The Olympics: Boston’s Great Debate

Dublin Core

Title

The Olympics: Boston’s Great Debate

Description

On January 8th 2015, the United States Olympic Committee somewhat stunned the American public with the news of the American city selected to bid for the 2024 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. Boston, the City upon a Hill, the Athens of America, and the Hub of the Commonwealth, had been elected as the American bid city. The news of Boston’s selection shocked its residents perhaps even more than those of the other candidate cities, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. Due to USOC rules, Boston 2024, the organization responsible for Boston’s bid, could not conduct any public outreach before the bid was selected. Consequently, since the USOC’s announcement, a heated debate has sprung up between Boston’s Olympic organizers, Boston 2024, and their opponents represented by the organization No Boston Olympics. In this essay, using the websites of the two groups, newspaper articles, and in-person interviews with and lectures by men leading each of the groups, I attempt to encapsulate this debate, boiling it down to four major points. Boston 2024 and No Boston Olympics, I show, are arguing specifically over the financial costs, economic benefits, infrastructural outcomes, and opportunity costs of hosting the Games in Boston.

Creator

Dylan McDonough

Files

http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/courses/2015/USW24/files/original/91358ab7dd2138384e6ff534c608ed59.png

Citation

Dylan McDonough, “The Olympics: Boston’s Great Debate,” USW24, accessed March 28, 2024, https://usworld24.omeka.fas.harvard.edu/items/show/28.