1994 - Roche - Mega-Events and Urban Policy

8/18/2019 1994 - Roche - Mega-Events and Urban Policy

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Annab o our ism Research Vol. 21, pp. I-19, 1994

0160-7383/94 6.00 + .OO

Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.

Copyright 0 1993 Pergamon Press Ltd.

MEGA EVENTS AND

URBAN POLICY

Maurice Roche

Sheffield University, UK

Abstract: The paper argues that the search for explanation should guide

mega-event research. The influence of planning, political, and urban

contextual processes and factors on mega-event production is illustrated

through a discussion of comparative event research and a case study

of Sheffield’s Universiade 1991. This research indicates the important

influence of contextual societal change, urban leadership, and nonrational

planning in event production processes. These factors are important for

understanding both event causation and also the potentially rational char-

acter of event policymaking. The strengths and limitations of “planning”

and “political” approaches to understanding events are considered. A rele-

vant research agenda is briefly outlined. Keywords: mega-events, mega-

event planning, mega-event politics, contextual explanation, situated ra-

tionality.

R&urn& Les mtga-tvtnements et la politique urbaine. La recherche sur

les mtga-CvCnements doit surtout fournir des explications. L’influence de

la planification et des facteurs et processus contextuels, politiques et ur-

bains, est illustree par une discussion de la recherche comparative sur les

evtnements et par une etude de l’universiade de 1991 a Sheffield. On

souligne I’influence importante des changements sociaux et contextuels,

les initiatives urbaines et la planification non rationnelle sur la gentse

d’un Cvenement. Ces facteurs permettent de comprendre la causalite des

kenements ainsi que le caracttre rationnel de la formation des politiques

pour les 6vCnements. Les points forts et les limitations de la planification

et des approches pour comprendre les tvtnements sont consider&. On

esquisse tgalement un programme de recherches. Mots-cl&: mega-

tvenements, planification des mtga4vtnements, explication context-

uelle, rationalit sit&e.

INTRODUCTION

Mega-events large scale leisure and tourism events such as Olympic

Games and World Fairs) are short-term events with long-term conse-

quences for the cities that stage them. They are associated with the

creation of infrastructure and event facilities often carrying long-term

debts and always requiring long-term use-programming. In addition,

Maurice Roche is Lecturer in Sociology at Sheffield University (Sheffield SlO 2TN,

United Kingdom). His research interests include the sociological and policy aspects of

sport, leisure, and tourism, and he has published a number of papers in these areas in

recent years.

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MEGA EVENTS

if successful, they project a new (or renewed) and perhaps persistent

and positive image and identity for the host city through national

and international media, particularly TV, coverage. This is usually

assumed to have long-term positive consequences in terms of tourism,

industrial relocation, and inward investments. As a result, city leaders

and event organizers typically claim that mega-events help to address

the economic and cultural needs and rights of local citizens, rgardless

of whether the citizens have actually been consulted about or involved

in their production. This paper is concerned with the social produc-

tion, and the social conditions of production, of such events.

“Mega-event” or “hallmark” event research has tended to focus on

effects, particularly economic effects, rather than causes. The issue of

event causation, and related issues such as the “functionality” of events

for modern society, has tended to be better identified and addressed in

retrospect, in historical studies, rather than in contemporary perspec-

tives (Allwood 1978; Benedict 1983; Lavenda 1980; Ley and Olds

1988; McArthur 1986; Rydell 1984). Contemporary mega-event re-

search has developed an elaborate understanding of events as causal

factors explaining their effects. However, with few exceptions, it has

contributed little to the social scientific task of developing an explana-

tory understanding of these events in terms of their production, their

conditions of production, and their causes. The methodological limita-

tions of much early event research is well-known (Burns and Mules

1986; Roche 1989; Schaffer and Davidson 1980; Travis and CroizC

1987), as are its limitations of scope. These have been revealed by

more recent work on the broader non-economic (political, ecological,

psychological, and community) impacts of mega-events (Ahn 1987;

AIEST 1987; Burns, Hatch and Mules 1986; Marris 1987; Mueller

and Fenton 1989; Ritchie 1984; Roche 1992; Syme, Shaw, Fenton

and Mueller 1989). However these developments, interesting as they

are, do little to alter the basic social scientific limitation of this research

field as regards its lack of attention to causation/production and thus

to explanation or explanatory understanding.

In recent years, some research attention has begun to be given to

the causation or production of events. Two main approaches (“plan-

ning” and “political,”

as rough categorizations) can be identified in the

work so far and this paper is intended to contribute to the emerging

research interest in the explanatory understanding of mega-event by

exploring the two main approaches in general terms, considering their

strengths and weaknesses. These issues will be illustrated by material

from two sets of empirical data about event planning and production,

namely comparative research on urban prestige projects and recent

studies of Sheffteld’s World Student Games 1991.

UNDERSTANDING MEGA-EVENT PRODUCTION

The Planning Approach

Public policymaking and urban planning, such as that involved in

tourism and mega-event planning, can be conceived of in various posi-

tive and critical ways. In a positive sense, planning can be conceived


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MAURICE ROCHE

3

of as a mainly technically or conventionally rational decision-making

process.

Hence the process is knowledge-based, involving, for in-

stance, the systematic gathering of optimal data relevant to the plan’s

implementation and impact; the analysis of such data (e.g., in cost

benefit, risk-analysis, or other relevant terms), and their use in evalu-

ating planning; and the application of such analysis and evaluation in

decision-making (Lichfield 1975). Then again, planning may be con-

ceived of as a mainly democratic decision-making process, requiring

consultation with the community in order to optimize its input of infor-

mation, views, resource, and legitimacy (Arnstein 1969). Or else plan-

ning may be conceived to be a mixed process requiring both technical

rationality and democracy (e.g., tourism and event planning below).

As against these versions, planning may be addressed from a critical

perspective. Neo-Marxism, for instance, conceives of urban planning

as an essentially ideological activity. In this view, planning serves the

interests of local capital and dominant class fractions by promoting

myths of local governmental rationality and civic harmony to disguise

and legitimate the deeply nonrational and socially divisive character of

the capitalist system (Castells 1978; Harvey 1985; Logan and Molotch

1986).

For the purpose of this paper, planning approaches in general may

be roughly summarized as having various relevant strengths and weak-

nesses. Thus, in principle, they can identify and coordinate the numer-

ous real factors involved in complex decision-making processes and

systems; they can contain and utilize explanatory models and informa-

tion; and they can identify and evaluate the reasons and conditions for

project failure as well as project success. In these and other ways,

planning approaches are undoubtedly useful for exploring the produc-

tion of urban tourism and mega-events. However, their ultimately

normative, practical, and “applied” orientation, aimed at diagnosing

and improving planning/management practice in terms of principles

and ideal models and examples of “best practice,” necessarily limits

their usefulness as tools for the pursuit of the explanatory understand-

ing of real-world event/action production, as compared with main-

stream social sciences.

Although mega-events are multi-dimensional and multi-purpose

phenomena with diverse impacts, it is nonetheless conventional to see

them particularly in relation to tourism. The development of planning

approaches in the general field of tourism studies (Duffield 1977; Getz

1983b; Gunn 1979; Jafari 1990) has been of a rather more long-

standing and substantial nature than anything in the more specialized

field of mega-event studies. Understandably, the planning literature

concerning mega-events that has been initiated relatively recently

(Dungan 1984; Getz 1991; Hall 1992; Sparrow 1989; Syme 1989)

tends to conceptualize such events in tourism industry/economic sector

planning terms. Contemporary writers on tourism and mega-event

planning tend to argue for the need to mix technical rationality and

democracy in planning (Getz 1991, 1983a; Hall 1992; Haywood 1988;

Jafari 1990; Murphy 1985; Runyan and Wu 1979).

The interest in recent work in community-based tourism and event

planning mainly responds to the notion that the product or service


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4 MEGA-EVENTS

consumed by tourists is, to a significant extent, the community as a

whole (its heritage and customs, its hospitality and goodwill, its milieu

and ambience). In a fully rational planning approach to tourism and

events, the community’s self-production as a relevant environment for

particular tourism attractions would seem, therefore, to require a mix-

ture of the democratic and technically rational planning approaches

indicated earlier.

The descriptive and explanatory limitations of the “planning ap-

proach” in general to touristic mega-event analysis can be empirically

illustrated in two stages. The first concerns the technical or conven-

tional rationality of real-world events and will be considered first. The

second concerns the potentially democratic character of such events

and will be considered next in connection with the “political approach.”

In Table 1, a technically rational model for the mega-event planning

process derived from Sparrow’s recent proposal (Model One) is com-

pared with a real life model (Model Two). Model One obviously pres-

ents a simplified scheme for the purposes of discussion; more complex-

ity, input sources, evaluation stages, etc., could have been included

(Getz 1991; Hall 1992). This model process may be usefully compared

and contrasted with two alternative empirically based schemata of

event planning processes. On the one hand (Model Two) there is the

typical planning process observed in an original and authoritative,

but little known, comparative study of 30 urban prestige projects and

mega-events (Armstrong 1984, 1986). Armstrong’s study revealed that,

In no cases were alternative strategies of achieving desired goals ex-

amined . . .

Data relevant to planned projects was used in such a

way as to support the project rather than objectively applied. The

projects examined were not planned in any traditional sense of plan-

Table 1. Models of Event Planning Processes

Model One Model Two

A “rational” event planning

Actual event/project planning

process: typical stages” process: typical stagesb

Pre-Bid 1. Conceptualization

1. Preliminary, vague subjec-

Phase 2. Pre-bid feasibility study

tive identification of a need

3. Political commitment

for a specific project

process

2. Development of cursory

4. Bid group organization

report

3. Decision taking

Post-Bid

5. Re-evaluation

4. Development of a plan to

Phase 6. Post-bid feasibility study

justify the project

7. Organizational planning 5. Building program

8. Implementation

6. Implementation

Post-Event 9. Monitoring/feedback

7. Little attention given to re-

Phase 10. Evaluation

view of planned develop-

11. New concept/new commit-

ments through time

ment?

“After Sparrow 1987); for more complicated models see Getz 1991); Hall 1992).

bFrom Armstrong 1984: 273, 272, Stage II).


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6 MEGA-EVENTS

cal judgment simply “get However, the of this

is that limitations of “planning approach” it to

supplemented by concern with study of politics and

context, particularly the urban if progress the social

goal of understanding is be made the mega-

research field.

The Pol i t i cal Approach

The political and wider societal conditions of mega-events, and their

significance in terms of urban tourism and development policy, is

well-understood in the historical studies, as noted earlier. These issues

are also addressed in occasional studies of the politics surrounding

globally preeminent events (and the symbolic, financial and franchis-

ing power of their associated organizations and “movements”) such as

the Olympic Games (Auf der Maur 1976; Booker 1981; Espy 1979;

Hart-Davis 1986; Shaiklin 1988; Simson and Jennings 1992; Tomlin-

son and Whannel 1984). However, the explanatory interest indicated

or pursued by these studies has not tended to figure very noticeably in

mainstream event research and related tourism analysis.

In recent years, this situation has begun to change and indeed it has

now become common in tourism and event research to acknowledge

the fact that events and tourism are “political” phenomena (Armstrong

1984; Butler and Grigg 1989; Getz 1981; Hall 1987, 1989a, 1989b,

1989c, 1992; Hiller 1989; J k

c

son 1988; Ley and Olds 1988; Ritchie

1984). The word “political” here does not reflect the planning ideal

(noted earlier) of democratic or community-based planning processes,

but rather the reverse. As Hall, one of the main proponents of a

“political approach” has argued:

Hallmark events are not the result of a rational decision-making

process. Decisions affecting the hosting and the nature of hallmark

events grow out of a political process. The process involves the values

of actors (individuals, interest groups, and organizations) in a strug-

gle for power (1989c:219).

Comparative event research illustrates the relevance of this approach.

For instance, Armstrong’s findings on the politics of the events and

projects he studied were as follows:

Eighteen of the 23 publicly funded projects came about through the

efforts and influence of individuals who were powerful politicians

. . . prestige projects are usually the product of an influential elite or

a particularly powerful individual.

. . .

Contemporary prestige proj-

ects, even private ones are highly political (1984: 13).

This analysis reveals an essentially “autocratic” pattern of decision-

making on major urban events and projects. There is typically little

democratic community input, and decisions are largely determined by

the will and power of urban political leaderships and/or other relevant

and powerful urban elite groups (such as business and cultural elites).

This essentially leadership-driven “autocratic” pattern, associated also


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MAURICE ROCHE 7

with civic “boosterism,” has been identified in other studies of prestige

projects and mega events (Auf der Maur 1976; Butler and Grigg 1987;

Shaikin 1988; Simson and Jennings 1992; Thorne and Munro-Clark

1987). In terms of Amstein’s (1969) well-known criteria for citizen

participation in planning, the typical event production process is “ma-

nipulative” or minimally participatory.

Recent studies of social and economic development policies in West-

ern cities point up the need to research and analyze the often-crucial

role played by different forms of leadership in the success or failure

of such policies, policies which often include a tourism and events

component (Cummings 1988; Gottdiener and Pickvance 1991; Judd

and Parkinson 1990; Stone 1991). Unlike the comparative research

cited above, these recent studies begin to describe an explanatory rela-

tionship between societal context (socioeconomic change, etc.) and

urban leadership, and also to evaluate the rationality and democratic

legitimacy of particular urban leaderships in terms of the nature and

adequacy of their general social and economic strategies and policies.

To understand urban tourism and event planning from the political,

sociological, and urban studies perspectives taken in recent research

two general issues need to be addressed: first, the mediation between

contextual forces (societal changes and trends) and urban policy; sec-

ond, the pot ent i al reasonableness or “situational rationality” of policy deci-

sions and actions. These can often be undertaken for general strategic

purposes in response to urgent problems and without much evaluation

of alternatives, cost-benefit projections, or community consultation

(that is, without much in the way of planning or rationality as it is

conventionally understood).

SHEFFIELD’S WORLD STUDENT GAMES 1991

Contextual Explanati on and Si t uati onal Rati onali @

The importance of contextual forces, pressures, and changes in un-

derstanding contemporary urban tourism and mega-event planning is

clear in the Sheffield case. Prior to the mid-1980s, the chances of a

touristically-oriented mega-event occurring in Sheffield were minimal,

to say the least. The city’s longstanding and politically impregnable

Labor leadership would not have entertained such an idea, and the

combination of economic decline and the political weakness and mar-

ginality of the city’s private sector ruled out any other source of support

for a prospective event promoter. However, in the mid-1980s, the

city’s Labor leadership changed direction and began to seek to build a

“partnership” with local private sector leadership to encourage land

and property development, company relocation and inward invest-

ment (Lawless 1990; Seyd 1990).

The causes and reasons for this change were structural, political,

and sectoral. Structurally, the fast-moving and long-term technological

and global market changes in steel production in the late 1970s and

early 1980s led to a sudden severe and irreversible loss of employment

in Sheffield’s industrial base (Lawless and Ramsden 1989; Watts,

Smithson and White 1989; Westergaard, Noble and Walter 1989).


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Sheffield’s version of a socialist “alternative economic policy” approach

to stemming economic decline and turning it into growth, which was

pursued in the early 198Os, had demonstrably failed by the mid 1980s

(Lawless 1990).

Politically, the obdurate “New Right” Thatcherite political climate

and the government approach to urban policy throughout the 1980s

emphasized public spending cutbacks and the privatization of public

services at national and local levels. Centrally imposed, private-sector

dominated Development corporations (to plan land reclamation, land-

use, infrastructure development, and investment in key areas of de-

cline and dereliction in major cities), were a key element in this strat-

egy. These and a variety of other similar agencies and initiatives were

empowered to encourage, and, where necessary, coerce local govern-

ments to develop economic growth and regeneration strategies in close

collaboration or “partnership” with the private sector (Robinson 1988;

Stewart 1990; Stewart and Stoker 1989; Stoker 1989). A Sheffield

Development Corporation (SDC) was imposed on the city in a key

development area in 1987.

In sectoral terms, government policy involved vigorous promotion

of the tourism sector nationally (drawing on US urban regeneration

models) and of urban development in particular. A politically and

structurally motivated wave of large hallmark events was instigated in

British cities in the mid and late 1980s (Roberts 1988; Robson 1988).

These and other apparently %uccessful” large events, such as the Los

Angeles Olympics in 1984 (Shaikin 1988), created a “demonstration-

effect” factor which influenced elements of Sheffield’s leadership to feel

more positive than they otherwise might have done about the prospect

of Sheffield bidding for, successfully staging, and even conceivably

making a “profit” from a mega-event.

These forces led to the formation of the Sheffield Economic Regener-

ation Committee (SERC)

in 1987, a partnership between the Labor

Council leadership and the private sector (SDC, Chamber of Com-

merce leaders, and others), with the limited involvement of other stake-

holders, such as the higher education institutions. The emergence of

SERC fortuitously coincided with council approval for two major visi-

tor-attracting developments, Meadowhall (one of Europe’s largest lei-

sure shopping malls) and the World Student Games. SERC speedily

developed a regeneration “strategy,” building on existing council devel-

opment plans, which expressed hopes and “visions” for development in

various sectors of the local economy, notably the leisure sector. In

terms of the latter, SERC promoted the hitherto unlikely concept of

Sheffield as a national sport center and tourism attraction (DEED

1990; Lawless 1990; Seyd 1990).

The structural, political, and sector-al context briefly indicated here

could be said both to have motivated Sheffield’s development of a

tourism policy and its mega-event bid, and also to have rendered these

intelligible and explicable within a strategic policy context. On the

assumption that the new strategy was sound, the event could thus be

said to be potentially situationally rational, in spite of the fact that its

particular production process largely by-passed conventional planning

processes, moving directly to the decision and implementation stages

(Table 2).


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Sit uat i onal Rati onal i ty

As noted above, national government urban policy in the late 1980s

inspired large events, in a number of de-industrializing British cities.

In addition to the wave of Garden Festivals (Liverpool 1984; Stoke

1986; Glasgow 1988; Gateshead 1990; Ebbw Vale 1992), the three

largest British cities outside of London developed active urban tourism

strategies that included the pursuit of mega-events. Thus, Glasgow

became European City of Culture in 1990, Birmingham made bids for

the 1992 and 1996 Olympics, and Manchester made bids for the 1996

and 2000 Olympics.

These innovative projects among Sheffield’s “peer group” were gen-

erally deemed to have been relatively successful in terms of “boosting”

these cities. They restored the self-confidence and dynamism of their

leadership and also some civic pride. In addition, they were successful

in terms of raising land values and re-imaging the cities for outsiders,

particularly potential tourists. However, these successes were offset by

the costs: the Garden Festivals were essentially “break-even” operations

needing considerable public subsidy for their capital costs (Gateshead

Council 1992; LEDIS 1985; Robson 1988: 111) and most of the Olym-

pics bids were ultimately unsuccessful.

In the context of the structural, political, and sectoral factors, it

would appear that many British urban leaderships came to the view

that investment in urban tourism development plans, including mega-

events, was a reasonable course of action (almost irrespective of the

huge financial and other risks involved). Indeed, given the absence of

a national industrial policy and the lack of realistic alternatives, such

policies came to be seen as both reasonable and compelling, that is, as

a necessary part of any strategy to tackle the traditional industrial city’s

many long-term problems and needs in the late 20th century.

Although it resulted in technically excellent facilities and events in

1991, Sheffield’s experience of event production from 1988 to 1990 was

crisis-ridden, politically divisive, and financially highly questionable. It

could be argued that, as an exercise in urban planning, it was lacking not

only in conventional rationality, but also in situational rationality.

Convent i onal Nonrat i onal i ty

To a considerable extent, Sheffield’s leadership bypassed the conven-

tional rational policy process in producing the World Student Games

event (Table 2). Although an urban tourism policy was sketched in

1987 (Sheffield City Council 1987), the leadership had no effective

( i.e., resourced) tourism strategy, nor any organizational means to

implement such a strategy, and yet they moved directly and speedily

from initial conception to the decision to bid for the event. Research-

based impact, cost-benefit and market forecasts, and feasibility studies

were either nonexistent, ignored, or produced too late to influence the

decision-making process. The community was not asked to indicate

whether it wanted the event and/or what it was prepared to pay for it

(whether financially or in terms of opportunity costs). These basic

nonrational and nondemocratic characteristics and weaknesses re-

sulted in unanticipated organizational, financial, and political prob-


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MEGA EVENTS

lems, particularly during the period of event and facility implementa-

tion (1988-1991) in particular (Roche 1991).

One of the organizing companies collapsed in a blaze of national

and local media attention and the event was very nearly canceled. An

early consultants’ report predicting a substantial operational deficit

(g3-14 million), which the Labor leadership had suppressed in 1987,

was discovered by investigative journalists and aired on national TV

in 1990. The validity of the report’s prediction was confirmed by the

actual deficit in 1992 of fl0 million (District Audit Service 1992).

The event operation was ultimately very badly managed financially

and became the subject of a number of damningly critical reports by

the District Auditor, the council’s Chief Executive, and the council’s

Internal Audit Service. For instance, event organizers in 1991 were

only able to achieve a small proportion of the income targets they had

predicted as recently as 1990 for the key areas of sponsorship, ticket

sales, and merchandizing (15 % , 45 % , and 18 % respectively) (Shef-

field City Council 1992:2).

Facility capital costs escalated in an apparently uncontrolled way

(f30 million in 1986- 1987, E80 million in 1987, fl50 million in 1990).

Including debt-interest charges and excluding operating deficits, they

were to continue to balloon to f400 million by 1991- 1992. The city’s

Labor leadership, rather than its SERC “shadow leadership,” took the

brunt of the criticism. It found itself isolated and assailed by Labor

party critics from within the council and from Sheffield’s District Labor

Party. Sheffield citizens were already antagonized by centrally imposed

public service cuts and the imposition of the controversial new local

tax (the “poll tax,” which was to cost Prime Minister Thatcher her

position). The news of the incompetence and politicking associated

with the Games project in the 1988-1990 period caused further demor-

alization.

This had various negative consequences from the point of view of

the city’s leadership and its hopes for positive city image and efficient

event organization. A small but vocal anti-Games group (“Stuff the

Games”) was formed and received local publicity for its various meet-

ings and activities; the support for the Games volunteer program and

also for local ticket sales was slower and lower than projected. Signifi-

cantly, since the citizens had been denied a referendum on the Games,

they expressed their disenchantment with the leadership’s “strategic

visions” in the annual Local Council Elections. Labor’s traditional

dominance in the capital city of the “socialist republic of South York-

shire” began to collapse from 1990-1992 (from 63% share of the vote

in 1990, to 50 % in 1991, to 43 % in 1992, although they still retained

a large majority of the council, even in 1992). This collapse can be

reasonably interpreted as being mostly due to the problems associated

with the Games project, although obviously other national and local

factors should be taken into account.

Sit uat i onal Nonrat i onal i ty

In principle, as suggested earlier, event-planning that is evaluated

in orthodox terms as nonrational may, nonetheless, be capable of being

assessed as situationally or strategically rational. However, this is not


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MAURICE ROCHE

11

a carte-blanche device capable of salvaging the rationality credentials

of all possible examples of event production. Event production can be

both conventionally and situationally nonrational, and this seems to

have been the case with Sheffield’s event policy and production process.

Sheffield’s new “partnership” urban leadership evidently acted in haste

(Darke 1991) d

n in classic “civic booster” style in 1986-1987 both on

its regeneration strategy and on its first major project, the Games

event (Roche 1991). However, the “partnership” leadership at this time

was lacking in strategic experience, organizational ability, and demo-

cratic legitimacy. Further, since mega-events demand a high order of

specialist organizational resources, which it would be unusual to find

in any city, the leadership was inevitably lacking on this front, too.

The quality of the Sheffield leadership’s overall “strategy” has been

questioned and criticized by various analysts (Crompton 1992; Darke

1991; Friel 1991; Lawless 1990, Seyd 1990). Glasgow’s tourism direc-

tor and organizer of its successful re-imaging, who produced a report

on Sheffield’s regeneration in 1991, observed that the various sections

of the urban leadership presented confusingly disparate and discordant

versions of the re-imaging and tourism strategy to the public, and

that they had not cultivated a sense of popular participation in and

“ownership” of the strategy by the public (Friel 1991; McCall 1992).

Also the leadership was unrealistic about the role and potential benefit

of the Games event within the overall strategy. “The short-term event

seemed to have hijacked the long-term strategy” (Friel 1991). Shef-

field’s attempted mega-event could be judged to have been potentially

situationally rational, given the societal political and economic chal-

lenges it faced. Nonetheless, its actual genesis and production can be

evaluated as lacking in situational or strategic rationality. The Labor

City Council was unrealistic, on the one hand, about the degree to

which the Thatcher government might ultimately be persuaded to re-

lax local public expenditure controls and to support the city’s event

costs and, on the other, about the possibility of a Labor Party govern-

ment (in 1987 or 1992) coming to power to bail the city out. In general,

it was the lack of realism in the “booster culture” of Sheffield’s new

“partnership” leadership in the mid 1980s combined, ironically, with

its lack of real power (e.g., financial resource) and authority (e.g.,

popular understanding and legitimacy) which were the main causes of

the Games event’s organizational and financial crises. These crises, in

turn, contributed to the ambiguous and mostly negative economic and

political impacts on Sheffield’s citizens of the city’s first major venture

into the international tourism and events market.

CONCLUSIONS

This paper has given an account of the main issues involved in the

analysis of one important form of contemporary tourism, namely large

event planning and production. It has illustrated these issues with

reference to a case study of Sheffield’s World Student Games in 1991.

The concepts of “contextual explanation” and “situational rationality”

were introduced and illustrated through empirical studies. They were

proposed as potentially useful concepts for the future development of

explanation-oriented mega-event research.


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MEGA EVENTS

The discussion has suggested that the long-established bias in that

part of the tourism literature concerned with events toward studies of

their impacts, rather than their causes and production, is a weakness

in terms of social sciences’ concern for explanatory understanding. The

two main contemporary approaches to understanding event produc-

tion, referred to here as the “planning” and the “political” approaches,

were each considered. While they have some contribution to make to

a new research agenda for mega-events, each has some important

limitations. The “planning approach” of necessity focuses much more

on developing the application-potential of explanatory knowledge for

presumptively rational actors and agencies, rather than on the genesis

and construction of such knowledge per se. The “political approach”

appears to address more directly the problem of describing and ex-

plaining real-world hallmark and mega-events than the planning ap-

proach.

The political approach, for instance, can reveal the role of urban

power-holders (e.g., urban leaderships, event planners, and organiz-

ers) in tourism and event production. This may involve a critique of

particular planning ideals in any given instance, and in general in-

volves the depiction of competing political and situational interests,

rationales, and rationality criteria in event-production. In some ver-

sions, the approach can be taken further towards a scepticism about

the role of urban planners as such (Castells 1978; Harvey 1985). None-

theless, in principle the political approach promises to complement the

planning approach (Hall 1992),

not least by the contribution it offers

to the latter’s knowledge base about the factors affecting the perfor-

mance of planning systems in real-world conditions. However, the

paper suggests that, from an explanatory point of view, the political

approach, in turn, requires contextualization in terms of the structural

forces conditioning and transforming Western nations and Western

cities in the late 20th century.

Such explanation-oriented research is relevant to the practical/nor-

mative evaluation of event-planning. Any urban leadership generating

or motivating tourism policy development and mega-event production

is likely to locate such a project, whether rhetorically or substantially,

within a wider urban development strategy. In this context, urban

leaderships’ approaches to event production need to be realistic and

well-founded. They need to be realistic about both the problems any

mega-event is intended to help resolve and the chosen event’s capacity

to have relevant effects on these problems. Their approach needs to be

well-founded in terms of the various sorts of vital resources necessary

to support effective policy implementation, particularly power and au-

thority (e.g., leadership and administrative competence, financial re-

sources, etc.) and democratic legitimacy (e.g., public support, under-

standing and involvement). Event-production may be judged to be

situationally or strategically rational (even where orthodox rational

planning procedures are by-passed because of the demands of bid com-

petitions and deadlines, etc.), to the extent that the strategies they

are part of are realistic and well-resourced in terms of power and

legitimacy.

The major structural changes occurring in late 2Oth-century West-


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MAURICE ROCHE

13

ern societies, connected with post-industrialism and globalization, are

focal concerns for much contemporary social science and social theory.

These changes are most visible in their effects on contemporary cities,

particularly old industrial cities. Urban tourism policies, including

heritage, new attraction, and mega-event policies, are being produced

by cities in the throes of transformation and in various sorts of crisis.

Various recent theoretical analyses of these changes are of relevance

for developing the explanatory understanding of urban tourism and

urban events in terms of urban post-industrialism and of post-modern

and consumer cultural developments (Cooke 1990; Featherstone 1991;

Urry 1990a, 1990b). Such approaches have begun to be usefully ap-

plied in empirical and comparative studies of contemporary urban

leisure policy (Henry, Bramham, Mommas and van der Poe1 1989;

Henry, Bramham and Spink 1990, Henry 1990). In this period, with

rapid structural/contextual and political change impacting on the con-

temporary city, the important role that mega-events can play in assist-

ing cities to regenerate (that is, to renew their image, to restructure

and reposition themselves as centers of capital and labor, production,

and exchange in the national and global economy, and generally to

“modernize,” Roche 1992), needs to be better understood.

From a neo-Marxist “logic of capital” perspective on contemporary

social change, Harvey (1989b, 1989a) observes about the West’s old

industrial cities that, given their grim recent history of de-indus-

trialization, they seem to have “few options except to compete with

each other mainly as financial, consumption, and entertainment cen-

tres” (1989b:92). Further,

Imaging

a city through the organization of spectacular urban spaces

[has become] a means to attract capital and people of the right sort)

in a period since 1973) of intensified inter-urban competition and

urban entrepreneurialism Harvey 1989b:92; see also Logan and

Molotch 1986).

From

a more pragmatic and empirical “urban studies” perspective,

Judd and Parkinson concur that city image and contemporary re-

imaging is a vitally important phenomenon to grasp if urban policy is

to be adequately understood:

If we speak of the capacity of cities to respond to external threats or

opportunities, we are actually referring to the success of local elites,

in projecting a coherent interpretation of a city’s “intentions” and of

its economic and political environment-in other words, its “image”

1990a:22; see also Bianchini and Schwengel 1991; Watson 1991).

The search for explanatory understanding in theoretical and empirical

urban tourism and mega-event research needs to take account of the

debate and relationship Fainstein 1990) among these types of perspec-

tive on the global, national, and local dynamics at work in contempo-

rary urban re-imaging and restructuring.

Therefore, what this paper suggests is that further research is needed

into the influence on urban tourism and mega-event production of two

main factors. First, there is the influence of the particular local forms


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14 MEGA EVENTS

of the general structural problems afflicting all major Western cities in

the late 20th century. Among the main problems, particularly for old

industrial cities, are de-industrialization (and thus unemployment and

poverty reproduction), service sector development, and image re-

newal/creation. Second, there is the influence of the types of urban

leadership that generate events in response to their perception of the

needs and problems and the possibilities and politics of their cities. In

contemporary Western societies, the major global and national prob-

lems and structural changes impact differently in different cities largely

because of differing characteristics of their politics and leaderships. At

the very least, then, a systematic comparative analysis is needed of

cities and large events in a range of post-industrializing Western socie-

ties going beyond the sort of analysis provided by Armstrong (1984,

1986) which has been considered in this paper.

A comparative analysis responds to the facts that touristic mega-

events have local/urban national, and international significance. On

the one hand, event-franchising organizations, such as the Interna-

tional Olympic Committee, together with the media and other corpo-

rations whose expenditures and used to finance events, and the media

publics and event consumers they supply, are all global phenomena.

On the other hand, large events typically (although not in the Sheffield

case considered here) carry national governmental prestige and fman-

cial support with them,

and this takes various forms and serves a

variety of functions in different nation states (Getz 1991). Although

they present somewhat different theoretical and practical problems,

such an analysis could also be adapted and extended to include a range

of the Third World and newly industrializing societies.

The aim of the comparative analysis proposed here would be to

develop the theoretical and explanatory understanding of the relation

between various types of large touristic events (Hall 1989a, 1992) and

their production processes, and a set of urban social and political fac-

tors. The typology of political and contextual factors needs to include

the following: one, types of city (Feagin and Smith 1989; Logan and

Molotch 1976), together with the main types of associated societal and

local socioeconomic problems; two, types of c&en part icipat ion in urban

planning in general (Arnstein 1969; Gyford 1990) and in tourism in

particular (Hayward 1988), together with main local political tradi-

tions, cultures, and divisions; three, types of urban leadership (Cum-

mings 1988; Judd and Parkinson 1990; Molotch 1988; Squires 1991;

Stone, Orr and Imbroscio 1991) in particular factors such as the bal-

ante between private and public sector power, Right-Center-Left polit-

ical orientation, and local government resource and competence; and,

four, types of urban regenerat i on and re imagi ng str at egies (Biachini and

Schwengel 1991; Cameron 1989; Henry 1990, Henry, Bramham and

Spink 1990; Judd and Parkinson 1990~).

This sort of event and urban tourism research agenda, which

responds to contemporary developments in this field, presupposes a

capacity for dialogue on the part of researchers and disciplines. It

requires dialogue between theory (i.e.,

varieties of contemporary social

and political economic theory) and empirical (sociopolitical) research

at both societal and urban levels. It also requires dialogue between

planning/managerial approaches and explanation-oriented empirical/


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MAURICE ROCHE

15

theoretical sociopolitical approaches. This paper has attempted to out-

line a case for such a new event and urban tourism research agenda,

and also to identify theoretically and illustrate empirically some of the

main issues and problems facing it. 0 0

Acknowledgments The material on Sheffield discussed in this paper derives from a

variety of documentary, observational,

and interview sources. Thanks are due to

Sheffield City Council for, among other things, allowing full access to the World

Student Games Bid Group and to the Tourism Joint Officers Group throughout 1987.

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Submitted 11 September 1991

Resubmitted 3 February 1992

Resubmitted 27 November 1992

Accepted 18 December 1992

Final version submitted 1 May 1993

Refereed anonymously

Coordinating Editor: Donald Getz

1994 - Roche - Mega-Events and Urban Policy

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