Mega-Events and Legacies in Post-Metropolitan Spaces: Expos and Urban Agendas

165 Pages·2018·3.95 MB·English

by  Stefano Di Vita

MEGA EVENT PLANNING
Series Editor: Eva Kassens-Noor
MEGA-EVENTS AND
LEGACIES IN
POST-METROPOLITAN
SPACES
Expos and
Urban Agendas
Stefano Di Vita
Corinna Morandi
Mega Event Planning
Series Editor
Eva Kassens-Noor
Michigan State University
East Lansing
MI, USA
The Mega Event Planning Pivot series will provide a global and cross-
disciplinary view into the planning for the worlds largest sporting,
religious, cultural, and other transformative mega events. Examples
include the Olympic Games, Soccer World Cups, Rugby champion-
ships, the Commonwealth Games, the Hajj, the World Youth Day, World
Expositions, and parades. This series will critically discuss, analyze, and
challenge the planning for these events in light of their legacies including
the built environment, political structures, socio-economic systems, soci-
etal values, personal attitudes, and cultures.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14808
Stefano Di Vita · Corinna Morandi
Mega-Events
and Legacies
in Post-Metropolitan
Spaces
Expos and Urban Agendas
Stefano Di Vita Corinna Morandi
Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi
Urbani Urbani
Politecnico di Milano Politecnico di Milano
Milan, Italy Milan, Italy
Mega Event Planning
ISBN 978-3-319-67767-5 ISBN 978-3-319-67768-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67768-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952833
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F
oreword
The literature about mega-events and their legacies has grown in many
directions in the last years. It ranges from analyzing economic and social
effects, local and non-local spatial consequences to geopolitical connec-
tions. Within this existing context, the addition by Stefano Di Vita and
Corinna Morandi selects a specific and innovative perspective, aimed at
interpreting mega-events as symptoms of wider urban processes.
I would like to underline at least three dimensions of this innovative
perspective. First, mega-events build up their own geography, redefining
spatial strategies of different actors in a flexible post-metropolitan space.
The case of the Milan Expo 2015 is a good example of this phenom-
enon. After the conclusion of the World’s Fair, the complex redevelop-
ment of the Expo area has become part of a ‘domino effect’ of interests,
transformation areas, and functional and business strategies by public and
private actors. This ‘domino’ game has a crucial role in a wider redesign
process of spatial transcalar strategies that affect the urban region. The
book by Di Vita and Morandi suggests new analytical and interpretative
tools useful to understanding these post-metropolitan spatial dynamics.
Second, if mega-events have typically been managed in a sort of ‘state
of exception,’ the analysis of the governance tools and mechanisms of
mega-events and their legacies can be considered an interesting example
of the occurring change in urban government and governance dynam-
ics. From this perspective, as Di Vita and Morandi clearly show, the
assessment of the immaterial legacy should be connected with a general
evaluation of the relationships between mega-events and processes of
v
vi FOREWORD
the redefinition of the urban agenda. In the Milan case, these connec-
tions are clear and very important. It is not by chance that the Mayor of
Milan—elected in 2016—was the manager of Expo 2015, and that his
managerial skills and attitude were considered one of the reasons of his
success in the electoral competition.
Finally, the book by Di Vita and Morandi provides a useful and well-
documented analysis of the multiple connections between mega-events
and the global crisis. The Milan candidature for the Expo 2015 was pro-
posed before the 2008 global financial and economic crisis, which has
contributed to many changes in the effects and symbolic meaning of the
event. For all these reasons, the reconstruction of the long-term process
of design, management, and conclusion of the Expo 2015 and its legacy
can be considered a worthwhile starting point to reflect on the conse-
quences of the global crisis on urban mega projects.
This book by Stefano Di Vita and Corinna Morandi, based on a
long-term research activity on mega-events mostly conducted at the
Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of the Politecnico di
Milano, is an updated and interesting analysis of a case study (the Milan
Expo 2015), but also provides a wider gaze on mega-events and their
connections with new urban processes. Through this dual view, the
authors are able to contribute to the international literature on mega-
events by proposing new points of view and new assessment perspectives,
while also giving implicit policy recommendations to public actors and
institutions.
Milan, Italy Gabriele Pasqui
Gabriele Pasqui completed his Ph.D. in Public Territorial Policies at
the IUAV University of Venice, he is the Director of the Department of
Architecture and Urban Studies at the Politecnico di Milano. Full Professor
of Urban Policies, his key scientific interests include interpretations of
contemporary cities dynamics, urban conflicts, urban populations, local
development policies, strategic planning, urban governance, and policies.
P
reFace
On the occasion of a short-term account concerning the Milan Expo
2015, this book aims at proposing new lenses to observe and inter-
pret mega-events. Indeed, this manuscript considers mega-events as a
privileged reflection scenario on contemporary urban phenomena, also
related to global geo-economic and geopolitical trends. This original
approach is consequent to the large diffusion of mega-events and their
high frequency throughout world cities, their capability to accelerate and
synthesize the complexity of usually fragmented urban change processes,
the long duration from their bid to their legacies and their changing role
in relation to different phases of world urban dynamics.
Since the 1990s, the global proliferation of mega-events has been
encouraged by processes of deindustrialization of society (particularly of
cities in countries with advanced economies) and of economic and cul-
tural globalization, affecting urban change (Chalkley and Essex 1999).
Within these processes, the promotion of city brands has grown as a pri-
ority of urban policies, and mega-events have become a privileged tool of
urban marketing because of their attractiveness for international tourism
and media. Their role has changed from opportunities for the innovation
of urban morphology and transformation of spatial and socioeconomic
features to extraordinary occasions for repositioning host cities in world
urban networks (Muñoz 2015).
However, following the historical, industrial-based urban develop-
ment and subsequent service metamorphosis of urban cores, the world
crisis—breaking out in 2008 primarily as a financial and economic crisis,
vii
viii PREFACE
but still ongoing as a social and political crisis—now demands a deep
reflection on the goals, tools, and mechanisms of urban change processes
(Rydin 2013; Knieling and Othengrafen 2016). This reflection needs
to also develop against the backdrop of a new manufacturing growth of
urban economies, societies, and spaces (Rifkin 2011; Anderson 2012;
Hirschberg, Dougherty and Kadanoff 2017). While highlighting the
necessary update of growth dependent urban agendas, the crisis sug-
gests the potential development of a further phase, resulting not only in
the end of the last expansive cycle of the real estate market, but also in
the need to promote mega-events and exploit their legacies in a post-
metropolitan perspective. This could be an opportunity to both reduce
the frequent unsustainability of mega-event’s spatial projects, but also to
exploit the material and immaterial benefits of these events for a spatial
and socioeconomic regeneration at a wider scale.
Within this context, the Milan Expo 2015 represents an impor-
tant case study according to both its temporal and spatial dimensions.
On the one hand, the event bid and projects were promoted in 2006,
before the outbreak of the global crisis, whereas its following organiza-
tion, implementation, celebration, and post-event planning phases have
been directly affected by the economic downturn. Accordingly, they
have required different approaches and solutions from the past. On
the other hand, the Expo site’s location, complementary projects, and
related transport infrastructures have involved a wide physical space,
which extends to the regional scale of contemporary urban phenomena
(Brenner 2014). The Milan World’s Fair is located in a wide and artic-
ulated urban region, produced by the overlap of several urban tissues
(mainly residential, productive or mixed used, grown in different histori-
cal phases), large and small fragments of open spaces as well as local and
international infrastructures (providing, at the same time, connectivity,
spaces, and barriers). Through this perspective, this wide and articulated
area can be synthesized as post-metropolitan space (Soja 2000; Balducci,
Fedeli and Curci 2017).
Furthermore, the current diffusion of ICTs—which have contributed
to the improvement of the quality of services provided in both the dens-
est urban cores and the in-between spaces of the urban region1—has led
1 For instance, through the Smart City Expo and the E015 Digital Ecosystem projects (See
Chap. 3).
PREFACE ix
to a redefining of the traditional perception of time and space (Morandi,
Rolando and Di Vita 2016), one of the most significant components of
the legacy of the Milan Expo 2015.
According to these issues, this manuscript detects mega-events as rep-
resentative components of urban dynamics through a comparable con-
text of similar experiences, taking the World’s Fairs as a specific study
scenario. Also through the support of the discussion about previous
Expos, it proposes one of the first assessments and immediate reports
of the Milan Expo 2015 and its short-term legacies, whose effects are
trans-scalar (Bolocan Goldstein 2015): from the local impacts of the
exhibition site to the global repositioning of the city on the world map,
passing through the reorganization of spatial and socioeconomic centrali-
ties at the urban region scale. For instance, a new perception of exist-
ing or improved public spaces and infrastructures from the side of the
users has been experimented with during the Expo celebration. Several
minor events were organized and coordinated throughout the city, ser-
vices provided by the enhanced regional railway system and nodes along
the national railway network strengthened (Bruzzese and Di Vita 2016).
The Milan World’s Fair marks a spontaneous ‘discontinuity within
the continuity’ of both traditional event and city agendas. Indeed,
besides the usual criticalities (i.e., attempts of real estate speculation), it
is characterized by the potential for meaningful innovation, for instance
through: smart and sharing city projects, a renovated culture of agricul-
tural activities stimulated by the event theme Feeding the planet, Energy
for life, post-event proposals of innovative research and productive activi-
ties as well as spatial and administrative reorganization from the scale of
the Municipality to that of the Metropolitan City.
While the crisis strongly affected the event organization, both dur-
ing the Expo celebration and the (still ongoing) post-event phase, new
economic activities and social relationships have also grown, accord-
ing to several spatial regeneration projects. Therefore, the book aims at
assessing and highlighting not only how the Milan World’s Fair has been
affected by the economic downturn. It aims at understanding also how
the event has been involved within and contributed to the current urban
innovation process (Armondi and Di Vita 2017), and which debate
about a new urban agenda is going on (Pasqui 2015).
This debate has developed according to the growing regional and
macro-regional scale of contemporary cities (Hall, Pain 2006; Scott
2001; Soja 2011; Brenner 2014), the growing global networks they