SHOULD CITIES GO FOR THE GOLD? THE LONG‐TERM IMPACTS OF HOSTING THE OLYMPICS

The Summer Olympics bring hundreds of thousands of visitors and generate upward of $10 billion in spending for the host city. This large influx of tourism dollars is only part of the overall impact of hosting the Olympic Games. In order to host the visitors and sporting events, cities must make sizable investments in infrastructure such as airports, arenas, and highways. Additionally, the publicity and international exposure of a host city may benefit international trade and capital flows. Proponents argue that this investment will pay off through increased economic growth, but research confirming these claims is lacking. This paper examines whether hosting an Olympiad improves a city's long‐term growth. In order to control for the self‐selection of cities that host Olympic Games, this paper matches Olympic host cities with cities that were finalists for the Olympic Games, but were not selected by the International Olympic Committee. A difference‐in‐difference estimator examines post‐Olympic impacts for host cities between 1950 and 2005. Regression results provide no long‐term impacts of hosting an Olympics on two measures of population, real Gross Domestic Product per capita and trade openness. (JEL O18, R11)     

From Prowar Soldier to Antiwar Activist: Change and Continuity in the Narratives of Political Conversion among Iraq War Veterans

This study examines conversion narratives of Iraq War military veterans who have become antiwar political activists. I examine how antiwar veterans construct and emplot prewar, wartime, and postwar narrative periods to shape and reclaim their moral identities as patriots fighting for a just cause, and how through a communal antiwar story they work to both challenge and reappropriate the rhetorical framework they associate with justifications for the invasion of Iraq. The study draws on in‐depth interviews with forty members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). In sum, the research describes how veterans engage with dominant narratives, shape new moral identities, and transition from soldiers to political activists.     

Time Difference Gentrification as a Bloodless Revolution: Class Structure and Spatial Polarization in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area after the 1980s

Economic disparity in Japan has been increasing since approximately 1980. This change has been particularly significant in one of its global cities, the Tokyo metropolitan area, resulting in a dramatic transformation of its socio‐spatial structure. Until the 1980s, economic disparity in Tokyo was not as large as that in the whole of Japan. Moreover, the concentration of high‐income households in the center of Tokyo was not significant. However, the old middle class, which consist of self‐employed individuals, and small capitalist class began to dissolve in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively, resulting in a decline in the population in the center of the city and its surrounding areas. In the 2000s the new middle class began to move into these areas. This was gentrification; however, because of the time difference between the dissolution of the old middle class and small capitalists and the influx of the new middle class, it was not violent but proceeded in a relatively peaceful manner. Until 1990, in areas 20‐40 km from the center of Tokyo, income levels and the proportion of the new middle class were high, however by 2010 the proportion of the working class had increased, and income levels had fallen significantly. Thus, in the Tokyo metropolitan area, the old middle class and the small capitalists in and around the center of Tokyo were replaced by the new middle class, and a hierarchical socio‐spatial structure culminationg in the center of Tokyo developed.     

Olympic Films and Public Memory

How is our memory of mega‐events structured? This article investigates the relationship between cinema and the Olympic Games. To this end, it first unravels the historical origins of the strong link between the two, as both are symbolic products of the 20th century. The Olympics reaffirm the image of the modern nation‐state; the cinematic medium visually represents the Games as spectacle. Leni Riefenstahl's film, Olympia (1938), recorded at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, supplies the most enduring imagery of this type. In addition to Riefenstahl's thoughts and methods, this study delves into Kon Ichikawa's Tokyo Olympiad (1965), which was influenced by Olympia. Ichikawa's film, which reflects his artistry and showcases his various skills, won critical acclaim and, intriguingly, precipitated the “document or art” controversy that involved the Japanese state and the mass media. Whether document or work of art, this film has supplied the public with imagery for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games—various images that most of us recognize—and thereby played a key role in constituting our memory of them. Therefore, our experience of the Games is a mediated experience through the construction of our public memory. Our memory culture is composed of “prosthetic memories” that are technologically assembled through cinema and act as Freudian “screen memories.”     

Making Heterogeneous Space: Land Development and the Proletarianization of Urban Underclass in Post War Japan

This paper aims to focus on a correlation between urban land development and a “proletarianization” of day‐laborers by examining Mitsui Fudosan Group [Mitsui Real Estate Group] as an agent of urban developments and construction industry in Japan, with examining daylaborers’ riots and moral economy as a counter‐culture against gentrified urban spaces.It is necessary to acknowledge the fact that the national projects – maintained by the closed market and the subcontracting labor system in the construction industry – also induce a radical opposition against the urban development. Although national projects are inevitably accompanied by gentrification, eviction of the homeless, and social exclusion of the underclass, unavoidable transgression or deviation conflicts with urban development, such as periodic and spontaneous riots by day‐laborers, demonstrates a vulnerability of the national unity. In fact, the day‐laborers changed the street labor market into their own field in order to overturn the hierarchy determined by the subcontracting structure in the construction industry. Their bodily expression in the form of riots had radically transgressed the ideas promoted in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics as “One World,” or the 1970 Osaka Expo as “Progress and Harmony for Mankind.” The Olympic legacy was disrupted boldly and transformed into a radical egalitarian thought in this sense. The underclass is immediately defined and commodified by national projects, however, it does not mean that its body is completely involved in its time and space.     

Recentralization of Tokyo: Contradiction and Political Struggle for Regional Policy in Japan

Tokyo, the capital city of Japan, has always been a center of national economic growth, and hence a focal point of political struggle between local and national government. There exist two kinds of political forces; the former desires strong concentration of economic activities in Tokyo based on market rationality and economic efficiency, and the latter counters the former claiming more decentralization based on the balanced national economic structure. This paper reviews the development of urban and regional policy in Japan over the last 20 years and examines how such political forces have played out. After the decade‐long sluggish economic performance and the challenge of inter‐urban competition by Asian mega‐cities, Tokyo Metropolitan Government formulated an aggressive promotional policy under the leadership of the then Governor Ishihara. He tactically created a political consensus to give locational favor to the central part of Tokyo at the expense of other regions. It was partially challenged by the election of the then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who insisted the need to revitalize the regions that were economically lagging. Despite his words, however, the centralization of Tokyo continued. This paper argues that the regional revitalization policy under the Abe administration was political rhetoric rather than reality, and Japan's economic fortune may still depend on the performance of Tokyo in the global economy under the neoliberal policy orientation.     

Star Architects,Urban Spectacles,and Global Brands: Exploring the Case of the Tokyo Olympics 2020

Olympic stadia are often regarded as political showcases stemming from a range of influences: the host nation's international politics, the interests of transnational capitalism, site‐specific meanings, and the power of iconic architecture. By examining the 2020 Tokyo Olympic main stadium as a case study, this article analyzes the controversial Zaha Hadid Tokyo stadium design in relation to the Japanese national branding initiative. The article argues that branding should be seen as part of an economic and cultural system that seems to enhance the global value of iconic architects and their buildings. Yet the power of brands can be understood as contingent. Their ambivalent nature entails a tension between exclusiveness and banality; additionally, branded architects may find it difficult to work across the different regimes of global and local politics, and they are of course also constrained by the logic of neoliberal transnational capitalism. By investigating a major global branded architect, Zaha Hadid, the article considers why a new image of Japan could not be adequately created by Hadid's aesthetics and narratives of the Olympic stadium, which could have been regarded as a national cultural legacy. The article then discusses the contested processes of image‐making and narrative creation in relation to the representation of Japan in contemporary Olympic culture. The article concludes with an examination of Kengo Kuma's architecture language in his 2020 Tokyo Olympics stadium design.     

Spatial Barriers and the Formation of Global Art Cities: The Case of Tokyo

This paper addresses a neglected dimension of global cities research: how the idea of economic concentration, its surplus and consequent global influence can be applied to the art world. The research presented here relates to Tokyo as a well‐known example of a global city, advancing existing understandings of Tokyo from the neglected perspective of the arts. Based on qualitative and quantitative research by the author, including cultural and spatial mapping, interviews, ethnographic observations and visual documents, the findings confirm that the role of space and materiality is overlooked in global cities research. The results demonstrate the active contribution and intervention of spatial patterns in the formation of artistic activities. A number of Tokyo's spatial features have an inhibiting effect that shifts artistic activities underground, creating asymmetries in the constitution of symbolic meanings in the city and a failure to openly stimulate artistic practices. As a consequence, Tokyo's vivid art world remains invisible not only to outsiders but to Tokyo itself.     

Urban Ethnography of the 1920s Working Girl

The 1920s was the era of the city. The urban population of the USA for the first time exceeded the population of rural areas and the nascent institutions of city life were flourishing. This article discusses the urban ethnography of the era with a focus on the way women and work was conceptualized, especially how ‘the city’ figured in explanation. Three ethnographies are examined — Frances Donovan's The Woman Who Waits (1920) and The Saleslady (1929) and Paul Cressey's The Taxi‐Dance Hall (1932). Donovan and Cressey presented their empirical material to show that the so‐called working girl faced a multifaceted world of opportunity in employment, not of disadvantage, as commonly emphasized in today's ethnographic studies of women and work. The conclusion reflects on the past, present and future in terms of the city's explanatory prominence in various eras.     

Japanese Sociology in a Global Network. Internationalization,Disciplinary Development,and Minority Integration in the Road Ahead

The dual trajectories of Japanese sociology and Japan itself are poised at a watershed moment in their shared history. In recent years, Japanese sociology has enlarged its international presence in unprecedented fashion and the Tokyo Olympics have positioned the global spotlight on the entire nation of Japan, making it an opportune moment to reflect on the future of Japanese sociology in connection to Japanese society by way of internationalization. This article draws on the author's reflections on the latest 92nd Japan Sociological Society Annual Conference in the context of recent socio‐structural and intellectual transformations in counterpart sociological cultures in Anglo‐America. Drawing on three theorizations of disciplinary development by Abbott, Connell, and Burawoy, this article articulates two dimensions (socio‐structural and intellectual) with which to examine (i) what Japanese sociology can contribute to improve the internationalization decolonization, and pluralization of global sociology; and (ii) what global sociology can do to advance Japanese sociology's public contribution to improving and preserving LGBTQ minorities' societal well‐being.     

African American Women and Power Politics in New York City, 1944–1972

ABSTRACT

Between 1944 and 1972, African American women from New York City ran for all levels of elected office, from City Council to the United States Presidency. In this article, I argue that World War II created unprecedented opportunities for women to enter politics. A study of postwar New York offers an excellent opportunity to examine how black women defied conventions of gender and race, challenging the pervasive image of the urban political operative, to advance in the city's tough electoral arena. They succeeded in overcoming the Democratic Party machine, Tammany Hall's, resistance to running black women. Once inside the system, despite significant obstacles, these women pushed to change the Democratic Party in important ways for women and for African Americans.     

Nationality and the European union competing identities in the visual design of four European cities 1

In this study, we integrate visual and linguistic research to analyze the relationship between a city's regional, national, transnational, and European identities as the face of four cities depicts it. We explore the cultural identity of Brussels, Luxembourg, Munich, and Dortmund through the study of public signs found in these cities. We examine how the choice of language, layout, typography, accompanying images, and positioning of city signs reflect the tensions involving the change from a national or regional identity to a Pan‐European identity. Our methodology combines an ethnographic approach and neutral observations with interviews of city inhabitants. By combining interpretive analysis with a meta‐discursive approach to how signs are read and perceived, we consider both the production and reception ends of the signs.     

Service outsourcing and labour mobility in a digital age: transnational linkages between Japan and Dalian,China

In this article, I examine the transnational mobility of digital workers and the control of their labour across multiple production sites. The digitalization of work has progressively allowed businesses to outsource IT‐enabled service jobs to cheaper production sites offshore. The growth of the ‘offshore outsourcing' of white‐collar service jobs in East Asia has produced the mobility of cheap digital labour from Japan to Dalian in northeast China. They work at call centres and other Japanese‐speaking workplaces in the lower echelons of the city's IT sector, typically earning salaries in Chinese yuan at, or even below, the average Japanese minimum wage. Based on ethnographic findings, I argue that in the global digital economy, digital services are rendered exploitable through their transnational mobility and that this form of labour migration has developed because of the partial, fluid and contingent nature of the transnational links between the two locations. I analyse how the neoliberal logic of exception underpins the creation of IT parks in China and the casualization of labour in Japan to enable new forms of transnational labour control and capital accumulation.     

HOTEL DEMAND BEFORE,DURING, AND AFTER SPORTS EVENTS: EVIDENCE FROM CHARLOTTE,NORTH CAROLINA

This paper uses daily hotel occupancy data to examine the effects of a wide variety of political and sporting events on the hotel room market of Charlotte, North Carolina from 2005 to 2014. Two political conventions and NASCAR auto races are associated with large increases in hotel occupancy, prices, and revenue, but many other events have no discernable effect on Charlotte's hotel market. The results also indicate that occupancy effects before or after most events are modest at best. Back‐of‐the‐envelope calculations show incremental hotel‐tax receipts fall short of the debt service incurred in constructing and maintaining the city's sports venues. (JEL H71, Z23, Z28)     

Japan's “New Homeless”

Since the mid-1990s, homelessness has become a major issue of public discussion in Japan, and is often viewed as a new social problem facing Japanese society. The issue of homelessness contrasts images of the absence of poverty and homelessness in postwar Japan, often explained based on the unique features of Japanese-style employment and welfare, containing poverty and unemployment. This paper contrasts these views with a perspective on the continuity of poverty, and homelessness in postwar Japan. Specifically, I discuss the characteristics of homelessness in Tokyo, how they relate to the structure of the economy and employment practices, and how the problems of today's homeless are accommodated in the welfare system. I argue that the homeless cast light on patterns of loss of employment, housing, and means of subsistence, characteristic to Japan's economy and welfare system, and contribute to a new understanding of the dynamics of poverty in contemporary Japan.     

Japan’s “New Homeless”

Since the mid-1990s, homelessness has become a major issue of public discussion in Japan, and is often viewed as a new social problem facing Japanese society. The issue of homelessness contrasts images of the absence of poverty and homelessness in postwar Japan, often explained based on the unique features of Japanese-style employment and welfare, containing poverty and unemployment. This paper contrasts these views with a perspective on the continuity ofpoverty, and homelessness in postwar Japan. Specifically, I discuss the characteristics of homelessness in Tokyo, how they relate to the structure of the economy and employment practices, and how the problems oftoday’shomeless are accommodated in the welfare system. I argue that the homeless cast light on patterns of loss of employment, housing, and means of subsistence, characteristic to Japan’s economy and welfare system, and contribute to a new understanding of the dynamics of poverty in contemporary Japan.     

Remaking the Image: The Changing Legibility and Visibility of Derby's City Center,UK

It was in 1960 when the concept of imageability was coined by Lynch, who also emphasized the importance of meaning, legibility, and visibility in the physical environment. Similarly, this study will explore the value of a memorable image within the city center's quarters, by analyzing socio-spatial interaction, pedestrian flow, and users' perception. This study will focus on the relationship between two retailing quarters of a city center and will analyze impacts of a hugely-scaled urban shopping mall on the whole image and memory of a city center. A case study of two main quarters in the City Center of Derby, UK will be analyzed to give analytical suggestions for planning and design in the future and possibly similar developments.     

Change and Continuity in Australian International Migration Policy

Almost half Australia's population are an immigrant or the child of an immigrant. This paper traces changes in Australia's immigration policy over the postwar period and relates them to changing global and national developments. While Australian postwar immigration policy changes are similar in many ways to those in other “traditional” migration countries there are a number of distinctive elements. The effectiveness of those policies in achieving government goals is assessed and it is concluded that most objectives of policy have been successfully achieved. Nevertheless there are a number of challenges which Australian policy makers face over the next decade.     

Infant mortality by socioeconomic status and race in Richmond,Virginia 1979–1981: A research note

In this study an ecological approach, in which the census tract of the mother's usual residence is the basic unit of analysis, is used to study the general association between infant mortality and socio‐economic status for the total white and black population of Richmond, Virginia 1979–1981. The analysis reveals that for the total black and white populations of the city, the traditional, inverse relationship between socioeconomic status and infant mortality exists. For the city's black population, on the other hand, there does not appear to be any relationship between the economic or family life characteristics of census tract populations and their level of infant mortality. Possible explanations of this finding are presented and an agenda for future research is identified.     

An Eastern or a Western Capital City? The Spirit of Helsinki

Helsinki's development during the last two centuries has been similar to that of many other medium-size capitals in continental, eastern and northern Europe. Centrally governed Helsinki, raised to a provincial capital in year 1812 in the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland, was urbanized late. The railway turned Helsinki at the end of nineteenth century into a main port for export and a real capital with connection to all over the country. The new industrial districts, ports, Paris-style boulevards and large stone house areas witnessed bourgeois wealth. The change in policy and governance transferred planning gradually from central to local level. The city's new Urban Planning Committee (1908) got the assignment of making new urban plans in the spirit of European metropolitan plans. This change coincided with the introduction of the one-chamber parliament (1906) and with the golden era of national arts and culture.

After the First World War Finland separated from Russia and Helsinki became capital for the independent republic (1917). The master plan proposal Pro Helsingfors, ordered by private commercial counselor for a Greater Helsinki, was made by architects Eliel Saarinen and Bertel Jung in 1918. It was marked with a continental planning ideas, modernistic monumentalism and traffic optimism. This plan influenced the development of the capital throughout the twentieth century. Among the large problems to be solved was the planning of a new city centre, the Töölönlahti bay area. The symbolic value of this area grew with Parliament House (1930). However, the final planning of this ‘republican core’ is still an open issue, with mixed interest by the state and the city.

After 1945 migration has been steadily growing. With the 1952 Olympics Helsinki joined the exclusive club of Olympic cities. Land area grew five-fold when the suburban zones were annexed in 1946 by decree of the National Government. Local urban planning could see capital, regional, metropolitan, traffic and suburban planning as a whole. The first master plan was approved in 1972. Since that, the city planning has been controlled strictly by the municipality.