Financing the 2012 London Olympic Games
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012
The current $15 billion estimated cost for Britain to host the 2012 Summer Olympics is nearly $10 billion more than its original bid. It is not the first time Britain has struggled financially to make the Olympics a reality–war-torn London hosted the 1948 Olympics–and with a stagnant economy and the highest unemployment in 17 years, there is wide disagreement over whether this is a sound financial investment. It could be years before the true economic impact of the games will be felt. Read more here.
| “You can take two attitudes to the Olympics,” Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, said late last year. “You can say, these are times of austerity, and therefore we should pare them down as much as possible. Or you can say, because these are times of austerity, we need to do everything we possibly can to harness the opportunity.” |
Ricky Burdett, key design advisor to the 2012 London Olympics, explores this topic at greater length in his article for the spring/summer 2012 issue of the Journal, called "Finding Solutions for Urban Imbalances."