August 27, 2012
Posted by: Jade Fu, Class of 2012
Forbes estimated that the final price tag to host the Summer 2012 Olympics falls somewhere between $15 billion to $20 billion.
Although having the tourists fly in from all around the world for the games have immediate benefits to the Olympics hosting city, the real benefits come from long-term gains of a healthy boost in tourism. Since London is already a big city, the spike is probably not going to be as high as other cities such as Atlanta and Salt Lake City.
An enormous amount of costs go into building the infrastructures and cleaning up after millions of individuals that attend the games.
It would have been awesome for Chicago to host the Summer Olympics that has just passed, especially for us MSC 2012 folks that would have been in town or stayed in town for it. But the downsides probably outweighs the potential / undefined benefits. There would have been an increase in construction (just when you think there can't possibly be any more construction around here), pollution, traffic (would suck for those of us that need to commute to and from work and school!), trash / litter, and taxes (!). All of the above would be pretty annoying… Paying the city additional construction and traffic due to the preparing for the Olympics… In the beginning, I thought it would be pretty cool to have it in Chicago, but after talking to friends in London and learning more about things that they have to deal up / put up with, I'm sure it is for the best that we didn't get the bid. There will always be other Olympics, and it's definitely more fun to travel to the Olympics than to deal with chaos in our own city.
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Categorised as: Jade Fu
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