No, no, no. Please no! That’s what I thought when I saw a tweet from Mark Lamster endorsing an article by Kriston Capps arguing why the Games are good for cities in democracies. Then I read the article, this gist of which goes like this:
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones wouldn’t mind putting his gargantuan stadium on several bazillion television screens, Texas Monthly speculates. But to realize a 2024 bid, Dallas would need to connect AT&T Stadium with a renovated Cotton Bowl more than 20 miles away—and other venues even farther afield. This would almost certainly require the kind of intensive public transit in which Dallas has been slow to invest. Especially for a megalopolis like D.C. or Dallas, hosting a mega-event opens a bridge over the political gulfs that make massive public transit schemes so difficult to conceive otherwise.
Hmm. I’ve always believed the conventional wisdom, that the Games cost cities money. But maybe they cost them money in the right way? As long as the Games aren’t used as an excuse to build the Trinity toll road. Please.
