This book offers new perspectives through which to observe and interpret mega-events. Using the specific case studies of World’s Fairs, Di Vita and Morandi present a report of the Milan Expo 2015 and its trans-scalar legacies. While the event and post-event have been affected by the world crisis, the locations of exhibition areas have greatly expanded, encompassing regional as well as post-metropolitan spaces. The two main aims of comparing Milan to previous expos such as Lisbon 1998, Zaragoza 2008 and Shanghai 2010, were to demonstrate the contribution of the 2015 World’s Fair to the urban innovation process and to the debate surrounding a new urban agenda; as well as to examine empirically and theoretically the international discussion regarding the growth of regional and macro-regional scales of contemporary cities in order to offer suggestions for future urban agendas through mega-events. This book will be of great value to students, researchers and policy makers in the area of urban planning and the urban studies more broadly, geography and spatial politics.

Planning and Managing Smaller Events: Downsizing the Urban Spectacle explores the role of smaller scale events in contributing to the renewal and development of urban societies. This book adopts a case study approach to examine a diverse range of events taking place in towns and cities in Europe, Asia and North America. This volume begins by defining and classifying these kinds of events and then verifying if and how they can provide opportunities for cities and towns without the disadvantages of world-famous large events. It concludes by discussing the growing regional scale of urban phenomena and their transition in post-metropolitan spaces. Planning and Managing Smaller Events: Downsizing the Urban Spectacle will be of interest to government officials and policy makers involved in economic development, urban planning, parks, arts/culture as well as students and researchers interested in urbanism, event management, tourism and recreation.

This book provides theoretical and empirical perspectives on the urban impact of mega-events globally. It takes mega-events as an instance to analyse urban transformations and their effects on citizenship. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, the book presents innovative and multidimensional analyses of mega-events with an international selection of case studies. The work provides a grounded theorisation of mega-events in the first part and scrutinizes its practices and processes in the second. Each chapter explores mega-events as crucial drivers and accelerators of urban and citizenship transformations. Rather than just focusing on a staged momentum, this book takes stock of the ‘before’ and ‘after’ that 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.

The book investigates the various aspects characterizing Megaprojects from numerous perspectives and by integrating different disciplines: engineering, economics, business organization, human resource management, law, etc. It represents the first output of MeRIT (the Megaproject Research Interdisciplinary Team), and focuses on the intrinsic and unavoidable complexity of Megaprojects. The chapters have intentionally not been standardized, and humanistic topics are not separated from technical ones: this way of reading and interpreting Megaprojects through the cross-pollination of various disciplines reflects the MeRIT approach. Addressing the complexity involved in Megaprojects requires the use of a hermeneutic circle of sorts: understanding the project as a whole is achieved by referring to the specific parts, while each part can only be understood in relation to the whole. This circular approach appears to be the only one applicable to Megaprojects: no final destination, no final synthesis can be achieved. This volume consists of eight chapters written by researchers in law, economics, sociology, business organization, engineering, architecture and landscaping. The topics covered will be relevant to researchers, practitioners involved in the development of Megaprojects, and policymakers at the EU level.

This book analyses case studies of heritage-rich cities that hosted mega-events to discuss emerging challenges, controversies, and accomplishments. The future of mega-events has never been more uncertain. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has introduced an unparalleled level of doubt regarding the kind of mega-events that will take place in the coming years. This book arrives at a quite unique moment of reflection. Prior to 2020, cities were already questioning the traditional format of mega-events (e.g. Olympics and Expo) while other cultural mega-events have been spreading and gaining popularity, thanks in part to typically lower costs of infrastructures and venues, far more adaptable arrangements, spatial distribution and time frame for hosting. In these ways, they have already been demonstrating higher flexibility in which to respond to future health and safety constraints. When it comes to the relation to the existing city, cultural mega-events have been planned, implemented, and studied far more than any other. By leveraging the richness of cultural mega-events, this multidisciplinary collection deepens the intersection between events and cultural heritage. The chapters in this book provide a new theoretical framework, critical questions, and relevant case studies to argue that the nexus between mega-events and heritage is a key challenge for many cities in Europe and beyond. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.