Global Games and Local Legacies: Understanding Olympics Outcomes in Host Cities

[i]Call for papers[/i] October 22-24, 2009 Vancouver Submitting Your Proposal for the Symposium [b]Deadline: July 15, 2009 [/b] The Urban Studies Program at Simon Fraser University invites scholars and practitioners from all fields to submit paper proposals for a symposium entitled “Global Games and Local Legacies: Understanding Olympics Outcomes in Host Cities,” to be held in Vancouver, Canada, from October 22-24, 2009. The symposium will involve organized panels, moderated discussion, and an open forum for ideas about urban Olympics outcomes research. The panels will be held at the Vancouver and Surrey campuses of SFU, and the symposium will also include organized field visits through sites that merit special attention and monitoring for their post-Olympic legacy on Metro Vancouver’s urban fabric. Presentations of both completed scholarship and research at the more exploratory stage are welcome, as is graduate student work. The symposium will be followed by a selective, peer-reviewed publication of the proceedings. An interdisciplinary team of faculty and graduate student researchers based at SFU Urban Studies has been investigating the potential urban outcomes of the Winter 2010 Olympic Games for the Vancouver region. We are taking a comparative approach based on observed outcomes in two prior Winter Olympic host cities, Salt Lake City and Calgary, using a mixture of quantitative indicators of impacts and qualitative impressions from researchers based in these other host cities. Beginning from the premise of this research --that the Olympics provide an exceptional opportunity to examine some of the most urgent issues facing cities today -- this symposium will bring together scholars and practitioners to place the Vancouver Olympics story within a global context to understand better the real costs and benefits of the Games for host cities. We invite proposals from all fields that explore the urban impacts of the Olympics, past, present, and future. Themes might include, but are not limited, to the following: 1. Public indebtedness 2. Polarization (income, poverty, etc.) 3. Political impacts 4. Public facilities and amenities 5. Sprawl, transportation, and land use 6. Social cohesion 7. Creativity/cultural impact 8. Local economy 9. Social policy Visit the official site: http://www.sfu.ca/urban