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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Tierney On the Olympics

Tierney On the Olympics

by John Cole|  June 11, 200511:21 am| 5 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics

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Good piece by John Tierney in the Times:

If you love cities, this is a week to rejoice. Now that the stadium planned for New York’s West Side is dead, no one can fantasize anymore about the Olympics coming to New York.

If the city had gotten the 2012 Games, its leaders would have basked for seven years in Olympic photo opportunities, and mayors across America would have watched enviously. They would have succumbed further to what I think of as the Circus Maximus syndrome.

The victims of this urban-planning syndrome believe, like some Roman emperors, that a leader’s prime civic responsibility is to build entertainment palaces for the masses. American mayors haven’t yet built anything quite like the Circus Maximus, where a quarter of a million Romans watched chariot races, but their combined output makes it look puny.

They’ve endowed downtowns with stadiums, arenas, theaters, concert halls, museums and aquariums. They imagine drawing hordes of out-of-towners to the new convention center, and when the visitors don’t materialize, the mayors’ solution is to build an even bigger convention center with a subsidized hotel next door.

The mayors hire consultants to project grand economic benefits from their projects, but these dreams virtually never come true. The only realistic way to justify one of these public projects is by considering the noneconomic benefits.

A good piece, because it echoes my sentiments.

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5Comments

  1. 1.

    Birkel

    June 11, 2005 at 3:45 pm

    “A good piece, because it echoes my sentiments.”

    Not that you’re full of yourself…

    How about both Cole and Tierney wrote good pieces. Or this is a good piece as was mine from a few days ago. Or Tierney’s piece reflects the same thinking as did mine from a few days ago.

    Or is Tierney’s only good because it reflected your position?

    (This is just a bit of razzing. Unserious razzing.)

  2. 2.

    Gary Farber

    June 11, 2005 at 5:12 pm

    “Or is Tierney’s only good because it reflected your position?”

    Don’t you love it, John, when you make a trifle mock of yourself, and someone picks it up to solemnly “razz” you by making the same point you just made about yourself? It’s so affirming, don’t you find? And validating. (And encouraging to have such close readers.)

    I also thought Tierney’s piece was sound, incidentally, although it’s his first Op-Ed column I can recall that I can say that of without hesitation.

  3. 3.

    shark

    June 11, 2005 at 11:33 pm

    Look, lets get a few things out of the way here:

    1) No American city will ever “turn a profit” on the Olympics

    2) In the NYC case, the main impetus for the stadium was to provide a NFL venue for the Jets.

    Now I still wanted the Olympics here. New York NEEDS the lasting infrastructure improvements an Olympics would leave. (NYC is so fucked up that you can never get any sort of development plan through the lawsuits, environmentalists, unions, etc- so this would’ve been a prefect way to ram it all through)

    London’s olympic bid has extensive plans to rebuild and improve their crumbling areas. NYC had the same.

    -The “olympic village” would’ve become affordable housing available for the public

    – There would’ve been improvements in the existing auto and mass transit facilities. In addition, newer and more modern busses and trains would’ve been purchased.

    -Facilities such as parks, marinas, biking and riding areas would’ve been built and then made public space.

    -A West Side Olympic stadium would’ve guaranteed NYC a Superbowl, as well as the relocation of a NFL franchise back to the city.

    Now NYC gets nothing. The West Side remains an unused empty space generating nothing for the city. The Jets stay in NJ (no superbowl). No extra housing or transit facilities built. No extra parks.

    Yeah, the Olympics aren’t worth it…

  4. 4.

    John Cole

    June 12, 2005 at 12:51 am

    New York can’t do all of those things without the Olympics?

  5. 5.

    scs

    June 12, 2005 at 3:09 am

    I agree it is a good piece. Mayors should forget the monuments and work on parks and shops. Why don’t mayors like making parks anymore? They are just as good as monuments to give cities a sense of place and they are a lot cheaper to build.
    Also areas for indivually owned shops are hardly ever made. Just more condos or large department stores. It’s shops and walking areas that give a city life. With more life, more people are attracted to the area. With more people. the real estate prices goes up and hence the property tax intakes go up. That is how you improve a city. Not some cold monument or some hulking stadium.

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