Davidson receives grant to study Olympic-host cities

Mark DavidsonMark Davidson, assistant professor in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University, has been awarded $20,730 from the International Olympic Committee for his year-long project titled “Governing to maintain legacies: urban governance, policies and the long-term impacts of the Olympics.”

Davidson’s research will examine ways in which recent Olympic-host cities have developed institutional and policy innovations to satisfy Olympic-related legacy commitments—the pledges and promises related to the outcomes of hosting the Games. Examples of such pledges include the urban renewal projects, institutional reforms and infrastructural improvements associated with Olympic-related development.

“My project will investigate the ways in which cities have to innovate and reform their governance practices in order to achieve the goals set out in their Olympic bids,” explains Davidson, “the premise being that cities are constantly reacting to changing circumstances that require them to develop legacies on an ongoing basis.”

Davidson is an urban geographer with research interests in gentrification, urban politics, policy making, comparative urbanism and critical socio-spatial theory. His most recent work focuses on large-scale urban redevelopment projects and theories of urban politics. Davidson’s research often combines qualitative and quantitative methods and is international in scope, including work in Europe, North America and Australasia.