Planning Disaster, Successful Event, and Uncertain Future: The Twin Cases of the World Expo 2015 and Innovation District in Milan

Gaeta, Luca; Vita, Stefano Di

doi:10.4000/craup.8735

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…The bidding for and awarding of the 2026 Milano-Cortina Winter Olympic Games confirms an enduring positive perception of the 2015 Expo (Bruzzese and Di Vita 2016 ), despite various shortcomings and reactions against the event (Casaglia 2016 ; Basso 2017 ) and the problematic legacy of the event site (Gaeta and Di Vita 2021 ). The regional spread of the sporting events, across a distance of 400 km, presents the need for a new thinking in terms of scale, organisation and planning—not only for the main sport events, but also for the Cultural Olympiad programme.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 76%

Changing mega-events’ spatial strategies and cultural policy: scaling down, spacing out, and assembling organizations in the cases of London and Milan

2022

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Despite the proposed ‘certainty’ in a city or region hosting a mega-event, there has long been issues of uncertainty surrounding the planning and implementation of what have until now essentially been mega-projects. Large events have found a variety of ways to adapt and respond to unforeseen circumstances due to political conflicts, planning of oversize venues, limited time of implementation, and legacies that are difficult to manage. Considering the further increased uncertainty surrounding the planning of mega-events as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper examines how an accompanying cultural component—e.g., the Cultural Olympiad—may help cities that plan for events like the Olympics transition toward diversified drivers and long-term legacy. In particular, the case of cultural offering in Milan between the two mega-events of Expo 2015 and the upcoming 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympic Games shows how host cities can address growing uncertainty through the expanded role of a cultural programme combined with the rescaling of traditional mega-event formats. With this purpose, 2012 London Cultural Olympiad has been selected as an antecedent example—with positive and negative outcomes—to critically review the relationships between the Olympics and the Cultural Olympiad, as well as their widespread spatial strategy and public engagement. In addition, the paper offers more general conclusions regarding learning potentials of jointly studying mega-events and cultural policy.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 76%

Changing mega-events’ spatial strategies and cultural policy: scaling down, spacing out, and assembling organizations in the cases of London and Milan

2022

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“…Considering the planning process, six different phases can be identified (Gaeta and Vita, 2021): three occurring before the Expo opening and the other three after the Expo closing. The first phase (2006)(2007)(2008) corresponded to the successful candidacy of the city of Milan, which submitted its candidature in 2006, in a context of an international competition.…”

Section: Defining Timeline Analysis Steps For the Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Free and Open-Access Gis for the Documentation and Monitoring of Urban Transformations in the Area of the Expo 2015 Exhibition in Milan

Gentile

Gaspari

Tornatore

et al. 2023

Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.

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Abstract. Mega-events imply several city transformations at different scales that could be challenging to be identified and documented. The impacts of such events like Universal Exhibitions are difficult to be identified and tracked in space and over a long period of time. This paper discusses the use of open-source geospatial technologies as innovative tools in support of urban planning and management of digital cities, analysing in particular the case of an international exhibition in the urban landscape. A GIS-based approach is used to design a spatially enabled database, which is essential for implementing advanced analytics in modern smart cities. The pilot project proposes the design and implementation of such georeferenced database for monitoring the urban transformations of the area used for Expo 2015 Milano (Italy). The potential of GIS environment in the consultation process, which allows to obtain different interactive views and to make selections and queries of the data, is explored. The paper also discusses the possibility of publishing such prototype on a shared platform, allowing a larger non-technical audience to follow the urban evolution of the area in a diachronic perspective.

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Making history, making place—contextualising the built heritage of world expos 2010 and 2015

Honisch

2024

Built Heritage

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Be it the 1873 World’s Fair in Vienna, which established the city's status as a link between the Occident and Orient, or the very first Great Exhibition in 1851 in London, which showcased the then British empire to a global public and the world to its domestic visitors. World’s fairs have been and are still an indispensable part of a shared human history as well as an indicator of a country's economic and cultural relevance on a global scale. They are undoubtedly politically motivated drivers of collective memories and, in turn, nation-building processes. This is why they are not only publicly discussed and thoroughly documented in archives but also often manifested in buildings that long outlast these events and themes but continue to tell their tales. This article elaborates on the ways in which world’s fairs (or expos) have been used as catalysts to develop cities and how they themselves – though ephemeral phenomena – ultimately found their way into urban landscapes and historiography. Moreover, based on his own empirical studies on the last two expos of Shanghai (2010) and Milan (2015), the author elaborates on the placemaking procedures that precede and follow these mega-events, reflecting on the ensuing public discourse to (de)legitimate them, its limitations, and effects on the urban legacy of the aforementioned expos. He then presents an overarching discussion on their built heritage.

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Planning Disaster, Successful Event, and Uncertain Future: The Twin Cases of the World Expo 2015 and Innovation District in Milan

Abstract: Débâcle d'urbanisme, événement de succès et future incertain: les cas jumeaux de l'Exposition universelle de 2015 et du quartier de l'innovation à Milan

Cited by 3 publications

References 21 publications

Changing mega-events’ spatial strategies and cultural policy: scaling down, spacing out, and assembling organizations in the cases of London and Milan

Changing mega-events’ spatial strategies and cultural policy: scaling down, spacing out, and assembling organizations in the cases of London and Milan

A Free and Open-Access Gis for the Documentation and Monitoring of Urban Transformations in the Area of the Expo 2015 Exhibition in Milan

Making history, making place—contextualising the built heritage of world expos 2010 and 2015

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