Ëcompany Cityí To Ësports Cityí : Torino 2006 As A Catalyst Of Urban Restructuring And Property Market Change

Many cities have viewed the hosting of international sporting events as a unique panacea for leveraging funding from a variety of sources both public and private to tackle long-standing problems of adjustment in the urban economy, in particular, deficits in physical infrastructure. The significant commitment of public resource to such events, clearly reflects this belief. Their hosting necessitates a significant transformation of the urban built environment with new requirements made on urban land and property markets. However, it is far from clear how a time limited exposure on the global media stage can act as a long-term trigger for sustainable urban transformation and property market change. This paper attempts to provide new evidence on these issues through a systematic examination of the recent experience of the Italian city of Turin in hosting the 2006 Winter Olympic Games. Turin provides a particularly interesting example as the bid to host the Winter Olympics was a key component of a process of plan-led urban transformation designed to reposition the city in response to very acute problems of economic restructuring associated with the cities previous status as the ëcompany cityí of FIAT. The paper examines the Torino 2006 projects within the context of the wider recent and current strategic policy actions to reposition the city and in particular, attempts to assess their property market and urban structure impacts. The analysis will also focus on how the ëimplementation structureí - the network of organisations and resources associated with the Torino 2006 projects - and the cities property market fundamentals, play important roles in shaping the magnitude and timing of impacts. The paper concludes with an assessment of the implications of the results obtained for cities contemplating a similar path to urban restructuring.