Whose games? The costs of being 'Olympic citizens' in Beijing

Hyun Bang Shin and Bingqin Li

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Mega-events such as the Olympic Games tend to be accompanied by copious media coverage of the negative social impacts of these events, and people in the affected areas are often thought to share similar experiences. The research in this paper, which focused on the Beijing Summer Olympic Games of 2008, unpacks the heterogeneous groups in a particular sector of the housing market to gain a better understanding of how the Games affected different resident groups. The paper critically examines the experience of migrant tenants and Beijing citizens (landlords in particular) in “villages-in-the-city” (known as cheongzhongcun), drawing on their first-hand accounts of the citywide preparations for the Games and the pervasive demolition threats to their neighbourhoods. The paper argues that the Beijing Summer Olympiad produced an uneven, often exclusionary, Games experience for a certain segment of the urban population.

JEL-codes: E6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-10
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in Environment and Urbanization, October, 2013, 25(2), pp. 559-576. ISSN: 0956-2478

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