Mega events are accelerators of urban transformation with lasting effects on urban environments. In the spotlight of the spectacle these crucial factors are often ignored, deliberately underestimated or underreported. They pertain every aspect of urban living, making mega-events more than instances of ambitious overspending, but ruptures in the established modes of urban production amplifying social and political inequalities. In this volume, authors with different perspectives and from different geographies and disciplines are gathered to create a unique reflection on mega-events at the intersection of culture, sports, planning and politics. Starting from the case of Tokyo 2020, the contributors bring about planetary trajectories of urban transformation today from both a theoretical and empirical perspective.

Innovative and the first of its kind, this informative and multidisciplinary book explores the socio-cultural significance inherent in event infrastructures. While mainstream event management literature addresses event infrastructures mainly through its operational relevance, this carefully compiled edited volume takes infrastructures as an analytical point in respect to its social, political, economic and cultural potential of the study of events. Borrowing from the ongoing social scientific debates on the geography, sociology and anthropology of infrastructures, critical questions are posed in relation to the event contexts. With references to events in Argentina, Malawi, Spain and the UK, among others, the volume combines an international perspective with a highly relevant subject for contemporary event management education. By bringing together theoretical as well as empirical readings on the question of event infrastructures from a critical point of view, the debates are relevant to practitioners and researchers as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students in the field of events, leisure, tourism, anthropology, sociology, geography and urban planning – among others.

This book examines the links between events and sustainability, with a particular focus on how festivals and events contribute to making places more inclusive, resilient and sustainable. Previous sustainability research in events often focused on reducing the negative environmental impacts, with a corresponding lack of consideration of socio-economic dimensions. More recently, research has begun to consider events in relation to a range of economic and social issues, highlighting the growing importance of examining events through a critical lens. This book adopts a critical and broader approach to event sustainability, arguing that scholars should examine how events might contribute to sustainable development, rather than merely exploring how individual events could be made more sustainable. Accordingly, the contributors to this edited book address how events might change attitudes and behaviours by promoting sustainable lifestyles, communities and technologies. Following a detailed introduction, the book features 16 chapters written by scholars from across the world. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism.

The spectacle of major cultural and sporting events can preoccupy modern societies. This book is concerned with contemporary mega-events, like the Olympics and Expos. Using a sociological perspective Roche argues that mega-events reflect the major social changes which now influence our societies, particularly in the West, and that these amount to a new ‘second phase’ of the modernization process. Changes are particularly visible in the media, urban and global locational aspects of mega-events. Thus he suggests that contemporary mega-events, both in their achievements and their vulnerabilities, reflect, in the media sphere, the rise of the internet; in the urban sphere, de-industrialisation and the growing ecological crisis; and in the global sphere, the relative decline of the West and the rise of China and other ‘emerging’ countries.

High performance during catastrophic terrorist events require the ability to assess and adapt capacity rapidly, restore or enhance disrupted or inadequate communications, utilize flexible decision making swiftly, and expand coordination and trust between multiple emergency and crisis response agencies. These requirements are superimposed on conventional administrative systems that rely on relatively rigid plans, decision protocols, and formal relationships that assume smooth sailing and uninterrupted communications and coordination. Network Governance in Response to Acts of Terrorism focuses on the inter-organizational performance and coordinated response to recent terrorist incidents across different national, legal, and cultural contexts in New York, Bali, Istanbul, Madrid, London, and Mumbai. Effortlessly combining each case study with content analyses of news reports from local and national newspapers, situation reports from government emergency/crisis management agencies, and, interviews with public managers, community leaders, and nonprofit executives involved in response operations, Naim Kapucu presents an overview of how different countries tackle emergencies by employing various collaborative decision-making processes, thus, offering a global perspective with different approaches. These features make this book an important read for both scholars and practitioners eager to reconcile existing decision-making theories with practice.

What are the social, political and economic consequences of staging sport mega events such as the Olympics and the World Cup? Capitalism, Sport Mega Events and the Global South presents a new approach to sport mega events and related issues, exploring elements that are not present or are not developed in the existing literature. This book explores the socioeconomic impact of these events on host countries in the Global South. Drawing on a thorough case study of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, it examines how the residents of Porto Alegre perceived how they were affected and considers the relationship between sport mega events and the wider social sphere of global capitalism. Supported by original socioeconomic research conducted in the area, this is fascinating reading for all students and scholars interested in sport mega events, sport tourism, international development, sport geography and the sociology of sport.