Urban Reimaging, Heritage and the Making of a World-class City: The Commonwealth Walkway as Mega-event Legacy Project

Abstract

Sport mega-events have the capacity to transform host cities both materially and symbolically. This article explores the urban reimaging potentials of mega-event legacies through a case study of the 2018 Commonwealth Games held on the Gold Coast, Australia. For the Gold Coast, one of the desired outcomes of the Commonwealth Games and its legacies was to aid in reorienting the city’s identity from a beachside resort to a mature, sophisticated, world-class city. Drawing on observational fieldwork and literature research, the article considers a particular legacy project–the Commonwealth Walkway, a self-guided heritage walk–to analyze how heritage initiatives factor into strategies for urban reimaging. The article finds that although the Commonwealth Walkway may enhance a sense of continuity in a city usually marked by impermanence, its sanitized, celebratory approach to the city’s colonial past and present undermines both claims of sophistication and intended legacies for social justice.