The Spatial Change of Winter Olympics: The Analysis of International Case Studies

This chapter explores five Winter Olympic Games in the Alpine macro-region: St Moritz 1948, Cortina d’Ampezzo 1956, Innsbruck 1976, Albertville 1992, and Turin 2006. It aims to identify trends and discontinuities in spatial scales and legacies from a plan-making perspective. Amid disparities, the chapter discusses innovative actions in the economic, energetic, infrastructure, and environmental sectors. It analyzes the cooperation among metropolitan and mountainside governments, supported by European, national, and regional funds and other financial instruments. The focus includes governance models, interventions, and resulting socioeconomic effects involving multiple actors, and complex planning and policy instruments. These selected instances, representing major Alpine countries (France, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy), are chosen for their relevance to trans-scalar phenomena impacting the identity and socioeconomic shifts of the entire Alpine macro-region, beyond the hosting territories. Using five leading indicators—the territorial context of the targeted mega-event, the program of competitions and the arrangement of venues, the interventions and developments, the socioeconomic impacts, and legacy—the chapter unpacks substantial transformations in terms of territorial policies, operational landscapes, relations between town/city scale and event scale, and the progressive growth of facility interventions.