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Emerging models of the Eventful City
Richards,Greg
Richards,Greg
Abstract
Cities around the world are increasingly using events as a tool to generate a wide range of effects, including image enhancement, income generation, and social cohesion. However, the use of events as an urban policy tool is hampered by the fact that events themselves also have their own objectives, such as making a profit or advancing the agenda of national and international organizations. In some cases, the objectives of the events and the city may coincide, but in other cases, they may not. Therefore, for cities there is a growing challenge in coordinating their events program in order to maximize the benefits for the city as a whole, while also supporting individual events. Many cities have already developed specific events policies and support mechanisms, but these tend to treat events as individual occurrences, rather than as an integral part of the urban ecology. Richards and Palmer have argued that the "eventful city" needs to take a strategic, holistic view of its events portfolio in order to move from being a city full of events to developing "eventfulness." This article considers how some cities are developing more holistic approaches to event policy and eventfulness. In reviewing the events policies of cities worldwide, it identifies three emerging policy models: event-centric policy, sector-centric policy, and network-centric policy. The article further considers the implications of these different models for events and events policies in cities.
Description
Date
2017
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
Event portfolios, Event programs, Eventful cities, Governance, Urban events, Urban regimes, SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
Citation
Richards, G 2017, 'Emerging models of the Eventful City', Event Management, vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 533-543. https://doi.org/10.3727/152599517X15053272359004
License
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess