Went to see Evan Falchuk talk at The Humanist Hub in Harvard Square on Sunday. Wanted to ask him about running a political campaign as a practical, grassroots organizing venture where you leave something active behind whether you win or not. Did so but don’t think he absorbed the concept.
Something he did talk about was the way the Boston Olympics bid is an end-run around the democratic process. There was a Boston Globe reporter there to cover that angle (hmmm, any conflict of interest between the Globe and the Olympics?). One thing Falchuk said led me to think that, perhaps, the Olympics bid is actually a stealth way to advance a local transportation and development agenda by the group that is backing it. He said that the Olympics organizers are already advertising their effort as a way to think about those issues but shouldn’t we be debating those issues on their own without the complication of such an event?
I know that the transportation issue has been hotly debated for many years and even went to a joint meeting of state environmental groups at the start of the last session of the legislature which dealt with the need to develop a consistent transportation plan before the session ended. Gee, I wonder how that went.
Just a thought from my suspicious mind but maybe others with more experience in the issues should give it a moment’s consideration.
Falchuk comes across as a smart guy. The United Independent Party plans to run a slate of candidates for the legislature next election and is organizing to get 1% of registered voters to register as party members, thus assuring that they keep their place on the ballot. From my experience, they are more savvy than the Greens have ever been.
n/t
Nearly all of the proponents advance this naive belief that civic panic over the onset of the games would magically lead to a fix for all of our broken stuff when the real answer is to fire the assholes who let it break and institute a wealth tax.
First off, if folks get elected to office you can’t fire them on the spot. Second, we the people are to blame on much of this because we embraced the notion that bad stewardship could save us some money. We’ll take care of it when it breaks, maybe. We just had a gubernatorial election and these issues only got the most minimal amount of lip service. A progressive state income structure would be great, but even if you fight and win that battle it doesn’t necessarily get anything built.
I’d say the main naivete here is the notion that Massachusetts is going to start debating these issues without some form of external impetus to force the debate. We’ve ignored our infrastructure needs for generations. The list of things we need to do is so long it’s daunting just to consider it. As I mentioned elsewhere, I also think it’s fantastically naive to think the current Olympic opposition, which is pure NIMBY, isn’t part of the larger problem. Just try to get something done and those same folks will rise up to proclaim, “Hey, we don’t DO things.”
Something’s got to shock our system, otherwise you can forget about any major changes beyond the Green Line extension.
We just had a referendum on tying the gas tax to the Consumer Price Index to fund infrastructure, or so I recall. I could be wrong about that. In any case, the voters in their wisdom voted not to do so.
I believe the following:
1- Mass. has distinct infrastructure needs that have for a long time been ignored;
2 – There is little reason to believe that will change without outside impetus in the future.
2a – Yes, it “should” change. But, if we did government according to what people “should” be doing, socialism would work.
3 – The Olympics is a powerful lever to usher in the changes that need to be made.
4 – Some of those changes will not be changes that most people would like. A small amount will be changes that may not be in the overall interest.
There is really no reason to believe that anything done for the Olympics is going to do any of the things you think it will. The proposals simply do not contain any interesting or useful infrastructure changes and the organizers have already claimed they are only want to accelerate the implementation of transportation projects that have already been planned.
Those who are boosting for the Olympics should not expect to get anything out of this other than the Olympics itself because that is the only thing you can really count on.
Number of tourists to London, England in 2011: 15.3 million.
Something happens in London, England, 2012
Number of tourists to London, England in 2013: 16.8 million (1.2 million greater than the previous record of 15.6 million, set in 2006).
Coincidence?
I do not believe you can find a hotelier or restaurateur who would not give their eyeteeth, their mothers eyeteeth and their grandmothers eyeteeth for a year on year improvement of 1%, never mind nearly 13%… I imagine that even a jump well less than half that would take the Commonwealths tourism industry from third to first in the state, even if only temporarily…
2014…
… drops mic…
It is not at all clear that the increased tourism was due to the Olympics, nor is it clear that this is a long-term trend in any case.
In any case, while I love Boston, London is a *much* more interesting city than Boston for tourists.
While I do agree that those in the downtown hotel/restaurant businesses will benefit a lot from tourism, I don’t know if most people around here are all that excited by the prospect of having slightly more tourism.
Hey, if you own a downtown restaurant or shop go ahead and be as excited as you want. The Olympics probably will be good for you. But if you think that bringing the Olympics is going to make your daily commute to work better or make housing more affordable then you will almost certainty be disappointed.
Actually, no. London is a bigger city that, pre-Olympics, averaged about 15 and a half million tourists a year… whereas Boston averages around 12 million a year. Now 12 million is not that much smaller than London as an absolute value, but is ginormously larger as a percentage of either the population or the geography: Pound for pound we were doing BETTER than London before the Olympics. As noted, tourism is already the third largest industry in the CommonWealth.
Boston is already a VERY popular tourist destination; it’s why Boston already has more than enough hotel rooms to satisfy the requirements of the IOC… Boston need not build any extra hotel rooms at all to host.
You touched on the Backwater Argument. We may think Boston’s important, but it’s just some provincial backwater burg. Or so the story goes. Forget about those 12 million tourists. Forget about being world renown in medicine, education, politics, finance and, oh yeah, sports. No one’s ever heard of us and no one wants to come here. It’s delusional to think the rest of the world would want to come to Boston in the summer with picturesque oceanfront New England just a stone’s throw away.
There’s the Asteroid Argument, which is the main one that gets used. If the Olympics come, it will obliterate us all. No good can or will come of it, only devastation.
Finally there’s the Kafka Argument. Don’t even try, because the whole endeavor is doomed to fail anyway. Boston never was going to get USOC backing. Whoops. Well, the IOC will shoot it down at the first chance. It’s hopeless.
.
.. they all boil down to the one argument: “The Olympics are just too big and Boston is just too small.” Nobody, so far, has offered anything that doesn’t boil down to Boston being inadequate.
If you say so.
-Who, outside of Gawker and The Onion, is making The Backwater Argument?There’s no one on BMG I can think of, that’s for sure. Boston is an Alpha Class city and long has been. Very few (again, outside Gawker, The Onion and maybe some Dowdesque national columnists) are calling us Backwater.
-Is this argument
Related to the Holy Frakking Exaggeration argument, in which you inflate someone’s real argument by magnitudes of at least 1,000? No one — I repeat, no one — has suggested we would be “obliterated” by the Olympics, just that it would starve resources that are desperately needed elsewhere. We’d still exist — the Olympics is not an asteroid — but it’s highly likely (borderline inevitable) that the costs of the Olympics would hamper the city for generations. Which, you know, sucks.
That’s to say nothing of what would be destroyed (parks, city blocks, etc.) to make way for events and venues. So maybe it’s accurate say some small, but very likely important chunks of the city (such as Franklin Park) could be obliterated. Which, you know, also sucks, even if it’s not the all of Boston you claim people are suggesting.
– Then this
is, more so than even the first argument, complete BS. No one is saying that, anywhere. Not even columnists and sites like Gawker that have berated Boston’s selection. The show will go on — no matter who is selected — just as we saw in Sochi, where you had to be careful where you walked because they didn’t have time to install all the manhole covers.
But I figure it’s my right since my roots here go back to 1675 or so, (the proof sleeps in a small Wellfleet graveyard). And 40 years of adult life here have given me many glimpses of the place at busily being a backwater.
It literally became a backwater with the completion of the Erie Canal and has been sullen about it ever since.
Boston generally makes it big being small. It has fatuous claims down, like its ad nauseum assertions about being the planets brain center that are laced through the 2024 PR slop . While that may be true on some level, it’s also like bragging about ones genitals.
The proponent team appears to be top heavy with Harvard shills practicing the craft made famous by Harvard’s beloved graduate, Putzi Hanfstaengl, (Class of 1909).
Now I don’t have any delusions of significance, mind you, so I’ll happily accept the weighty appellation of No One as it does come in handy.
And if you give me a while, I bet I can find a few others who have little to gain from this foist who will also ascribe to this backwater outlook. It was a common cited reason advanced by the friends I’ve canvassed, including an events tech who would probably make bank on the thing.
You’ve just gotta know where to look.
Hell, I’ll even coach the Onion, etc on the many juicy details of backwater status. Boston is trying to punch above its weight class and has been from the get go.
… diary.
It begins with the statement “It’s not showtime yet, but auditions are underway for the big stage of the 2024 Summer Games here in our wee burg of Boston. (emph. mine)” It continues by expressing surprise that “Somehow Boston edged ou[t] the U.S. competition to become the USOC pick.” It then links to another blog post, the first line of which is “Boston really wants to play with the big kids.”
If you can’t be bothered to read what’s purportedly in agreement with you, if only to check to see if they actually agree with you, but instead make knee-jerk blanket statements like “no one on BMG” one can hardly expect your opposition to the Olympics to be even half as rigorous as that. One might even be tempted to think that any linking to pictures of persons with their heads in the sands are your idea of a self-portrait.
It’s nice to have one of you rise as if on cue.
Another thing I love about this argument is the stretching it invites. I figure the Harvard opinion is pretty well know at this point but it is handy to have so earnest an advocate ever ready to make sure we don’t forget.
The ostrich ploy is tried and true and can be a place holder until more creative shillage can be fabricated. And there are jerking knees all around with variations on the jerk turning on which way the sky is falling.
…but with a minimum of style.
Harvard don’t do screeds. It’s uncool.
No one is making that argument… Except you: Here, here. and here.
Oh, and here.
… and, also, here…
You do know… do you not… that there is a search button on the right side of the top banner? You can put in all kinds of terms like “no chance” and “olympics fail” and get all kinds of prior comments from you –or from the person pretending to be you– saying all manner of Kafka-esque things.
When the shilling isn’t showing,
What the pitchers want it to..
Gotcha is what’s left to do…
Burma Shave.
This is fun. I haven’t found a doggerel muse in a while. Yes, search queries are endless fun.
And after all that busy work, it’s still back to where it started.
It’s easier for me to dodge these pitfalls as I have no intention of going along with reasonable rebuttal in this situation. And I couldn’t be more proud of every derisive slag I’ve tossed at this conceit.
The casual arrogance underlying the way this thing is being foisted deserves no less then the most implacable hostility it can engender from as many directions as possible, 24/7.
I see your doggerel and raise you haiku:
summer olympics
opposition born of false
premises and fears
a moral highground
cannot be sustained upon
a falsity of premise
double edged sword
cuts the cutter and the
legs beneath him too
my respect for you
will not allow me to allow you
feckless rhetoric
It distracted you from your usual routine.
It’ll be a refreshing break before mapping out the next gotcha batch and shill fill.
there is a value
in the face value, to see past
may be to not see
It was in 2008, before the consequences of Athens on the entire Greek economy became apparent, before the cost overruns for Beijing and Sochi, and before New York and Chicago lost their bids at the IOC, not before leaving some white elephants behind from their bids. He addressed that in a separate post.
I might also note that sabutai made many of the argument opponents are now making, so something changed his mind as well. Leave the flip flops gotchas to Fox News and the Swift Boaters.
Everything to which I linked was from 2014. Does anybody actually read things before responding to them??
I have simply argued that Boston does not currently have the infrastructure capacity or global perspective from it’s local pols to pull off a successful bid. I don’t see either point as particularly debatable.
If Mayor Curtatone was leading Boston 2024 I may reconsider. He put a substantial proposal on the table for a games bid that makes sense. The continued secrecy of the Bid, the growing public opposition, and the lack of probable funding sources as our state has a projected deficit and a bipartisan unwillingness to raise taxes to pay for basic services, let alone a global event of this scale, makes it less and less likely.
There is some truth to the Onion article in my book. We keep saying we are a world class city, but have third world infrastructure. We say we have moved past our racist and elitist reputation, but we have a paucity of women or people of color on the bid committee, and a paucity of MBE and WBE businesses in line to get contracts. And clearly no concern for the displaced homeless population, displaced cooperative, and displaced neighborhoods that will be dramatically altered for the sake of this bid.
We have towns fighting over scraps of local aid, and trying to dump their problems on one another whether it be special ed students or the homeless. We have failed at regional planning, and we have broken municipalities and a parochial legislature. We have a lot of challenges to overcome before we can be anywhere near the caliber of cities that achieved successful bids in the past, and even they had substantial cost overruns. Being honest about where we are is important if we want the bid to be successful.
I think you’ve skewered many of the major problems with metro Boston. We’ve got issues. Then again so does Rome, which is the other major bidder in the picture at the moment. It’s got just about the worst public transportation of any major city on the European continent and some ancient infrastructure. In the middle of the summer, it smells fairly ripe too. Most world class cities have plenty of blemishes when you take a closer look.
Doha may make a bid. It boasts deathly hot summer weather, laws that basically outlaw women’s sports and hundreds of workers who have died building structures for the 2022 World Cup. Casablanca may jump in and it’s got real third world problems Hamburg could emerge, which is a lot like Boston in terms of city profile.
Best as a I can tell from the bid docs released today, the Blue-Red and North-South connectors will be an absolute necessity for 2024 along with a reworked Silver Line (e.g. maybe making it an actual train) and vastly upgraded stations all along the Red Line. Improved regional transit (namely faster trains on the commuter rail) may need to part of the package as well. I’m guessing a few sewer lines will need to be bumped up and that the communications for Boston will need a forklift upgrade. Who’s paying for that, and the land/lawsuits at Widdett Circle, and how much more needs to be piled on top of that, I don’t know.
I know you have experience in this, but that strikes me as probably a fairly standard to-do list for an Olympics from an infrastructure point of view. The feasibility of the event venues and whether a free society can tolerate the IOC are other questions. It’s a lot to unspool, but my opinion (which is all most of us can rely upon at this moment, absent your hands-on experience) is Boston’s issues aren’t so intractable or overwhelming that they should cause an automatic disqualification.
It would be cool if they could repurpose the Colisseum and Circus Maximus for a modern Olympics!
“We keep saying we are a world class city, but have third world infrastructure.”
The entire USA is rapidly devolving into a third world infrastructure. Ain’t just Boston and ain’t just highways and bridge but water systems, sewer systems, electricity transmissions systems (a significant percentage of existing VT wind electricity can not be transmitted by the existing power lines I’m told). It goes on and on.
The Olympics ain’t gonna change that one iota.
I never said that London had higher per-capita tourism than Boston, just that it is much more interesting, and it is. It has *far* more restaurants, historical sites, museums, shops, and just about everything than Boston. It definitely has much more international tourism than Boston has, even per-capita. Are you honestly going to argue that Paul Revere’s house matches up with the Tower of London?
In any case, not sure that pointing out that Boston already does very well in the tourism industry helps make your point. How much better are we going to do?
If we did care just about boosting tourism, can you prove that the Olympics is the most cost effective way of bringing that about? What if we just boosted Boston’s tourism advertising budget?
As I have said, there is nothing wrong for wanting the Olympics purely for its own sake.
That translates to more history and more stuff. Nothing we can do about the history part. Boston’s got just about the most “history” of any city in this hemisphere. It’s also near pretty beaches, which I’m told people enjoy in the summer. As for size, it’s a big city, but it’s not a megalopolis. London’s the 15th largest city in the world.
Interestingly, at 4.68M Boston’s metro population falls in line with Hamburg (5.1M), Rome (4.2M), Johannesburg (4.4M) and Casablanca (5M). It dwarfs Doha (1.3M). So can we please dispel the meme that Boston’s way too tiny when it lines up with the other major Olympic competitors? Boston’s a real grownup city. Let’s stop pretending otherwise.
I’m not sure where you’re pulling your “international tourism” claims from, but Boston gets a lot of it. London’s advantage would be that Europe is tiny with lots of different countries. I don’t know that I’d equate geography with international appeal.
Anyway, I agree (I think) that boosted tourism is at best a minor case for a Boston Olympics. It’s a pleasant side effect, but not a central reason to do the games.
that you quote at 4.68 million people includes the two southern counties of New Hampshire, all of eastern MA from Cape Ann in the north to Plymouth Cty in the south and all of Middlesex and Norfolk Ctys, covering about 1400 sq miles. I think of that as a little bigger than “Boston.”
Greater London is less than half the area at 600 sq miles, with almost double the population with 7.8 million people. It also has four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the city, while Boston has none. The 5m Hamburg population you cite covers 10,000 sq miles, ginormous in size. In short, most attempts to compare population size for Olympic purposes fail at the start.
The tourism benefits that a winning Olympic city gains can only be counted after the first year, unless the infrastructure continues to attract but it ain’t happened yet. One ideologue here on BMG cited an article indicating a big increase in tourism two years after the London Olympics as proof as to why the Olympics are good for a city, even though both the article he quoted and the underlying study by MasterCard made it clear the huge tourism increase in 2014 had nothing to do with the Olympic history. When he did his “boom, drop mic” bit it was proof that he knows nothing except how to read a headline.
Boston punches way above its weight class in attracting tourists. The questions that Olympic proponents must answer are whether a winning bid will attract more tourists at a pace we can handle (we currently lack the hotel rooms to accommodate more, a problem that will be exacerbated with the expansion of the Convention Center); will the Olympic bid accelerate construction of our capital master plan, or divert it to satisfy a two week party; and whether local taxpayers are going to be stuck with a huge tab when the tourists leave. There are lots of other issues but it seems to me those are the big three.
It’s a fine contrast to set against the booster fluff that even twists the terms to fit its pitches.
The apple and grapefruit comparisons are funny.
I was surprised by the growth of tourism since I got back. Over the course of making Harborwalk videos downtown, I noticed costumed guides in tricorns and other period get ups leading avid gaggles along the Freedom Trail in all seasons.
And waterfront guides mistook me for a tourist over by the Aquarium and cursed me for my lack of interest in their services. They are like the equivalent of the fake centurions that accost you in Rome.
And people actually fall for fake gondolier rides along the esplanade. The duck boats tool around incessantly and fake double decker buses pass by my window on Hampshire Street in Inman Square all day, every day.
We may have 99 problems but tourism ain’t one. Hell, during my last visit to Thoreau’s grave, there was a regular line, on and off the, whole time I was there.
It’s as apples to apples as it gets. Are different metro areas different sizes? Yes. Yet are you seriously going to sit here and throw stones at metropolitan area population figures? Because if you are, then any attempt at discussion with you likely is useless. Those are the figures that everybody in the world uses to measure the conglomeration of people around an urban center. What next, your incisive thoughts on the truth of up vs. down and night vs. day?
The point is that Boston is right in line population-wise with the other leading contenders for 2024. We’re not some little engine that thinks it can. Boston actually matches up quite well with Hamburg, Johannesburg and Casablanca. Rome has history that no one can touch, but the city itself is an infrastructure nightmare. Doha’s the pathetically overmatched challenger, but it can offer fat bribes and it’s unencumbered from the entanglements of a free society.
Anyway, it’s says “reality-based” at the top of the page. So can we please dispense with this ridiculous assertion that Boston is some hamlet with barely any history or tourist attractions? We’re not London, but we’re also not Paducah.
is a legal definition that only applies to cities in the US and none of the other cities you noted. The EU uses different definitions for “larger urban zones.” In no way did I “throw stones” at the definition.
If you cool your jets and pay attention you will see that my point about Hamburg actually bolsters your point. As I previously wrote:
“Boston punches way above its weight class in attracting tourists. ”
Citing the regional population of Boston is irrelevant for an Olympic bid whose sponsors claim it is going to be walkable, just as citing the population of the 10,000 sq miles of Hamburg state and adjoining states is irrelevant to their bid.
If you continue to read the rest of my previous post you will see that I agree with you that the Olympic tourism bubble will be temporary. But writing as you did that anybody here thinks we are are a hamlet or Paducah is just ridiculous.
How I took your post and how you intended it clearly weren’t aligned.
We mostly agree on the tourism piece. I’d hazard a guess at a modest sustained bump because I think we’d get good word of mouth off the temporary bump. That strikes me as the secret for why Boston already punches above its weight in the tourism department. People come here and return with nice things to say and pretty pictures to show.
Fair game to use the Larger Urban Zone figure for Hamburg (3.1M). The upside of metropolitan area numbers is that they show the size of the ecosystem that the city sustains.
Just to note, the surrounding region can play a significant role in what makes a city an attractive Olympics venue. For instance, if Hamburg got picked, a lot of visitors would take a trip to Lübeck as well. I can’t imagine going all the way to Tokyo and not heading over to Mt. Fuji. In Boston’s case, Cape Ann and Cape Cod strike me as major assets in July/August. Dan Wolf might be able to win the bid by his lonesome if he offers IOC members free flights to Nantucket and the Vineyard.
Is anyone actually arguing that Boston is too small? Perhaps some, but not many. I certainly am not.
I was simply questioning whether it is really reasonable to extrapolate numbers from London.
The part of the city that people actually visit along the original tombolo and the back filled Charles marshes is tiny.
But what are the tourism numbers for Hyde Park, West Roxbury, Mattapan and so on?
One could just as well argue that the throngs at Quincy Market get funneled there as there isn’t much incentive to explore Brighton.
If the Olympics came to NYC, the Upper Bronx and Flatbush wouldn’t be getting a whole lot of visitors either. I’m reasonably sure visitors to the Rio Olympics won’t be traipsing through the favelas.
Go visit any city and you’ll only see a tiny fraction of it. Doesn’t change the fact that Boston is a city that serves as a business/cultural/social center for roughly 4.7 million people and that it boasts a thriving tourist industry. Boston may not be the biggest city, but it’s a big city with lots to see and do. If it’s too small, then no city in the current mix for 2024 qualifies as big enough to host an Olympics.
Then we’ve established that the area that is supposed to handle the visit load is substantially smaller than the various prior efforts to describe Boston’s size.
Now that the city size definition is moving to actual working area available, it provides a basis for more accurate projections than the 4 million plus thing that goes from Rockingham County NH to Providence.
Before you know it a consistent set of meaningful footprint calculations and impact guesses may begin to cohere.
Won’t that be grand, even if it will tend to return to the 10 pounds of crap in a 5 pound bag problem at the heart of the matter?
I won’t hold out hope that comparisons of working foot prints and city layouts will be forthcoming any time soon, but that would be a more useful basis for comparing Hamburgs to Durbans.
The population inside the most trafficked areas for a potential Olympics has notion to do with whether the city in question is a substantial metropolis that regularly hosts major events and serves as an economic/social center for a population of millions. Do millions filter in and out of the city everyday? Is there an infrastructure that accommodates millions every day (sewers, electric, etc.)? The answer in both case is yes. You are focused on a meaningless glob of trivia.
If what you want to conduct is a feasibility study for a densely-arranged games, be my guest. I suspect the X people moving through Y area calculations can be located within yesterday’s document dump. Looks like the Olympics human traffic would be taking place primarily outside the main tourist/business centers of Boston, so excuse me if I’m not particularly worried if some people are watching water polo in Cambridge while others watch track in Southie while others take in weightlifting along the waterfront while others enjoy dinner in the North End while others stroll along the Esplanade while I take an evening bike ride not near any of those places. If anything, the more concentrated nature of these plans should mean there’s less of an impact on the rest of the city.
It’s a city. Things are happening all the time. If your goal here is to play mock IOC with bids that don’t exist yet, I’m not interested. I don’t know, maybe others are. Whether the IOC ultimately buys a pitch for the sort of smaller footprint Olympics it claims to want has nothing to do with whether I’m going to be convinced Boston should host the games.
The preposterousness becomes endemic in the dizzying definition telescoping. It is admittedly something of a gotcha ploy, but still.
We went from a metro area of 4 million to city limits numbers to practical area boundaries where events can be held. And as you move from the macro resolution to the micro, details emerge that undermine assertions of do ability and those are capably handled by JConway on the operational side and RyePower on the fairness and civil liberties side.
Other than concurring and having fun with the upwelling fallacy flow, there isn’t as much to do beyond holding feet to fires when these vague claims rise of how the 10 pounds of crap will fit in the 5 pound bag without the bag inhabitants getting hosed.
Seattle went through this and actually has facilities that are far more adaptable and in closer proximity to one another than the scatter shot mess this is likely to be. But they ultimately punted.
I don’t know why but I’m betting it was the civil liberties encroachments as they are pretty assertive, have stronger unions and have genuine progressive traditions rather than a parade of J Michael Curley wanna be’s and would be wonks.
By dint of historical proximity it’s probably the best games to use as a comparison point. Sydney would be the other I’d use as it’s a similar sized city. However all comparisons depend on the answer to “What’s the goal here?” and neither Marty Walsh nor Charlie Baker has taken command of that issue yet.
The Boston-is-too-small notion has been pushed in numerous spots, though I apologize if I unfairly lumped you in with it. I think it stems from the current streak of Beijing-London-Rio-Tokyo that we’re in.
Pipes fall off our bridges daily, the T cannot function in good weather let alone bad weather, and is already at ridership capacity, and our voters and politicians keep insisting on the outdated notion that our taxes are too high, our liquor laws too liberal, our cabbies need to be coddled, and what happens in Mattapan and it’s people matters nothing to the people in Medford and vice a versa.
Until we have a 21st century transit system, a local and state government that is forward looking rather than parochial and provincial, and regulations regarding private businesses that weren’t written during the horse and buggy era-than I would argue we are unworthy of a global event of this caliber. And to wit, the IOC is even more backward, more corrupt, and more parochial and petty than Beacon Hill-so yes I can also argue they are unworthy of us at the same time without contradicting myself!
…because when I saw the comment title on the right margin I was thinking and how old are Paris and Rome again?:)
And it is not surprising, because it is much larger and a lot closer to other countries than Boston is. Having said that, I don’t think there is anything particularly important about international tourism per se. I don’t see why Boston should care where its tourists come from as long as it has a sufficiently healthy tourist economy.
I am sure Boston does quite well for its size. My point was only that I am not sure to what degree it would be meaningful to extrapolate London’s experience to predict what will happen here.
Quincy Market gets 14 million tourists a year. Way more than the Statue of Liberty. And way more than many of the cities we would be competing with. Boston is doing just fine for tourism as is. Making a city and region that is more livable and affordable for it’s actual residents seems like a better priority to me.
Olympics>tourism>windfall is a flimsy case for the Olympics.
To add to your points, growth would be an appealing benefit. Banging out what we consider the center of the city is an interesting concept, particularly in the direction of Widett Circle.
We barely recognize most of Boston, geographically speaking, as being part of Boston. A bigger city center would increase the region’s commercial might. It’s also a key ingredient for a larger population in metro Boston, notably in the southern sections of Boston proper. People need places to work, shop and congregate. Metro Boston could grow by 1 million during the next 50 years. It’s an appealing city and more people are gravitating towards urban living.
Boston only has an estimated 12 million tourists per year, so it would be amazing if they could sneak in an extra 2 million to Quincy Market! Unlike the Statue of Liberty (which I never visited all the years I lived nearby in NJ), many residents of the Boston metro area do visit Quincy Market from time to time.
I have a feeling that we are going to see a lot of not very meaningful numbers get thrown around in this debate….
First off, we don’t have anything like a detailed plan. You’re mock assessing a phantom. For instance, where will the Olympic village go and what will it become afterward? What kind of telenetwork capacity will the games require and will building that naturally envelop at least a portion of greater Boston?
Second, there’s a lot of stuff that’s been “planned” but isn’t anywhere near going into action. That’s kind of the point. If the Olympics can move needle on this stuff (and maybe they can’t, but we’re not close to knowing that yet), then they’re at least worth consideration.