Sport Better Cities

How do major sporting events actually shape the cities that host them? Sport Better Cities provided verified facts on the long-term urban benefits and drawbacks of hosting the FIFA World Cup or Olympic Games — beyond the stadium and outside the news cycle.

The project was built for journalists, sports enthusiasts, city governments, and the institutions that decide where these events go. Its goal: to help FIFA and the IOC work with hosts as peers, prioritizing long-term urban development and infrastructural needs alongside event hosting.

The work draws on years of fieldwork — preparations for South Africa’s 2010 FIFA World Cup, a Fulbright fellowship studying Barcelona’s 1992 Olympic transformation, and research on the Diagonal District after Barcelona’s 2004 World’s Fair.