The events city: Sport, culture, and the transformation of inner Melbourne, 1977-2006.(Report)

In 2006 Melbourne, Australia, played host to an almost monthly lineup of major international sporting and cultural events: the Australian Open Tennis tournament, the Commonwealth Games and associated cultural festival, a Formula One Grand Prix, an International Flower and Garden Show, an arts festival, and what is billed as the third largest comedy festival in the world. Almost all of these events were staged primarily in a revitalized region within a five-kilometre radius of the city centre, and all--bar the Commonwealth Games--are annual events, part of a deliberate economic and tourism strategy that attempts to sell Melbourne as an "events city." This paper charts the emergence of this events strategy and argues that, rather than being a phenomenon of the 1990s as is often assumed, its origins lie in the early 1980s and was a deliberate response to deindustri-alization, urban decay, and "crisis" in the inner Melbourne economy in the 1070s. The paper recognizes the many successes of this economic policy but raises questions about a policy that adds to a growing economic gap between the now prosperous, genrified inner city and the increasingly marginalized zones of the metropolis.

En 2006, la ville deMetbourne en Australie a ete l'hote d'une serie d'evenements sportifs et culturels d'envergure internationale: le tournoi de tennis Open dAustralie, les Jeux du nonwealth auxquels etait associe un festival culturel, un Grand Prix de Formule I, un festival international d'horticulture et de jardins, un festival d'arts et un festival de l humour qui fut alors presente comme le plus grand au moude, Presque tous ces evenements se sont deroules dans une zone revitalisee se trouvant dans un rayon de cinq kilometres du centre de la ville. Tous, a l'expection des Jeux du Commonwealth, sont devenus des evenements annuels et ils s 'inscrivent dans une strategic deliberee de developpement economique et touristique visant a promouvoir Melbourne comme une ville de festivals et de grands evenements. Cet article reconstitue la mise en forme de cette strategic de revitalisation du centre, J'y argumente que cette strategic n'a pas ete ilaboree dans les annees 1990 comme ill'est souvent evoque. Visant relancer I'economic du centre de Melbourne, cette approche soutenue par les pouvoirs publics en partenariat avec les acteurs prives et civiques trouve plutot ses origines dans les annees 1980 alors que Melbourne traversait depuis une dizaine d'annees une phase de desindus-trialisation et de devitalisation urbaine. Tout en reconnaissant les retombees positives de cette strategic de developpement economique sur la vitalite du centre, cet article souleve aussi des enjeux relies a Vecart economiqueprevalant entre les zones prosperes etgentrtfiees du centre-ville et les secteurs excentri-ques de plus en plus marginalise's de la metropole.

Introduction: Sport, Culture, and Urban Regeneration

In 1977, Melbourne's then metropolitan planning authority, the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) issued two reports on the city's inner region. The first, Melbourne's Inner Area: A Position Statement, noted a recent rapid decline in blue-collar employment in the region and warned of the potential for "serious problems of chronic unemployment" among unskilled workers and others, unless efforts were made to generate alternative employment strategies for people displaced by economic restructuring. (1) The second report, Socio-economic Implications of Urban Development, also voiced concerns about the effects of economic change on inner Melbourne, but was much more alarmist in tone, declaring that the region was experiencing a "crisis" in manufacturing that was rapidly leading to deindustrialization, economic stagnation, and rising unemployment. (2) This report predicted that if "the overseas pattern of the rundown of larger cities were repeated in Melbourne then the consequences for the inner areas would be very grave indeed." These consequences might include "unemployment rates of 15-20% ... with more than double that for certain groups such as the young, who are forced to remain in the inner city." (3) The report went on to intimate that, if these trends were left unchecked, there existed the real possibility of the emergence in inner Melbourne of British- or American-style urban decay and social disorder.

Today, thirty years later, the predicted deindustrialization of inner Melbourne has essentially occurred, but neither the mass unemployment nor the social unrest has come to pass. And rather than being a place of abandonment and decay, Melbourne's inner city has become the main locus of a highly successful urban economy based on services, spectacle, and consumption. As with numerous other cities around the world, Melbourne has witnessed a massive transformation in the physical, social, and cultural profile of its inner area in the decades since the 1970s, and, notwithstanding the success of Sydney in hosting the Olympic Games in 2000, has been the Australian city that has overtly followed a strategy of utilizing its cultural infrastructure and tradition of mass spectatorship at sporting events to drive economic development, and in the process revitalize the urban economy.

The physical impacts of these policies are most notable in the downtown area and its immediate surrounds, which have been transformed by massive development or redevelopment of what were already extensive sporting, arts, and cultural institutions. In the period since the early 1980s this area has seen the Melbourne Cricket Ground completely rebuilt as a 100,000-seat day/night sporting venue; a 52,000-seat multi-purpose indoor/outdoor stadium constructed as a centrepiece of the regenerated Docklands precinct, immediately to the west of the Central Business District; the National Tennis Centre built (and rebuilt) as a sports and entertainment venue on the eastern fringe of the Central Business District; and the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre established and then extended at inner-suburban Albert Park. In the cultural realm, the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne Museum, Public Records Office of Victoria, and the National Gallery of Victoria were all rebuilt or refurbished in the 1990s and early 2000s, while Federation Square, completed in 2002 is an avowed showpiece of architecture, which alongside a number of bars, cafes, and shops, houses a new Australian wing of the National Gallery, as well as the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and the Victorian headquarters of multicultural broadcaster SBS. (4) All of these projects are located in the "downtown" region of the city, that is within a five-kilometre arc of the Central Business District, and most have been funded from public or public-private sources, and overseen by a state government instrumentality, Major Projects Victoria, founded in 1987. (5)

Recent years have also seen Melbourne's political, civic, and business elite seek to reinvent the formerly manufacturing and commercial-focused metropolis as an "events city" of sporting, cultural and other attractions, pitched to local and international tourists. These "events" have now become almost monthly fixtures on the urban calendar. An especially busy year was 2006, as the city played host to the Commonwealth Games and its associated cultural festival, the Australian Open Grand Slam Tennis tournament a Formula One Grand Prix, an International Flower and Garden Show, and what is billed as the third-largest comedy festival in the world. Other cultural events included an international puppet festival, a major international film festival, and the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts. (6) In sport there was also the Australian Football League Grand Final, the Boxing Day cricket test, and the "race that stops a nation"--the Melbourne Cup--run on the first Tuesday in November. (7) All of these events--except the Commonwealth Games and the puppet festival--are annual fixtures, and almost all are staged primarily in the new or refurbished inner urban cultural and sporting facilities described above.