The City as an Image-creation Machine: A Critical Analysis of Vancouver's Olympic Bid

Abstract

The strategic mobilization of images, visual metaphors, and other forms of graphical rhetoric has always been central in place promotion. Images of place have assumed even greater importance, however, with the rise of locational tournaments of cities bidding for the "right" to host high-stakes transnational spectacles. In this paper, we adapt Harvey Molotch's pioneering theory of the urban growth machine to illuminate the contemporary enterprise of city bids for the Olympic Games. Taking Vancouver's successful bid for the 2010 Winter Games as a case study, we use a visual methodology framework to analyze the manifest (explicit, surface) and latent (implicit, subtle) visual narrative strategies used to craft a carefully considered representation of the city. Our analysis of the official Bid Questionnaire and the video presentation to the International Olympic Committee documents the sophisticated process by which a city is constructed to embody pristine urban nature, multicultural social harmony, and vibrant local cultures of sport in keeping with the spirit of Olympism. Whether imagined cities like this are effective is irrelevant: cities understand that half of their advertising budget is wasted (they just don't know which half). The expanding symbolic economies of tourism, conventions, and hallmark events require that urban growth machines develop and operate a full suite of image creation machines, each attuned to the real and perceived desires of an elusive transnational audience in a perpetual movable feast of locational consumption. [End Page 24]

Image Impacts of Planned Special Events: Literature Review and Research Agenda

“…Special events are not hosted in a sociocultural vacuum (Getz, 1997;Hall, 2001); rather they are deeply embedded in the "glocal" sociocultural realities. Many studies find that ideology (Issue 4) (Berger, 2010;Dimeo & Kay, 2004;Giffard & Rivenburgh, 2000;Preuss & Alfs, 2011;Rivenburgh, 1992Rivenburgh, , 1995, politics (Issue 16) (Mangan, Ok, & Park, 2011;Paret, 1978), elitism (Issue 9) ( McCallum et al, 2005;O'Donnell, 2006;Reid, 2006), and gender (Issue 12) (Berger, 2010;Trump, 1998) can influence the nature of the event hosts' projected images. Briefly, these forces (among others) create an invisible "field," through which the hosts' projected images are usually filtered if not distorted.…”

Berlin's Failed Bid to Host the 2000 Summer Olympic Games: Urban Development and the Improvement of Sports Facilities

“…Pound, 2004), while others investigate various aspects of the bidding process (e.g. Hiller, 2000; Whitelegg, 2000; Shoval, 2002; McCallum et al. , 2005).…”

Mapping the Olympic growth machine

“…237-8) Cashman, 2006;Chalkley and Essex, 1999;Gerlach, 2004;Roche, 2000;Short, 2004, pp. 86-108;Shoval, 2002;Gold and Gold, 2008;McCallum et al, 2005. ) The idea of hosting large sports events was not new for Vancouver in the late 1990s, when the Vancouver-Whistler 2010 Bid Corporation was established.…”