Olympics and Urban Form: Evolution of the Scales of Representation, Planning and Construction

For a long period, hosting the Olympic Games has been viewed as an opportunity to promote and accelerate urban development, a driver of economic growth, a way for fast urban regeneration, also improving transport accessibility and cultural life. Being the most prestigious world mega-event and having over a hundred years of history, the Olympic Games have impacted many hosting cities' development trajectories. However, a general shift in attitude to the Olympics' organization that involves concepts of sustainability and territorial cohesion could change the mega-events local effects. In Italy, the twentieth century's Olympics were localized in a small but prestigious town as Cortina d'Ampezzo (1956 Winter Games) or in a big metropolis as Rome (1960 Summer Games), contributing to significant urban transformations and international repositioning. In 2006, the Turin's Winter Games had a regional scale and involved several localities and regional infrastructure. The Winter Olympic Games 2026 will spread in the macro-regional dimension in which the four territorial clusters will be located: 1) Milan and 2) Valtellina (200 km from Milan) in the Lombardy Region; 3) Cortina with Anterselva between the Veneto Region and the Autonomous Province of Bolzano (370 km from Milan); 4) Val di Fiemme in the Autonomous Province of Trento (300 km from Milan). Based on Italy's case, the study aims to shed light on the evolution of the Olympics projects' representation, planning, and construction scales. The event's macroscale diffusion further raises the question of its territorial impact in places, directly and indirectly, involved and the transformation of local expectations and event's perception. At the same time, in a global context of long-term regionalization of cities but also of recent restrictive measures to mobility due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this contribution aims to reflect about the potential role of mega-events in representing, planning, and constructing the spatial structure of a macro-region.