian concept of spectacle, the analysis in this paper suggests a new theory of mega events as sites of struggle and articulators of political dissent, a conception that helps to explain the increasing international opposition and protest against the Olympics and the mega-event strategy. a “dramatic character, mass popular appeal, and international significance ” (Roche, 2000, p. 1). Unlike local festivals or small tourist attractions, mega events like the Olympics, the World Cup and world’s fairs are associ-ated with costly investments in infrastructur