Olympic Cities provides the first full overview of the changing relationship between cities and the Olympic events since 1896. With eighteen specially commissioned and original essays written by a team of distinguished international authors, it explores the historical experience of staging the Olympics from the point of view of the host city.

A thought-provoking analysis of the relationship between Olympic festivals and urban spectacle it:

• provides overviews of the urban impact of the four component Olympic festivals - the Summer Games, Winter Games, Cultural Olympiads and the Paralympics
• comprises systematic surveys of four key aspects of activity involved in staging the Olympics - finance, place promotion, managing spectacle and urban regeneration
• consists of nine chronologically arranged portraits of host cities, from 1936 to 2012, with particular emphasis on the first four Summer Olympic games of the twenty-first century.

As controversy over the growing size and expense of the Olympics continues unabated, this book's incisive and timely assessment of the Games' development and the complex agendas that host cities attach to the event will be essential reading not only for urban and sports historians, urban geographers, planners and all concerned with understanding the relationship between cities and culture, but for anyone with an interest in the staging of mega-events.