The ‘Green’ Games Sydney 2000 Played

Abstract

According to the Olympic Charter, increased understandings of cooperation, solidarity, tolerance and environmental sustainability are all social outcomes of hosting an Olympic Games. This chapter explores one of these claims, environmental sustainability, in the context of Sydney 2000’s ‘green’ games. See Waitt (2003) for a discussion of social affects. The Olympic Charter’s apolitical social movement claims are juxtaposed in this chapter by examining the games as urban spectacle. The games become a political mechanism to revitalize deindustrialized localities along the lines of consumption activities, such as those offered by sporting, culture and entertainment activities (Harvey, 1989a). As urban spectacle, the Olympics provide an important instrument by which a city is argued to differentiate itself within an increasingly global world economy, thus securing overseas investments and tourists (Ashworth and Voogd, 1990; Hambleton, 1991; Whitson and Macintosh, 1993; Loftman and Nevin, 1996). Designing, marketing and constructing Olympic venues within a globalized economy is demonstrated to call upon establishing an elite urban development authority informed by entrepreneurial urban planning polices of the New Right (Harvey 1989b). Sydney’s ‘green’ games is thus explored as an example par excellence of a hallmark event in the context of economic globalization, deindustrialization, commercialization of sport, the global shift to the service sector and entrepreneurial planning processes.