Raco, M;
(2015)
Sustainable city-building and the new politics of the possible: reflections on the governance of the London Olympics 2012.
AREA
, 47
(2)
pp. 124-131.
10.1111/area.12080.
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Abstract
This paper draws on the example of the London Olympics 2012 to argue that a new ‘realistic’ politics of good governance and output-focused private sector delivery now dominates sustainability policy thinking. It is a politics that makes a series of normative claims and promises based on a pragmatic and non-ideological approach to sustainability. Its advocates claim that it converts the lofty ideals and aspirations of utopian sustainability into tangible, verifiable and output-based delivery mechanisms. The discussion examines the governance arrangements that were put in place for the Games and the ways in which sustainability objectives were defined, institutionalised and mobilised by hybrid public and private actors. It outlines some of the wider impacts of this new development model and its implications for thinking about sustainability planning elsewhere.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Sustainable city-building and the new politics of the possible: reflections on the governance of the London Olympics 2012 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1111/area.12080 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/area.12080 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2014 The Author. Area published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. |
| Keywords: | sustainability, managerialism, London Olympics, privatisation, governance models, urban democracy |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > The Bartlett School of Planning |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1471243 |
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