The modern Olympic Games draws selectively on recollections of the classical festival, which have been imaginatively constructed and reconstructed over time. This chapter reviews the principal phases in the development of what are now known as the Summer Olympic Games from their reintroduction in Athens 1896 through to Tokyo 2020. In doing so, we focus on three phases. The first, lasting from 1896 to1906, was characterized by revival and initial innovation. The second (1908–1956) was marked by steady evolution and consolidation of the Games, with local Organizing Committees (OCOGs) devoting increasing resources to preparing stadia and associated facilities. The third phase (1960–present) has seen the relationship between the Summer Olympics and their host cities actively and continually reinvented, with the themes of legacy and, somewhat less transparently, sustainability coming to the fore.

The environmental debate has galvanized thinking across all branches of academic discourse and professional practice. This chapter looks at the ways in which the Olympic Movement has responded to growing concerns about the environmental impact of the Games historically and the agenda of environmentalism in the context of sustainability and in the face of global warming. It explores the evolution of IOC thinking as it has sought to carve out a role in shaping the relationship between sport and the environment in the Games themselves but also in the wider Olympic movement. In doing this it also shows how sustainability and legacy have become part of a single discourse of positive impact for the Olympics.

Speaking to an academic audience, Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson (2006), then the leading medal winner in the history of the Paralympic Games, noted the remarkable convergence of the Paralympic and Olympic movements. From pragmatic beginnings as part of the treatment of spine-injured ex-servicemen towards the end of the Second World War, disability sport has developed so rapidly that it now supports sport-specific national squads of elite athletes participating in international competition. As the summit of disability sport, the Paralympic Games have played a major part in changing social attitudes by emphasizing achievement rather than impairment and by accelerating the agenda of inclusion. They have also forced changes in official attitudes in countries where disability was ideologically problematic, if only to accommodate international opinion when bidding for the Olympics – given that the Paralympics are now closely linked to that process (Gold and Gold, 2007).

We occasionally remind ourselves that Planning Perspectives’ subtitle states that it is ‘an international journal of history, planning and the environment’. Most of that needs little clarification. The journal’s international character is shown, issue by issue, by its contents and editorial board. There is also no doubt about its commitment to planning and history, given that the planning process studied historically is a required feature in the articles that we publish. Where the reminder is perhaps necessary stems from inclusion of the words ‘the environment’. When preceded by the definite article, a focus on the environment would seem to imply something rather different from what is normally seen in this journal – at least with regard to that term’s contemporary meaning and emotive associations. It might well suggest planning historians pursuing a critical ecological agenda, taking their place alongside other scholars interested in issues such as climate change, disease control, deforestation, desertification, landscape conservation, urban environmental quality, and equitable resource distribution. These, it must be confessed, are not themes commonly articulated in the pages of Planning Perspectives. Yet planning interventions are inherently concerned with environmental matters even if the focus for many planning historians has more often been on the scale of the plan and the vision of the planning process rather than environment per se. The study of environmental regulations, for example, is demonstrably important for planning history, whether the subject concerned is nineteenth-century sanitary reform, interwar suburbanization and green belts, linearity and urban growth, colonial and neo-colonial exploitation of resources, sustainability and smart growth principles, resilience and environmental justice, or a host of other issues. Two questions perhaps worth asking therefore are, first, what was originally meant when the word ‘environment’ was included in the journal’s sub-title? and, secondly, what could or should it mean today? The first question, unlike the second, is relatively easy to answer. Environmental debate was very different when Planning Perspectives was launched in the mid-1980s. Understandings of environment from that time were primarily linked to alerting a sceptical public about the dangers of an imminent environmental crisis and the need for global ecological security. Prior to the publication of the Brundtland Report and the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – two landmark events dating from 1987 and 1988 respectively – environmentalist thought generally lacked the direction, conceptual sophistication, and evidence-backed clarity that it has latterly achieved. Against that background, it was perhaps inevitable that there would be a degree of imprecision about what might appear in the journal under the environmental banner; a lack of clarity that, incidentally, had a useful permissiveness for a new journal seeking copy from potential contributors. The editorial in the journal’s first issue (March 1986) provides mention of environment in relatively brief and non-specific terms through a series of capsule statements. Planning historians, it was argued, were inherently curious about ‘the processes by which our various environments

1. Introduction John R. Gold and Margaret M. Gold Part 1: The Olympic Festivals 2. From A to B: the Summer Olympics, 1896-2008 John R. Gold and Margaret M. Gold 3. The Winter Olympics: Driving Urban Change, 1924-2014 Stephen J. Essex 4. The Cultural Olympiads: Reviving the Panegyris Margaret M. Gold and George Revill 5. The Paralympics John R. Gold and Margaret M. Gold Part 2: Planning and Management 6. Financing the Games Paul Kitchin 7. Promoting the Olympic City Stephen V. Ward 8. Olympic Security Jon Coaffee and Peter Fussey 9. Urban Regeneration and Renewal Jon Coaffee 10. Olympic Tourism Mike Weed Part 3: City Portraits 11. Berlin 1936 Monika Meyer-Kunzel 12. Mexico City 1968 Michael Barke 13. Montreal 1976 Daniel Latouche 14. Barcelona 1992 Francisco-Javier Monclus 15. Sydney 2000 Beatriz Garcia 16. Athens 2004 Margaret M. Gold 17. Beijing 2008 Ian G. Cook and Stephen Miles 18. London 2012 Graeme Evans 19. Rio de Janeiro 2016 John R. Gold 20. Afterword John R. Gold and Margaret M. Gold

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1 Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons”

"State of the Legacy: reviewing a decade of writings on the regeneration promises of London 2012." Planning Perspectives, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2

The Venice Biennale is the world's first biennial art exhibition. It was founded in 1895 as a way for Venice to put itself on the Italian festival map, to generate tourism, and to boost the contemporary cultural sector in a city with a strong tradition in classical art. The Biennale has adapted and evolved into a portfolio of 7 international exhibitions. Today three of these – the Art Biennale, the Architectural Biennale and the Film Festival – are global players in their respective fields. At the same time, the festival has also impacted geographically on the city. Beginning by utilising the Giardini gardens in the east of the city, it then spread to the redundant shipyards of the Arsenale in the 1980s, where it became a driving force for regeneration. More recently, it has diffused outwards into the wider city as national pavilions and collateral events established themselves in suitable buildings after 1995. Described as the Venetization of the festival, this geographical spread of the Biennale from its original exhibition ground has rooted the biennale in the fabric of the city in new ways. This chapter looks at the origins of the festival and its current relationship to the city, highlighting the ways in which the festival has adapted to internal and external pressures for change while keeping its model of national pavilions, by which countries display their art. Initially a pragmatic solution to diversifying the exhibition, this was later interpreted as a straightjacket and an imperial anachronism, but has nevertheless endured as a feature of the Arts and Architectural Biennales. Seen as a means of promoting tourism, the Biennale is now ironically seen as an antidote to overtourism and mass cultural tourism by tempting visitors away from the crowded centre to explore the city beyond.

During a lengthy holiday trip that I suspect was designed primarily to satisfy my father’s insatiable passion for motoring, we stopped near Avignon to view the Pont du Gard, the imposing three-decker aqueduct-bridge built by the Romans in the first century BC. Had I but known it at the age of 12, it would be as good an introduction to the subject of infrastructure as you could wish to find. Clearly, it was a spectacular feat of hydraulic engineering. Spanning the steep valley of the River Gard and constructed without use of mortar, it was a vital part of a 50-kilometre-long gravity-flow system that allowed the city of Nemausus (now Nîmes) to flourish despite lacking a reliable local water supply. Later, after ceasing to carry water, it accommodated a lucrative toll road. During the days of the Grand Tour, the Pont attracted well-heeled travellers, keen to check whether reality matched the Romantic portrayals of the bridge found in the writings of Rabelais, Rousseau, and Stendhal or the paintings of William Marlow and Hubert Robert. Its symbolic value was underlined by the way that French rulers from Charles IX through to Napoleon III made well-publicized visits, seemingly keen to associate themselves with the perceived glories of imperial Rome. Notably, when UNESCO awarded it World Heritage Site status in 1985, the commendation emphasized its continuing cultural importance as tangible and intangible heritage as much as it being an exemplar of classical architectural construction. This multifaceted nature of this example hints at the sheer breadth of meaning that ‘infrastructure’ now encompasses, although that was not always so. Despite its Latinate roots, it was only coined in the late nineteenth century as a term that French engineers used to describe the track beds for railway lines. After then being appropriated by military planners to describe the support facilities for combat, it progressively assumed a much wider meaning as a collective noun referring to ‘all subordinate parts of an undertaking’ (Oxford English Dictionary). As currently conceived, infrastructure can be ‘hard’ – comprising physical installations such as power grids, roads, railway terminals, pipelines, harbours, dams, airports, expressways, telecommunications systems, and much more – or ‘soft’, including financial institutions, services, computer software and regional pools of human capital. It also embraces the flows that are facilitated by these sinews of connection along with the nodes, networks, experiences, practices, and imaginaries with which they are associated. The study of infrastructure, therefore, provides a central focus that permits contemplation not just of the frameworks that allow human activities to function but also of the narratives that surround their use

The rapid proliferation of festivals experienced by cities round the world over the last four decades was brought to a sudden halt in early 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic. Planned gatherings ranging from local arts festivals to global megaevents were summarily abandoned, postponed, or converted to digital alternatives. This paper opens with a contextual introduction. The ensuing section considers the reasons for the seemingly unfe ered proliferation and festivalization that had occurred pre-Covid-19, but indicates that problems had already arisen over appropriation of public space, overtourism and security before the current crisis. The next part surveys the pandemic's impact on the urban festival sector to date. With reference to the megaevents planned for 2020 and a series of case studies of arts festivals, it notes responses ranging from whole or partial cancellations to implementation of wholly digital options. The conclusion argues that the continuing importance of physical congregation in designated places must be recognized, contending that this is enhanced rather than challenged by the rise of digital alternatives.

The International Planning History Society (IPHS) presented an online masterclass on oral history at the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) annual PhD Workshop, which was conducted over two 90-minute sessions on 24 and 25 June 2021. Designed as an introduction to oral history, the event was open to AESOP workshop participants and to PhD candidates and recent graduates who registered through IPHS. Twenty-four people from various parts of the world participated.