The transformation of Beijing as a dual Olympic city: growth, post-growth, and the reimagining of the capital

Richard Hu

Planning Perspectives, 2024, vol. 39, issue 3, 575-594

Abstract: This article employs an Olympic urbanism perspective on the transformation of Beijing’s planning and development. For Beijing, holding the Olympic Games was not just about staging the city – and the nation – to the world as commonly understood. It was also about transforming the city through megaprojectification – the use of megaprojects like the Olympic Games to boost urban growth. The 2008 Summer Olympics played a critical role in growing Beijing in terms of the economy, population, fixed assets investment, infrastructure provision, and real estate development. Rapid but ill-planned growth within a decade exacerbated many pre-existing problems of the megacity. In the post-Olympic years, big city syndrome became Beijing’s calling card: pollution, congestion, unliveability, and unsustainability. Since then, a post-growth discourse has been emerging, reimagining the capital’s future in the context of balanced, coordinated development of the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region. These include the construction of a new city Xiong’an to decentralize Beijing. This post-growth discourse that influenced the 2022 Winter Olympics was a contrast to the growth discourse that had underpinned the 2008 Summer Olympics. Beijing presents an unusual case of holding two Olympics within a short timeframe but under two contrasting urbanisms.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02665433.2024.2324356 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rppexx:v:39:y:2024:i:3:p:575-594

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rppe20

DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2024.2324356

Access Statistics for this article

Planning Perspectives is currently edited by Michael Hebbert

More articles in Planning Perspectives from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().