What if Detroit had hosted a Summer Olympics?

[Doady]

Hosting the Olympics would not have helped with the city's debt, that's for sure.

[mhays]

Effects on a city's brand and name recognition can be a very big deal, potentially playing out in everything from tourism to corporate locations. Brand doesn't "seal the deal" for a a corporate office for example, but it's an element, for example because workforces will view it differently, as will location matrices to a point.

Name recognition is just the start. Ideally the event also helps build a compelling brand -- a bunch of hopefully-favorable ideas and images in people's heads. When successful, the city will occupy a larger place in billions of people's heads, and one tied to cool aspects of the city and region. The benefit isn't just the initial surge of recognition, but also the successive waves, like those new tourists telling people how great it was, movies featuring the city and boosting the image again. It can be an upward spiral. Like Barcelona.

Atlanta didn't necessarily get all of that. It got the name recognition, but I don't think it got a ton of brand benefit along with it. It's not (and wasn't) a city with iconic imagery like a Paris or even an LA. The event was downgraded for going big and corporate (even by Olympic standards) rather than focusing more on local flavor. The city has gained more cultural cache since, generally focused toward the US audience. It's still not a top-10 international brand among US cities.

How would Detroit have done? A celebration of what makes it good and unique (Motown et al), coupled with sound investments?

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Doady

Hosting the Olympics would not have helped with the city's debt, that's for sure.

yes, earlier peak detroit days it would have been fine, but certainly not by the late 1960s or afterward.

it seems we are headed toward a permanent olympics site in greece — and that would be fine.

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by Crawford

If selected in '68 (I think they fell short by just one vote?), there wouldn't have been the Mexico City student massacre. And it would have been pretty weird having the Olympics just a year after the worst riots in American history.

In the long run, I don't think it would have changed anything. The Olympics are a two-week sporting event, and don't really impact macro trends.

That's mostly true, but the exception is Barcelona. The Olympics really put the city on the map for so many people, and made it a tourist destination, transporting it from an industrial town to a showcase for unique architecture.

Perhaps, if everything went right, Detroit could have become the Art Deco capital of the world by hosting the Olympics.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

That's mostly true, but the exception is Barcelona. The Olympics really put the city on the map for so many people, and made it a tourist destination, transporting it from an industrial town to a showcase for unique architecture.

Perhaps, if everything went right, Detroit could have become the Art Deco capital of the world by hosting the Olympics.

Right, but before the Olympics Barcelona was (to most of the world) a hidden gem. It always had a strong and unique local history and identity, an amazing central city with notable features like Las Ramblas and Sagrado Familia, great food and nightlife, Mediterranean location and climate, etc. The Olympics drew global attention, but zillions of people visit Barcelona today because of those qualities. Like Atlanta, Detroit didn't/doesn't have that same global "undiscovered gem" thing going on.

[jmecklenborg]

The weird thing about Spain is that most if not all of the country's residents live in picture-perfect towns and cities with terrific walking and transit and most if not all of the country has a very pleasant climate. Yet it still had a major civil war and seemingly constant threats of separatist/regional violence that continue to the present-day. When I visited Spain it was pretty weird being stopped on the interstate highway near Pamplona by government agents with machine guns. That stuff doesn't happen in the United States despite all of the doomsdaying.

So mother hen urbanists like the 15-minute city guy want to wave a magic wand over Detroit and other busted-up U.S. cities and turn them into walking and transit paradises and all of the sudden all of their social ills will disappear and they'll become magic fairy tails like Europe. Except those places in Europe...that aren't. Like Spain.

[Minato Ku]

Originally Posted by craigs

Right, but before the Olympics Barcelona was (to most of the world) a hidden gem. It always had a strong and unique local history and identity, an amazing central city with notable features like Las Ramblas and Sagrado Familia, great food and nightlife, Mediterranean location and climate, etc. The Olympics drew global attention, but zillions of people visit Barcelona today because of those qualities. Like Atlanta, Detroit didn't/doesn't have that same global "undiscovered gem" thing going on.

Barcelona was seen as an industrial city. It was pretty far removed from its waterfront. It's old town was rundown. I wouldn't call Barcelona pre-Olympics a major european touristic destination. Neitherless it was already a big european city and Spain was rising in 1990s.

I don't think the Olympics would have had the same effect on Detroit, just like the effect of 1996 Olympics on Atlanta seems to be pretty minimal seen from Europe.

[ocman]

I don't know about Detroit but I read it had positives for cities like Atlanta and Vancouver, putting their image on the world stage, boosting local tourism post-Olympics and attracting business and landing major sporting events. Of course, you also get all that money from the state and feds to put into infrastructure.

For LA 2028, one of the goals is to introduce both tourists and locals to the improvements to the transit system. This was a major benefit that Vancouver had when it hosted. Canadians took it, many for the first time, realized how convenient it was and rail ridership got a boost post-Olympics.

[Crawford]

I don't buy the "Olympics made Barcelona a global destination" narrative. Spain, at the time, was still relatively poor and recovering from the Franco years. It hadn't yet become Europe's Florida and the amazing cities were largely forgotten.

If, in an alternate universe, it had never hosted, I can't imagine it would be different today. Barcelona had a wealth of historic gems & districts that just needed polishing.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by mhays

Atlanta was the #13 US city in 1990, and probably #12 in 1996 (having passed Seattle). I'm using CSA. I suspect its image grew massively due to the Olympics, though it had some black eyes.

It was not the #13 US city, it was the #13 US metro. It was the #36 US city in 1990.

Originally Posted by mhays

I can't imagine how municipal population is relevant...event sites, hotel inventories, airports, etc., have nothing to do with that.

Fact still remains that it was/is the smallest host city of a Summer Games.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I don't buy the "Olympics made Barcelona a global destination" narrative. Spain, at the time, was still relatively poor and recovering from the Franco years. It hadn't yet become Europe's Florida and the amazing cities were largely forgotten.

If, in an alternate universe, it had never hosted, I can't imagine it would be different today. Barcelona had a wealth of historic gems & districts that just needed polishing.

Barcelona was the European equivalent of a Rust Belt city in the 1980s. It was in worse shape by the 1980s than Detroit was in the 1960s. They did a LOT of redevelopment of the city to build venues, hotels, etc., for the Olympic Games that they leveraged to boost their tourist economy. I don't think it's a given at all that Barcelona would have ended up as the tourist mecca it is today without the Games.

[PhillyRising]

I don't know if it would have kept Detroit from falling so far as it did had they staged the game in the 50's or 60's. You had to admire their persistence.

Los Angeles saved the Olympics. Politics creeped in the 60's and 70's...the attack in Munich could have ended them. The cost over runs of Montreal scared off everyone from wanting to host. Jimmy Carter boycotting in 1980 was a blunder...using the games to get the Soviets to get out of Afghanistan...which was never going to happen. The Soviet Bloc boycott in 1984...but that blew up in their faces and Los Angeles made hosting good again. After the Montreal games and the debt that incurred...only two cities were bidding for 1984 games...LA and Tehran. Tehran dropped out in 1977 and LA won because it was the only bid in 1978. Detroit should have kept at it...maybe a 1984 Olympics there would have put Detroit on a different course? I don't know...did hosting the 1982 World's Fair do anything for Knoxville. TN going forward? I was there...it was cool but how many people even remember that they hosting a World's Fair in 1982 these days?

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by PhillyRising

I don't know if it would have kept Detroit from falling so far as it did had they staged the game in the 50's or 60's. You had to admire their persistence.

Los Angeles saved the Olympics. Politics creeped in the 60's and 70's...the attack in Munich could have ended them. The cost over runs of Montreal scared off everyone from wanting to host. Jimmy Carter boycotting in 1980 was a blunder...using the games to get the Soviets to get out of Afghanistan...which was never going to happen. The Soviet Bloc boycott in 1984...but that blew up in their faces and Los Angeles made hosting good again. After the Montreal games and the debt that incurred...only two cities were bidding for 1984 games...LA and Tehran. Tehran dropped out in 1977 and LA won because it was the only bid in 1978. Detroit should have kept at it...maybe a 1984 Olympics there would have put Detroit on a different course? I don't know...did hosting the 1982 World's Fair do anything for Knoxville. TN going forward? I was there...it was cool but how many people even remember that they hosting a World's Fair in 1982 these days?

San Antonio, Seattle, San Diego, and St. Louis, I’d think, are the cities in the U.S. which have leveraged their World Fair into building something long-lasting.

Chicago and New York, of course, have also had noteworthy fairs.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

It was not the #13 US city, it was the #13 US metro. It was the #36 US city in 1990.

Depends what you mean by "city." I clarified what meaning I was using.

[mhays]

Seattle has leveraged TWO world's fairs into something long-lasting (physically). The first gave us the UW campus. The second the 74-acre Seattle Center, a tourism, museum, arts, spectator sports, and park campus that includes the Space Needle and handles our largest festivals.

World's fairs don't generate worldwide attention like Olympics do. People might see an article or two about them but they don't watch them on TV. I'm really meaning past tense back when fairs were a big deal--mostly pre-internet when seeing other cultures and learning about the latest innovations was much harder.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by PhillyRising

I don't know if it would have kept Detroit from falling so far as it did had they staged the game in the 50's or 60's. You had to admire their persistence.

Los Angeles saved the Olympics. Politics creeped in the 60's and 70's...the attack in Munich could have ended them. The cost over runs of Montreal scared off everyone from wanting to host. Jimmy Carter boycotting in 1980 was a blunder...using the games to get the Soviets to get out of Afghanistan...which was never going to happen. The Soviet Bloc boycott in 1984...but that blew up in their faces and Los Angeles made hosting good again. After the Montreal games and the debt that incurred...only two cities were bidding for 1984 games...LA and Tehran. Tehran dropped out in 1977 and LA won because it was the only bid in 1978. Detroit should have kept at it...maybe a 1984 Olympics there would have put Detroit on a different course? I don't know...did hosting the 1982 World's Fair do anything for Knoxville. TN going forward? I was there...it was cool but how many people even remember that they hosting a World's Fair in 1982 these days?

It's no coincidence that 1972 was the last real bid by Detroit for the games. The selection for the 1972 games was the last one to occur before the 1967 riots, after which the Detroit area became balkanized between city and suburban political power centers.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Minato Ku

Barcelona was seen as an industrial city. It was pretty far removed from its waterfront. It's old town was rundown. I wouldn't call Barcelona pre-Olympics a major european touristic destination. Neitherless it was already a big european city and Spain was rising in 1990s.

I don't think the Olympics would have had the same effect on Detroit, just like the effect of 1996 Olympics on Atlanta seems to be pretty minimal seen from Europe.

Atlanta is really the only direct comparable we have to the OP's question, since it's a city of similar size that hosted a modern summer Olympics in the US.

From where I sit, Atlanta has definitely continued to grow and become more important, but it's almost as if 1996 was this turning point between Atlanta being this place of almost incredible growth - not just population growth, but growth in importance/consciousness - for the 3 decades prior to the Olympics compared to the 3 decades since. I mean, here we are 28 years after the Olympics, and Atlanta would be recognizable to someone who traveled from 1996 in a time machine, whereas Atlanta would have been almost unrecognizable in 1996 compared to someone who had time traveled from 1968.

The next closest comparable would be Montreal, even if it's in a different country, because it's a North American city that hosted an Olympics roughly around the same time as Detroit could have, and was a city that was starting to decline.

Montreal's turned around since then but, again, none of that has to do with the Olympics. In fact, I'd argue that without the Olympics, the Canadian and Quebec governments would have been more warm to investing in the necessary infrastructure that Montreal didn't get for almost 3 decades after the Olympics that might have helped it out when it needed it most.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

It was not the #13 US city, it was the #13 US metro. It was the #36 US city in 1990.

Fact still remains that it was/is the smallest host city of a Summer Games.

I could be wrong but I believe Helsinki was/is the smallest host city of a Summer Games.

And regarding Barcelona, I really do believe regardless of whether it hosted the Olympics or not, it would have grown to be the tourist destination that it is now. If you look at old guide books of Spain during the Franco era, they'll say "skip 'boring' Madrid and go straight to Barcelona!" As was mentioned up the thread, it still had the great architecture, Las Ramblas, etc. Catalonian culture/language was just suppressed during the Franco era. But the Olympics gave it more reason to clean up and beautify its waterfront, create sports venues, etc.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

I could be wrong but I believe Helsinki was/is the smallest host city of a Summer Games.

According to the info I was able to find Helsinki was over quite a bit over 400k by 1960. At best Helsinki was about the same size when it hosted in 1952 as Atlanta was in the 1990s. One city I did miss was Athens. When Athens first hosted the games in 1898 it was around 125k in population.

Originally Posted by sopas ej

And regarding Barcelona, I really do believe regardless of whether it hosted the Olympics or not, it would have grown to be the tourist destination that it is now. If you look at old guide books of Spain during the Franco era, they'll say "skip 'boring' Madrid and go straight to Barcelona!" As was mentioned up the thread, it still had the great architecture, Las Ramblas, etc. Catalonian culture/language was just suppressed during the Franco era. But the Olympics gave it more reason to clean up and beautify its waterfront, create sports venues, etc.

It's possible, but Barcelona punches well above its weight even for a European tourist destination. It receives more tourists than Rome, even though Rome is much larger, has way more historical sites, and has similar weather. It would've much been harder for Barcelona to pull that off without hosting an Olympics in the modern era, IMO.

[Minato Ku]

I agree that Olympics intensify trends of a city rather than create one overnight.