Major events, a roadmap for lasting benefits

Surprise, or maybe not. Big events do not digitise a city's services, but they do enhance infrastructure such as wi-fi, backbones, sensors and temporary networks. In short, they speed up the creation of those facilities that would otherwise take much longer to switch on: they digitise the cables, but not always the services. And then they amplify the voice of the city involved, even if only for a limited period of time. Cross and delight of our years marked by all sorts of events.

Less than a month before the start of the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, an inter-university study sheds light on the rate of digitisation associated with mega-events. It is called 'Taming the White Elephant' and was edited by Filippo Marchesani and Giuseppe Ceci, professors at the D'Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara and La Sapienza University of Rome, respectively. A study to understand how mega-events do indeed advance the rate of digitisation, but with distinctions. The researchers mapped the depth, breadth and evolution of digital presence, analysing how it varies in the period preceding, accompanying and following the sports events analysed. A current scenario that will reappear on the world stage in the coming weeks. The study covered 11 European cities that hosted the Champions League finals: among them Munich, London, Milan, Paris, Istanbul.

The title is evocative and a reference to eastern mythology. In Asia, kings would donate white elephants held sacred to inconvenient officials because the cost of maintaining them would slowly drive them to ruin. This is why in urban planning, a white elephant becomes a spectacular, expensive and non-functional piece of infrastructure after its first use. But how many white elephants really are in major initiatives? And how does an extraordinary event improve ordinary life? Cities use these events to develop in terms of infrastructure and communication, but much more could be done so that the value created does not vanish with the end of the event.

A paradox of the smart city because the more visible part of digitisation grows more than the part that really affects citizens' daily lives. "The benefits for citizens and the community exist and are real, but in the transition of places the more visible dimension weighs more than the invisible one. Infrastructure and communication grow because they are tangible and immediately recognisable. Services manage to have a real impact on daily life but require time and structural organisational changes,' says Filippo Marchesani. The risk is increased when we focus on the attractiveness of the city rather than on those who live there. "Hosting a major event is certainly a benefit and allows the integration of technologies and skills that were previously unavailable on infrastructure, mobility and security. But a technology remains if it creates value afterwards: it vanishes if it lives only in the extraordinary,' Marchesani points out.

Thus, major events function as accelerators, not as ex novo generators of innovation. "They amplify inequalities between cities because they reinforce trajectories that are already underway and allow existing processes and projects to be accelerated, often by leveraging the skills and experience of partner companies already involved in other cities. Where there is a lack of strategy, the event remains an episode, while where there is vision, it turns into a multiplier of opportunities,' Giuseppe Ceci argues.