Atlantas Olympic Resurgence How The 1996 Games Revived A Struggling City

"The summer of 1996. In nineteen days, six million visitors jostled about in a southern city grappling with white flight, urban decay and the stifling legacy of Jim Crow. Six years earlier, a bold, audacious partnership of a strong mayor, enlightened business leaders and Atlanta's Black political leadership dared to bid on hosting the 1996 Olympic Games. Unexpectedly, the city won, an achievement that ignited a loose but robust coalition that worked collectively, if sometimes contentiously, to prepare the city and push it forward. This is a story of how once-struggling Atlanta leveraged the benefits of the Centennial Games to become a city of international prominence. This improbable rise from the ashes is told by three urban planning professionals who were at the center of the story."--Back cover.

At this writing, the Atlanta metropolitan area is the ninth-largest in the country and likely to climb into the eighth spot in the not-to-distant future. This book focuses on four key, interconnected themes in the evolution and restructuring of Atlanta in the twenty-first century. The first is the major racial and economic restructuring of the region's residential geography, including the city proper. A second theme of the book is the failure of the City of Atlanta to capture a significant share of a tremendous growth in local land values. A third theme of the book is the critical role of state government in constraining and enabling how development and redevelopment occurs and whether the interests of those most vulnerable to exclusion and displacement are given serious consideration. The final theme of the book, and its key overarching narrative, concerns the political economy of urban change and the presence of inflection points. .

A no-holds-barred view of the 1996 Atlanta, Georgia Centennial Olympic Games from an insider's perspective.

The purpose of this exploratory study was to develop a better understanding of non-host city legacies experienced in relation to the hosting of an edition of the Olympic Games. A case study focusing on Athens, Georgia and the 1996 Olympic Games held in Atlanta, USA was used to illustrate this particular phenomenon of interest. Findings revealed five emergent legacy themes: nostalgia, urban development, volunteering, community engagement, and sport development. Moreover, three major factors (planning approach, external factors, and image) created a different Games experience in Athens and thereby distinguished its legacies from ones created in Atlanta. Challenges and issues associated with providing event legacies in non-host cities are also discussed.

Info. on (1) the amount of Fed. funding and support provided to the 1984 and 1996 Summer Olympic Games (OG), and planned for the 2002 Winter OG, and the types of projects and activities that were funded and supported; and (2) the Fed. policies, legislative authorizations, and agency controls in place for providing the federal funds and support to the OG. Includes the evaluation of the 5 projects: development of the Ocoee Whitewater Rapids Slalom venue for the 1996 Summer OG; use of Fed. employees to provide security during the 1996 OG; payment of Atlanta Paralympic Organizing Comm. staff salaries; payment of Paralympic Games' opening ceremony entertainers costs; and vet. assist. during the Paralympic Games.

Coubertin's main contribution to the founding of the modern Olympics was the zeal he brought to transforming an idea that had evolved over decades into the reality of Olympiad I and all the Olympic Games held thereafter.

When hosting an edition of the Olympic Games, the host city commonly experiences various lasting impacts. Thus, much sport event management and legacy literature pertains to host city legacies. However, due to the magnitude of the Games, several nearby cities are needed in order to successfully host such an event. Nonetheless, very little research highlights non-host city legacies. Therefore, due to their necessity, the purpose of this study aims to identify the legacies that have accrued in a non-host city as a result of hosting part of an edition of the Games. Using the case study of the 1996 Games, this research examined the non-host city of Athens, Georgia. The findings of this study revealed that non-host cities experience many types of sport event legacies. Also discovered was that host and non-host cities garner dissimilar legacies and that there are challenges faced when planning legacies within a non-host city.

A day-by-day chronicle of the Games of the XXVIth Olympiad in Atlanta, Georgia, from July 13 to August 4, 1996.