This month Dr. Pop is all about sports and politics, about the ways that the love of the game gets mixed up with the love of money and power. Celine examines the “rules of the games” in the upcoming London Olympics, Gary comments on a recent drive for professional football in LA spearheaded by a local power broker, and Andrea turns her eye to the collateral consequences of the 2010 African Cup of Nations. Each story deals with the tension between sports for the sake of enjoyment, and sports for the sake of enhancing market values or securing political futures. They address the ways that athletic competitions have become a key fixture in the contemporary global political economy.

This unique mixture, between the politics of sports and the economic game of politics, comes into play every time a city faces a decision about building a new stadium or a country attempts to host a mega-event like the FIFA World Cup.  At stake in these decisions is the deployment of scarce public dollars and vital urban lands. As the future of these resource get decided, a broad collection of stakeholders must debate:  What kinds of benefits might an expanded sports infrastructure bring to our city?  Who will get to enjoy these benefits and for how long? And because these are tough questions, these debates can set off fierce competitions between opposing groups, competitions which make many championship games seem like little-league. To read more about how these questions are being answered in South Africa, check out this recent NY Times article: “Cost of Stadium Reveals Tensions in South Africa.”

At the heart of these debates is the issue of who has the right to access and to enjoy the city. This often becomes a clash between the use value and the exchange value of urban space, between the ways that city dwellers make the most of city lands and the ways these same lands are controlled by outside investors, as well as commercial and government interests.  The 2008 Beijing Olympics offer a clear example of what happens when the concern with building a new sports infrastructure becomes more important than the human rights of urban dwellers. In addition to the seven gold medals won by swimmer Michael Phelps, the Beijing Olympics also featured the displacement of roughly 1.5. million people from their homes.

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Plan for London Olympics 2012 Village Photo: ecofriend.org

In 2012, London will be hosting the Summer Olympics, “the greenest games to date” according to the Olympic Delivery Authority chief executive, David Higgins.

London authorities are gearing up to win the gold in sustainability, with claims of cutting carbon emissions, lighting a carbon neutral Olympic Flame, using recycled materials and cleaning up the brownfield upon which athletes will compete. But that’s not the only legacy the city hopes to accomplish. London is also looking to implement a robust social agenda to accompany the physical regeneration projects. As the Strategic Regeneration Framework report hopefully proposes:

The true legacy of 2012 is that within 20 years the communities who host the 2012 Games will have the same social and economic chances as their neighbours across London.

London Olympics Photo: gadiss.com

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