Financing the 2012 London Olympic Games
The current $15 billion estimated cost for Britain to host the 2012 Summer Olympics is nearly $10 billion more than its original bid. It is not the first time Britain has struggled financially to make the Olympics a reality--war-torn London hosted the 1948 Olympics--and with a stagnant economy and the highest unemployment in 17 years, there is wide disagreement over whether this is a sound financial investment. It could be years before the true economic impact of the games will be felt. Read more here.
| “You can take two attitudes to the Olympics,” Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, said late last year. “You can say, these are times of austerity, and therefore we should pare them down as much as possible. Or you can say, because these are times of austerity, we need to do everything we possibly can to harness the opportunity.” |
Ricky Burdett, key design advisor to the 2012 London Olympics, explores this topic at greater length in his article for the spring/summer 2012 issue of the Journal, called "Finding Solutions for Urban Imbalances."
Retrofitting Old Buildings for New Use
The New York Times discusses retrofitting old buildings for new use in Paris. With 80 percent of buildings in the US built in the last fifty years, is this the wave of the future? In Paris, a converted 50-year-old cement block tower is successfully remade into a sparkling new building.
| "This half-century-old tower used to be one of those blocks. Its makeover, by a creative team of local architects — Frédéric Druot, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal — is a case study in architectural ingenuity and civic rejuvenation. It’s a challenge to urban innovators too. Instead of replacing the old tower with an entirely new building, the designers saw what was worthwhile about the existing architecture and added to it." |
Marc Angélil and Cary Siress explore this topic at greater length in their article for the spring/summer 2012 issue of the Journal, called "The Paris Banlieue: Peripheries of Inequality."
The Secret to Seattle's Booming Downtown
In a blog post on The Atlantic Cities website, urban scholar Richard Florida discusses downtown Seattle's growth since the 1990s. The city has encouraged the long-term growth of its core through large-scale infrastructure investments and encouraging downtown retail. Nevertheless, the area was heavily affected by the recession, and lost 12 percent of its jobs between 2000 and 2010.
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"A 2000 study by Paul Sommers and Daniel Carlson found nearly half of all high-tech jobs in the Seattle region were located downtown. Today, Seattle provides a good example of the back-to-the-downtown trend that is reshaping cities across the United States as workers relocate to formerly neglected urban cores that offer transit, walkability and central location."
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Las Vegas Growth From 1973 to 2011
A time lapse video of Las Vegas growth from 1975 to 2011.
| The large red areas are actually green space, mostly golf courses and city parks. You'll notice the images become a lot sharper around 1984, that's when new instrument designs greatly increased their sensitivity. |
Read more here.