The International Olympic Committee officially announced the five candidate cities competing to host the 2024 Olympics today and they are: Los Angeles, Budapest, Hamburg, Paris, and Rome. Several Asian and South American cities have been selected as hosts in recent years, but this all-European-plus-LA crop is a bit of a return to form for the historically Eurocentric Olympics. The bid process will take two years with a final vote held in Lima, Peru in September 2017, reports the AP. These are the first cities to bid under the IOC's new Agenda 2020 plan, which seeks to keep costs low by, among other things, reusing existing facilities.
LA has thirstily embraced the mission—not just putting out a corny video all about how digitaly startupy the city is, but also assembling a bid based on the reuse of many existing facilities, including the LA Memorial Coliseum. Even so, the bid also calls for an enormous new Olympic Village on an LA River parcel owned by a company that has previously refused to sell and lots of other inexplicable costs that have made city analysts very skeptical that the city will turn a profit as the bid promises. Los Angeles taxpayers will be on the hook for any cost overruns.
· Los Angeles among five finalists to host 2024 Summer Olympics [AP]
· 7 Very Big-Deal Plans in Los Angeles's New 2024 Olympics Bid [Curbed LA]
· City Analysts: Los Angeles's Olympics Bid is Kinda Nonsense [Curbed LA]