Large-scale events and sustainable urban regeneration: key principles for host cities

Abstract

Hosting large-scale events is often justified by the envisaged regeneration benefits. This paper explores the merits of events as regeneration tools, before providing recommendations for future host cities about how best to maximise opportunities for sustainable regeneration. Large-scale events are often represented as the epitome of ‘top-down’ approaches to regeneration, but ideas are suggested here that can allow events to assist a diverse range of target beneficiaries at the neighbourhood level. The paper concludes that cities should try to follow ten generic principles to maximise the regeneration legacy of events, but that they also need to think about which events, or which portfolio of events, would be most likely to assist their regeneration objectives.