Bigger and better?: A multi-disciplinary perspective of mega-events

The European Capital of Culture. World Expositions. The Olympic Games. These are just some examples of mega-events. Such events are large-scale, highly-planned, and complex affairs with global impact. While many types of mega-events exist, all of them share a similiar characteristic: they have outsized impacts on the built environment and the population where the event is held.

In analysing the effects of such mega-events, a new book by external pageAssistant Prof. Dr Naomi Hanakatacall_made, Filippo Bignami, Niccolò Cuppini uses these events as a baseline to examine the urban and social transformations that result. Titled external pageMega Events, Urban Transformations and Social Citizenshipcall_made, it contains contributions from leading scholars in the field, and explores mega-events as crucial drivers and accelerators of urban and citizenship transformations.

Crucially, this book also has an international selection of case studies - from the European Youth Olympic Festivals in Tbilisi and Baku, to COP22 in Marrakech and the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games - and looking at them in ‘before’ and ‘after’ lens to hoghlight what these these events imply for the urban condition.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars in urban studies, human geography, economics, architecture, planning, sociology, political science. It will also appeal to professionals and policy makers engaged in the planning, hosting and management of mega-events.

Assistant Prof. Dr Naomi Hanakata is currently the lead Principal Invesigator of the New Urban Agendas in Planetary Urbanisation module at FCL Global. The work on mega-events and projects by Assistant Prof. Dr Naomi Hanakata builds up on the research of the Grand Projet: Undestanding the Making and Impact of Urban Megaprojects research at FCL2.

_{(Header Image: Olympic Park, Bangi-dong, Seoul by external pageDaniel Bernard on Unsplahcall_made)}