Tag: Russia
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File under: clever strategies to skim a little off the top
Kirill Bezrukov (@KBezrukov) pointed me to this beautiful example of savvy business in Kaliningrad. There’s a bridge (Vysokiy Most, or High Bridge) that connects the main parts of Kaliningrad to Oktyabrskiy Ostrov, a quirky, mostly undeveloped island in the middle of the city. Among other things, the city’s World Cup development agenda involves transforming this…
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A trashy kind of Olympic legacy
In preparation for my talk at this year’s American Association of Geographers annual conference I’ve been thinking about Sochi several years after the Olympics. I think it’s worth taking a look at the city after the circus has left town, when the international spotlight has largely moved on to other events and other places. Sochi…
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L’esprit de l’escalier, or Meddling? What meddling?
In April this year I had the opportunity to give a talk at Smith College with Martin Müller and Chris Gaffney. The event was called Sport Mega Events and Urban Development: Cases of Brazil 2014, Rio 2016, Sochi 2014, Russia 2018, and it was hosted by Andrew Zimbalist. If you don’t know him, Andrew is a…
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The World Cup and/or Urban Development
Mega-events are mega expensive – this is nothing new. And while there are exhaustive lists of the high costs of preparing for the Olympics or the World Cup, there is also evidence that in some cases these are better understood not as the costs of a sporting event, but rather as massive development projects with…
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Sleight of Hand
If you’re feeling critical, it’s easy enough to find problems in the preparations for a World Cup. In seemingly any host nation, journalists and academics alike find ripe fruit in bribery and corruption scandals, tales of misused funds and human rights violations, busted budgets, and the sad parade of white elephant stadiums. In this, unfortunately,…
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Russia’s World Cup: Stadium and Urban Development in Ekaterinburg
Here is another article I wrote for Futblograd.com, this time focusing on developments in the host city of Ekaterinburg. http://futbolgrad.com/russias-world-cup-stadium-urban-development-ekaterinburg/
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Russia’s 2018 World Cup – A Conversation Beyond Sport
An article I wrote for Futbolgrad.com about some issues to look for in the 2018 World Cup. http://futbolgrad.com/russias-2018-world-cup-conversation-beyond-sport/