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  #61  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2024, 8:24 PM
Tuckerman Tuckerman is offline
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It would be hard to find someone visiting the United States especially to go at Atlanta.

I would argue that France may be a little peculiar in this regard. My experience, having worked in Paris, Germany and the UK is that each of these countries has a very different orientation to the USA as well as to Atlanta. Because of the heavy concentration of immigrants to the US from the UK and Germany, there is, IMO. a very different knowledge of the cities in the US and their relative importance. For example, Atlanta is the North American headquarters for Porsche, Mercedes Benz, Thyssen, Siemans to name a few major German companies here.
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  #62  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2024, 8:44 PM
Tuckerman Tuckerman is offline
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A final note on International tourists to the US. The website https://www.trade.gov/us-states-citi...seas-travelers is very useful as it provides a very clear picture of international travel to American cities. For what it is worth Boston, Houston and Atlanta are quite similar in international visitors (10th, 11th and 12th). But the reality is that the top five cities (NYC, Miami< LA,Orlando and SF) make up around 3/4 of foreign visitors to the US. (in 2023).
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  #63  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2024, 9:09 PM
DCReid DCReid is offline
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Originally Posted by Tuckerman View Post
The costs and benefits of hosting the Olympic games is very complicated as those of us from Atlanta can well attest. A nice analysis is found at https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/eco...-olympic-games .

It is also complicated by the fact that in some cases national financial support by the host country is given to the host cities to defray costs and allow for more spectacular opening ceremonies, etc. This is usually not the case for any American city that hosts the event. Therefore the financial burden has to be handled in a more challenging way.

My wife worked for the Atlanta Olympic Committee and we experienced a lot of the challenges and joys of the event. There is not room enough to explore all the dimensions.

Atlanta was a relatively small city at the time and the financial burden was great. Nonetheless, there was some clever planning that left the city with some tangible structures: an extension of a MARTA line to the northern suburbs; a stadium that continues to serve (first as a home for the Braves and now the football stadium for Georgia State University); an aquatic center for Georgia Tech; housing for Georgia Tech; and of course the development of Centennial Olympic Park in downtown.

How much the Olympics contributed to the extraordinary population growth of the Atlanta Metro over the years since 1996 is probably not knowable in any exact way, but there is general speculation that it was part of the fuel for the growth.

Was it worth it? Is it worth it for a city to put such large resources into the support of professional sports? We do it without much questioning for baseball, football, and basketball.
I don't see Olympics affecting the trajectory of most cities. St Louis in 1902 was already a larger city and per Wiki, its best percentage growth decades were already behind it. Montreal continued to decline relative to Toronto and Vancouver for decades after the Olympics. Rio has not gained on Sao Paolo. Atlanta has started growing, but it is a small city in a large metro area, and the metro area's population growth has slowed since the 1990s. I even suspected that Atlanta metro population would become bigger than Houston's based on the explosive nearly 40% growth in the 1990s, but it does not seem that it will exceed Houston anytime soon. Atlanta is growing and will continue to grow because it is an important hub for business in its own right, even with more competition from NC cities and Nashville. Detroit's challenges included being highly dependent on domestic companies US manufacturing.
The preference for international companies to base their operations elsewhere (I hope we don't start talking about unions and the UAW) hastened its challenges with being highly dependent on a single industry. For example, I think Toyota has over 4000 at its DFW North American HQ and I would guess Nissan has at least 1000 in Nashville, and Atlanta has at least 1000 for Mercedes and Porshe, and who knows how many Souther Calif has for Honda, Kia/Hyundia, and NJ has many hundreds for Subaru. And of course, there are thousands of factory workers elsewhere - I believe over 8000 for Toyota in KY alone. I could image that if international energy companies decided not to locate their operations in Houston, Houston would probably be growing a lot slower. Or image if most of the international auto manufacturers based much of their operations in the Detroit area - I think the metro would be a lot bigger and larger parts of the city would have redeveloped and gentrified by now. But I don't want to get into discussions of causes, as it can get political....

Last edited by DCReid; Aug 14, 2024 at 9:18 PM. Reason: edit
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  #64  
Old Posted Yesterday, 3:51 PM
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Centropolis Centropolis is offline
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I think the Olympics had a little boost (or stymied a slowdown) on St. Louis in some ways (as it was still well into double digit percentage growth inside fixed city limits) - it certainly impacted the architecture and development of and around Forest Park and carried pre-world war I urban development past the city limits.

It would be like Austin hosting the Olympics or something and seeing a little boost to speculative real estate development in an already fast growth market (and without knowledge of a long term curve).

Not seeing the Olympics turning around a city, though, at all.
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  #65  
Old Posted Yesterday, 6:00 PM
mrnyc mrnyc is offline
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well i was in brisbane this winter and although its growing anyway olympics prep is most definitely bumping infrastructural improvements up many levels over what it would be otherwise. i wouldn’t say hosting the olympics is driving those developments like bridges and metro directly, that is, they would be built eventually, but it is driving them to be built much sooner than later. the construction and the olympics will most definitely boost way up brisbane’s current mostly laid back profile.
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  #66  
Old Posted Yesterday, 10:50 PM
isaidso isaidso is online now
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Atlanta is globally known as a big corporate center and airport crossroads.
I'm not sure that's even true. People may have heard of Atlanta but most people around the world will draw a complete blank. People usually can't name a single city in a given country. Some times they can name 1-2 cities. In huge countries like the US and China, a few more, but Atlanta won't be one of them.
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  #67  
Old Posted Today, 1:48 AM
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Nouvellecosse Nouvellecosse is offline
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Saying something is "globally known" is pretty vague anyway. In the age of globalism with jet travel and the internet, there are people around the world who know about pretty much every place and topic. But the question is, how many people? Is it handful of top experts and academics in a few countries? Is it people who happened to have visited at some point? Is it the top 5% of most educated people? All but the 5% least educated people? Somewhere in between? How many people outside a given country have to know of a place before the term globally known applies?
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  #68  
Old Posted Today, 2:37 AM
mhays mhays is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tuckerman View Post
A final note on International tourists to the US. The website https://www.trade.gov/us-states-citi...seas-travelers is very useful as it provides a very clear picture of international travel to American cities. For what it is worth Boston, Houston and Atlanta are quite similar in international visitors (10th, 11th and 12th). But the reality is that the top five cities (NYC, Miami< LA,Orlando and SF) make up around 3/4 of foreign visitors to the US. (in 2023).
"Visitors" is extremely different from "tourists by choice." To illustrate, Boston has areas thronged with non-business tourists in ways Houston and Atlanta don't.
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  #69  
Old Posted Today, 4:31 AM
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xzmattzx xzmattzx is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DCReid View Post
I don't see Olympics affecting the trajectory of most cities. St Louis in 1902 was already a larger city and per Wiki, its best percentage growth decades were already behind it. Montreal continued to decline relative to Toronto and Vancouver for decades after the Olympics. Rio has not gained on Sao Paolo. Atlanta has started growing, but it is a small city in a large metro area, and the metro area's population growth has slowed since the 1990s. I even suspected that Atlanta metro population would become bigger than Houston's based on the explosive nearly 40% growth in the 1990s, but it does not seem that it will exceed Houston anytime soon. Atlanta is growing and will continue to grow because it is an important hub for business in its own right, even with more competition from NC cities and Nashville. Detroit's challenges included being highly dependent on domestic companies US manufacturing.
The preference for international companies to base their operations elsewhere (I hope we don't start talking about unions and the UAW) hastened its challenges with being highly dependent on a single industry. For example, I think Toyota has over 4000 at its DFW North American HQ and I would guess Nissan has at least 1000 in Nashville, and Atlanta has at least 1000 for Mercedes and Porshe, and who knows how many Souther Calif has for Honda, Kia/Hyundia, and NJ has many hundreds for Subaru. And of course, there are thousands of factory workers elsewhere - I believe over 8000 for Toyota in KY alone. I could image that if international energy companies decided not to locate their operations in Houston, Houston would probably be growing a lot slower. Or image if most of the international auto manufacturers based much of their operations in the Detroit area - I think the metro would be a lot bigger and larger parts of the city would have redeveloped and gentrified by now. But I don't want to get into discussions of causes, as it can get political....
To me, the cities that benefited the most globally from hosting the Olympics have been Barcelona and Sydney. Barcelona energized its tourism sector as it transitioned out of industry, and Sydney completed the role reversal with Melbourne, becoming Australia's primary global city.

Maybe Beijing counts, signalling China's coming out party on the global stage. But that reason is not necessarily city-centric.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mrnyc View Post
well i was in brisbane this winter and although its growing anyway olympics prep is most definitely bumping infrastructural improvements up many levels over what it would be otherwise. i wouldn’t say hosting the olympics is driving those developments like bridges and metro directly, that is, they would be built eventually, but it is driving them to be built much sooner than later. the construction and the olympics will most definitely boost way up brisbane’s current mostly laid back profile.
Brisbane will be the Atlanta of Australia. Just like most people around the world never heard of Atlanta until they hosted the Olympics, most people will find out that Brisbane exists when they host.
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  #70  
Old Posted Today, 4:41 AM
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cabasse cabasse is offline
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Originally Posted by isaidso View Post
I'm not sure that's even true. People may have heard of Atlanta but most people around the world will draw a complete blank. People usually can't name a single city in a given country. Some times they can name 1-2 cities. In huge countries like the US and China, a few more, but Atlanta won't be one of them.
this is entirely anecdotal but i was surprised when i stumbled across the (closed long ago) detroit bar in london and hotel atlanta in amsterdam. in barcelona and madrid there are a few bars/restaurants/etc named after atlanta as well(bar de tapas atlanta in barcelona; atlanta restauración temática and cafeteria atlanta, and atlanta select real estate in madrid)

if i'm bored one day, i will write some scripts to call the google place search API and pass in various american city names in with the locations of major european cities to see what comes back.
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