The following post was written for the American Culture Project, organized by William Harvey through his nonprofit initiative Cultures in Harmony.
Many of my friends hate the Olympics.
I love the Olympics.
Personally, I’m a sucker for the color and the pageantry. It is the one regularly scheduled event in which the entire world comes together to celebrate our diversity and our common humanity. The size of the event seems to meld the vibe of the largest pro-sports events I’ve ever attended with that of the largest rock festival I’ve ever attended, and then multiply these by ten. Plus, it’s a welcome relief from the quadrennial onslaught of American presidential campaign politics.
And yet, I have to recognize the criticisms of my friends. The Olympics, for all of their professed ideals, churn up many hypocrisies in the execution of the event. The pageant has become so expensive that it necessarily precludes participation by much of the developing world. Whether hosted by a wealthy city and nation or not, there are plenty of realpolitikal shortcuts taken to fund and construct and manage the event and, as is typically the case, the poor, the afflicted, the disenfranchised bear the brunt of this burden.
I was mindful of this as a Chicago resident in 2009, watching that city’s bid come together and it became increasingly clear that accommodations and improvements to the city would only be made on a shoestring and on an “as needed” basis; neighborhoods would be torn apart and redeveloped, but we wouldn’t even see an extended Red Line in exchange for that. Chicago lost that bid, of course, which went to Rio de Janeiro, whose Olympics have come together after many travails, but not without tens of thousands of under-reported evictions, while poverty and pollution continue to be issues that Brazilians struggle against every day.
But what if it wasn’t that way?
What if the Olympics fulfilled that wonderful, idealistic “coming together” in the spirit of community and competition without all of the icky side-effects that have come along with the modern Olympic games? What if the media and marketing blitz was matched and expanded by local and national governments and a private sector that looked at the event not just as an opportunity to throw a big party and market itself to the world, but to deliver major and much-needed investments to communities whose needs are often neglected? What if the bid was built from the bottom-up and not from the top-down? What if it was assembled in the Biblical spirit of jubilee as a time for reparation and reconciliation and forgiveness backed by action by the wealthiest and most powerful and prompted by a sincere desire to heal our broken world?
I was thinking about this in light of the various daydreamy “bids” I’ve seen the Internet assemble for the City of Detroit. After every Summer Olympics, some assemblage of Detroiters and Michiganders put together a vision of how that city could host the Olympics. It’s a paradox; the poorest big city in United States trying to host the most expensive party in the world, but I can’t fault their imagination.
If I wanted to put together an Olympic bid for Detroit, it would look like this:
- The Olympics would be the pretext for short-term investments in Detroit sports facilities and long-term and permanent investment in Detroit’s assets and infrastructure.
- All of the Olympic sporting venues would be temporary or would make use of already-existing facilities: Comerica Park, Ford Field, the new Red Wings thing (hey, we’ve already paid for it), facilities at Wayne State, Eastern Michigan, University of Detroit Mercy, and University of Michigan. Where temporary, land would be earmarked for post-Olympics rent-controlled housing or tightly-controlled and locally driven economic development. These local commitments would be legally-binding before shovel meets dirt.
- The Olympic Village would be built on reclaimed factory land or, better, restored housing stock throughout Detroit’s neighborhoods. However, again, before a single shovel went into the ground, before the contracts were inked up, it would be understood that 100% of this housing would be committed to rent-controlled or sold housing to groups representative of Detroit’s overall population at the time of the bid. Detroit like every other American city struggling to rebound has featured scattershot development prompting reckless gentrification, but not this bid. This bid would nip that in the bud.
- The far flung sites (events concentrated Downtown, on Lake St. Clair, in Ann Arbor and other suburbs, plus the neighborhood-hosted Olympic Village) would require a robust and speedy public transit, and it would all have to be built in four years. No problem; with the right expenditure, a system could be built that is not only equal to the needs of a region with 5 million people but no comprehensive public transit, but even saves money in the long run by taking advantage of new technology, clean energy, and an efficient design. Engineering and construction would be contracted out by a competitive bidding process to contractors with Michigan roots. I like the sound of light rail, and any Detroit suburb that wants to enjoy Olympic investments would have to sign on to the regional transit plan.
- The ethical redevelopment of Detroit and the implementation of its comprehensive public transit would be two huge slices of an educational and economic development pie, and this is where the state and federal government would come in. If Detroit’s public and private sector were to foot much of the bill for development, then the state and the federal government would deliver on these long-term investments that would constitute a success for the Olympics long after the torch passed on. The state would shift course from its calamitous divestment in secondary and primary public education, and re-up financial assistance and research funding, while the nation would deliver on infrastructural investments and economic incentives in the metro area so that the city is not hanging on an choppy economic resurgence following the Olympics but is rather carrying the Olympics on the crest of a more egalitarian economic resurgence years before they arrive.
- But would this make any money? Possibly not by the traditional metrics. It would be one of the most expensive Olympics in history. Its long term legacies would be good schools, reliable transit, improved housing stock, and access for all Detroiters. The Olympics wouldn’t be a moneymaker in marketing buzzwords of placemaking and public-private synergy, but a more fundamental shift in the way our we in the public show respect and take responsibility for each other. How the Detroit Olympics ultimately came down in dollars and cents would be a difficult task for economists to figure out, but it might be a full generation at best before expenses were recouped.
Is any of this likely?
Pssht. Probably not. Detroit will probably not host the Olympics anytime soon. Even if it did, there is little reason to think that it would do so without the broad abuses other host cities and nations have presided over. What I have described would require different attitudes from elected officials, from business leaders, from the body politic, in Detroit, in Lansing, in Washington, and on the IOC. Plus, I don’t know that much about the Olympics and I don’t know a ton about urban planning. This is just daydreaming. This is just a pipe dream.
Still, the Olympics are predicated on peoples’ dreams and, some might reasonably say, sometimes very unrealistic dreams. And if there is a facet of the Olympics that I think is worth treasuring and emulating, it is that pursuit of excellence and comity in competition.
If Detroit, Lansing, and Washington D.C., from the top to the bottom were to commit to such ideas in putting together a Detroit bid that would benefit all Detroiters and Michiganders — of the Olympics as a challenge to build something permanent and good and not to simply enjoy a two-week bonanza — who is to say that it wouldn’t work out in the end?
Certainly many of our athletes have bested similar odds.
It would be a powerful witness of American culture indeed.