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Mega Event Planning

Series Editor
Eva Kassens-Noor
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

The Mega Event Planning Pivot series will provide a global and cross-
disciplinary view into the planning for the world’s largest sporting,
religious, cultural, and other transformative mega events. Examples
include the Olympic Games, Soccer World Cups, Rugby championships,
the Commonwealth Games, the Hajj, the World Youth Day, World
Expositions, and parades. This series will critically discuss, analyze, and
challenge the planning for these events in light of their legacies
including the built environment, political structures, socio-economic
systems, societal values, personal attitudes, and cultures.
More information about this series at http://​www.​palgrave.​com/​
gp/​series/​14808
Greg Andranovich and Matthew J. Burbank

Contesting the Olympics in American

Cities
Chicago 2016, Boston 2024, Los Angeles 2028
1st ed. 2021
Greg Andranovich
Department of Political Science, California State University, Los Angeles,
CA, USA

Matthew J. Burbank
Department of Political Science, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT,
USA

ISSN 2633-5859 e-ISSN 2633-5867

Mega Event Planning
ISBN 978-981-16-5093-2 e-ISBN 978-981-16-5094-9
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5094-9

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore

Pte Ltd. 2021

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively
licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is
concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in
any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks,

service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the
absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the
relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general
use.

The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the
advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate
at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
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Praise for Contesting the Olympics in American
Cities
“Arguably we are at a tipping point in the history of the Olympics and
Contesting the Olympics in American Cities makes a major contribution
to debates about the future of the Games and other sports mega-events.
Written by renowned experts in the field of the urban politics of mega-
events, this will become a standard reference point for students,
teachers, researchers and anyone interested in the recent past and
future development of the Olympics.”
—Professor John Horne PhD, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
Contents
1 Cities and the Olympics in Urban Politics
Introduction
Mega-Events and Cities
Contesting the Mega-Event Strategy
References
2 Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid and Opposition
Government and Politics in Chicago
The 2016 Olympic Bid
Contesting the Olympic Bid
The Meaning of Opposition to the Chicago Olympic Bid
References
3 Boston 2024 Olympic Bid and Opposition
Government and Politics in Boston
Boston’s Bid for the 2024 Olympics
Contesting the Olympic Bid
The Meaning of Opposition to the Boston Olympic Bid
References
4 Los Angeles 2024 Bid and 2028 Opposition
Government and Politics in Los Angeles
The Los Angeles 2024 Olympic Bid
Contesting the 2028 Olympics
The Meaning of Opposition to the 2028 LA Olympics
References
5 Anti-Olympics Protest as a Political Legacy
Introduction
 The Nature of Anti-Olympic Opposition
Contesting the Olympic City in the USA
Conclusion
References
Index
About the Authors
Greg Andranovich
attended his first year of college at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul and
holds a BA from Clinch Valley College, an MA in economics from George
Mason University, and a PhD in political science from the University of
California, Riverside. His research interests are urban politics, policy
making, and public administration. He has co-authored three books and
a number of journal articles and book chapters on these topics. He is
emeritus professor of political science at California State University, Los
Angeles, where he taught political science and public administration.

Matthew J. Burbank
is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of
Utah where he teaches classes on voting, public opinion, political
parties, and research methods. He is the co-author of two books,
Parties, Interest Groups, and Political Campaigns (2012) and Olympic
Dreams: The Impact of Mega-events on Local Politics (2001), as well as a
number of journal articles and book chapters. He currently serves as
the associate dean for undergraduate studies and faculty affairs in the
College of Social and Behavioral Science at the University of Utah.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
G. Andranovich, M. J. Burbank, Contesting the Olympics in American Cities, Mega Event
Planning
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5094-9_1

1. Cities and the Olympics in Urban

Politics
Greg Andranovich1 and Matthew J. Burbank2
(1) Department of Political Science, California State University, Los
Angeles, CA, USA
(2) Department of Political Science, University of Utah, Salt Lake City,
UT, USA

Greg Andranovich (Corresponding author)

Email: gandran@calstatela.edu

Matthew J. Burbank
Email: mburbank@poli-sci.utah.edu

Abstract
This chapter examines policy choices by taking a closer look at the
questions raised by opponents of the Olympics. Opposition groups in
American cities offer two critiques of existing social and political
institutions. First, they question whether the IOC and the Olympics
makes sense as a basis for urban growth and development. We examine
the institutional framework for bidding and hosting the Olympics,
focusing on how and why it is changing. This framework reveals the
distortions inherent in corporate global sport, more specifically the
ways in which it contributes to urban policy outcomes that can
exacerbate inequalities. Second, opposition groups question the lack of
democracy in the policy processes used in urban governance. We
examine the claims, strategies, and tactics of the anti-Olympics
opposition, and how these have changed over the time.
Keywords Agenda 2020 – IOC – Mega-event strategy – Olympic bids –
Opposition – Right to the city – USOC

Introduction
Sport reveals choices in communities. In the period 2013–2018, 14
European and North American cities withdrew from potential bids to
host the Olympic games. The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the
postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Summer Games for at least a
year, pending resolution of the global pandemic. In December 2020,
Japan’s NHK News (2020) found that public support had slipped for the
already-postponed 2020 Olympics (MacAloon 2020; Zimbalist 2020):
32% of respondents wanted the games canceled, 31% wanted them
postponed again, and 27% said the games should go ahead in 2021. It is
fair to say that the Olympics are in disarray. Public sentiments—at least
in democratic societies where these can be expressed and assessed—
have shifted from a broad societal consensus valuing the corporate
model of global sport with cities as merely temporary custodians of an
event, toward one of greater skepticism and a questioning of priorities.
The social and political values underlying the transformation and re-
creation of urban spaces through mega-events such as the Olympic
games are a focus of critique. Perhaps most important is the gap
identified by the question, do the Olympics actually promote the stated
philosophy of Olympism? The seven “fundamental principles” of this
philosophy emphasize the importance of human rights, global
citizenship, and “the harmonious development of mankind” (IOC 2020,
11–12). Does the conduct of the Olympic games live up to these
principles and truly support the value of human development? If the
Olympics do not live up to their own fundamental principles, then why
are cities making the policy choice of bidding to host them?
This book examines such policy choices by taking a closer look at
these questions from the perspective of the emergent anti-Olympics
opposition and resistance. The opposition and resistance groups in
American cities offer a critique of our social and political institutions in
two ways. First, they question whether the International Olympic
Committee (IOC) and the Olympic games make sense as a basis for
urban growth and development. We examine the institutional
framework for bidding and hosting the Olympics, focusing on how and
why it is changing. This institutional framework reveals the distortions
and contradictions inherent in corporate global sport, more specifically
the ways in which it contributes to certain urban policy outcomes such
as the financialization of land uses in cities that can exacerbate
sociospatial inequalities. Second, opposition groups question the lack
democracy in policymaking and the policy processes used in urban
governance. We examine the claims, strategies, and tactics of the anti-
Olympics opposition, and how these changed over time. This
examination allows us to identify the critique of urban economic
development policy as producing an urbanism built on the profitable
consumption of land and based selectively on values that promote
individualism, self-reliance, and the sanctity of private property rights
while neglecting the values that promote community, public
responsibility, collective connection, and caring. We examine the
Olympic bids and opposition in three different cities—Chicago, Boston,
and Los Angeles. Our assessment of these cities’ anti-Olympics
opposition is based on documentary analyses of the official bid books,
media coverage of the bidding processes, IOC documents, and analysis
of materials produced by and conversations with key members of the
opposition and resistance in Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles (as well
as observation of meetings, activities, and events in Los Angeles). These
cities are useful cases for identifying, as theory suggests, the weak
points in the relationship between society and political institutions that
allow opposition and resistance to emerge. Studying the anti-Olympics
contestation holds the promise of understanding the possibilities for
broader societal and political change (e.g., Lefebvre 1969).

Mega-Events and Cities

Utilizing globally broadcast sports mega-events as agents for urban
change has been a mainstay strategy for cities and nations around the
world for several decades (e.g., Burbank et al. 2001; Essex and Chalkley
1998; Hall 1992; Hiller 2000; Lenskyj 2000; Roche 1994). Getting an
external event requires bidding for it, and the IOC, which owns the
Olympic games, determines the bidding process. The manner in which
the IOC selects cities to hold either the summer or the winter games has
changed over time as the appeal to cities of bidding for or hosting the
Olympics changed (Shoval 2002). At some times in the past, the IOC has
sought host cities out and negotiated directly with them. At other times,
the IOC encouraged cities to bid to host the games. During periods of
high demand, such as in the post-1984 Los Angeles Olympics period,
the IOC selection system relied on competition between cities. After the
success of the 1984 LA Olympic games, many city leaders sought to bid
to host a mega-event because of the perceived economic benefits,
grounded in the concepts and practices of urban entrepreneurialism:
the Olympics could be a revenue generator for cities, serving as a
catalyst for urban growth that intensified land-uses and increased the
profitability of land consumption. In addition, the IOC consolidated its
control over the production of the Olympics and sought greater benefits
for itself as bids became larger and more complex. For example, the IOC
developed a corporate sponsorship program and took control of and
then tinkered with the distribution of sponsorship and television
broadcast revenues. However, in a number of cities Olympic bidding
and hosting led to unfavorable urban outcomes such as overspending,
expensive and underutilized “white elephant” facilities, and outright
corruption in the bidding process. Increasingly during this period, the
Olympics were seen as being too large in scale and overly commercial
indicating the existence of contradictions between Olympic rhetoric
and urban reality. After 2000, it was becoming evident that there was a
shift in relations between cities and the Olympic games characterized
by increased transnational mobilities (Cashman and Harris 2012;
Salazar et al. 2017). Olympic bids saw new stakeholders representing
transnational development interests (Surborg et al. 2008), including
the IOC itself (Kassens-Noor 2012). This shift suggests that the policy
path of uneven urban economic development catalyzed by the Olympics
distorts and disempowers local and national interests (Heying et al.
2007). Although the IOC has responded to the issues raised in bidding
for and hosting the Olympics, it has done so at the margins with the
purpose of “brand protection” as a guarantor of urban growth. In the
process, the IOC has given anti-Olympics community organizers a
number of very real issues around which they can mobilize and contest
the games (Hippke and Kreiger 2015; Mü ller 2015a; also see MacAloon
2008).
 The costs of hosting the Olympics dwarf city budgets and the
amounts spent to provide programs to city residents. In addition, the
Olympic games are marked in the public eye as much by the cost
overruns and the lack of financial transparency as they are for the
athletic competition. The changing perception of the Olympics indicates
both the growing power and the weakness of the IOC in local urban
economic development policy making and planning (Davis and Groves
2019; Kassens-Noor 2012, 2015). Flyvbjerg et al. (2016) examined local
Olympic organizing committee operating and direct capital costs, or all
sports-related costs for hosting the Olympics, at two points in time (the
bid budget and the final costs) for all Olympics between 1960 and
2016. For those games where cost data were available (data could not
be obtained for 11 out of 30 games), each of the Olympic games seemed
to be an outlier when seeking a pattern among the cities (Flyvbjerg et
al. 2020). The $50 billion spent to put on the Sochi 2014 Olympic
winter games—this figure includes all costs with sports-related costs
pegged at $21.9 billion (Flyvbjerg et al. 2016, 9)—blew the lid off the
notion that spending could be contained or that gigantism was being
tamed by the IOC (Mü ller 2015b). The excess of the Sochi games
underscored the gap between the rhetoric coming out of the IOC and
the reality on the ground in the Olympic host city selection process.
The IOC processes are codified in the Olympic Charter, which serves
as the “constitution” for international sports. The charter spells out the
principles, rules, and bylaws that guide and regulate the Olympic
Movement and it is organized around the constituent parts—the IOC,
national Olympic committees (NOCs), international sports federations,
and the Olympic games (for more detailed analysis, see Chappelet and
Kubler 2008; Duval 2018). The philosophy of Olympism provides the
moral foundation for the document, and its seven aspirational
principles begin: “Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and
combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind.
Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a
way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good
example, social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental
ethical principles” (IOC 2020, 11). In addition, the IOC has recognized
certain issues—sustainability, legacy, and non-discrimination—that are
larger than the sporting event and these represent a nod toward the
human development foundational values of Olympism (Hayes and
Karamichas 2012). The regulations contained in the remainder of the
Olympic Charter recognize the proprietary and financial stakes in
global sport and range from establishing the composition of the IOC
and the bidding process, to laying out what the opening ceremonies do,
who the athletes are, what they can wear, and governing their conduct
during the Olympic games (IOC 2020). It is important to note that the
charter does get revised regularly, often in response to an issue or
issues that cropped up in a locality or in more than one city organizing
the Olympic games. In the early 1990s for example, the environment (or
rather, environmental degradation) became a focus for organizing the
Olympic games and the idea of sustainable development was enshrined
in the charter in 1996 and post-games legacy concerns made it into the
charter in 2007 (Andranovich and Burbank 2011, 827). Both of these
appear under Rule 33 (2.5), “Election of the host of the Olympic games”
and Rule 34, “Locations, sites, and venues” (IOC 2020, 72). London
2012 was the first Olympic games to be under the IOC’s new legacy
requirements, and it is in the period following the 2012 summer games
that anti-Olympics opposition and resistance has gained traction.
Chappelet (2016, 750) describes what the IOC does today as
“network governance of a complex system,” pointing to the sheer scope
and scale of global sports (also see Mü ller 2014). While it might appear
that the IOC is a central authority, the Olympic Charter institutionalizes
a fragmented hyper-relational set of activities and events under the
guidance of the IOC. Reading the language used in the Olympic
Charter’s Rule 33, which covers host city selection, suggests the close
attention, through the IOC Executive Board or intermediaries, over the
Olympics (IOC 2020, 70–72). Behind these rules and regulations is an
infrastructure of activities that aim to keep the Olympics at the center
of global sport, and for this center to be negotiated as a “functional and
financial system” (Chappelet 2016, 749). These rules belie the
turbulent and changing environment of global sport, which is
addressed through ongoing scrutiny and assessment, and
corresponding administrative and managerial shifts (MacAloon 2008).
The IOC’s extensive changes to the bidding process reflect this dynamic
operating environment, and a long standing dispute between the IOC,
the United States Olympic Committee (USOC; the USOC renamed itself
the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee in 2019), and the other 200-
plus NOCs over the allocation of sponsorship and television revenues
underscored the role of politics in the host city selection process. More
specifically, as the Olympics became more transnational this also
affected a dispute over the share of revenue from global sponsorships
and USA television broadcast revenues. The dispute pitted the USOC
against the other NOCs in an environment of economic globalization
where the value of national boundaries was diminishing in importance
and IOC tinkering with its share aggravated this dispute and weakened
USA bids to host the games (Barney et al. 2004; Elcombe and Wenn
2011). After an agreement to resolve the dispute was reached, the USOC
sent a letter to 35 mayors in February 2013 seeking confirmation of
interest for bidding for the 2024 summer games. That letter described
what it takes to be an Olympic host city (Livingstone 2013):
The staging of the Games is an extraordinary undertaking for any
city, with operating budgets in excess of $3 billion, not including
costs associated with venue construction and other infrastructure.
Among the many requirements are:
45,000 hotel rooms.
An Olympic Village that sleeps 16,500 and has a 5000-person
dining hall.
Operations space for over 15,000 media and broadcasters.
An international airport that can handle thousands of international
travelers per day.
Public transportation service to venues.
Roadway closures to allow exclusive use for Games-related
transportation.
A workforce of up to 200,000.
While the Games require a formidable commitment, they also
provide an unparalleled opportunity for a city to evolve and grow.
The Games have had a transformative impact on a number of host
cities, including Barcelona, Beijing, and London. They enable the
creation and implementation of a new vision and provide a powerful
rallying point for progress.
The USOC letter identifies the key linkages that drive the Olympic
dreams of urban leaders and make the mega-event strategy an
appealing policy choice for local leaders embracing consumption-
oriented economic development: “unparalleled opportunity to grow,”
“transformative impact,” “creation and implementation of a new vision,”
and “rallying point for progress” provide catch phrases worthy of any
aspiring urban leader. When cities bid for the Olympics the period of
hosting the games is not the only time a global sports space comes into
play; the overlays of the Olympic City development requirements
exacerbate tensions in urban development, providing new
opportunities to challenge political power and consumption-oriented
development strategies. In this instance, the contrasting intentions
between this letter and the IOC’s shift toward adopting Agenda 2020
resulted in an opening between policy and practice. As the year 2013
ended the IOC was queuing bids for 2024, the USOC was conducting
informal visits to Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and
Washington, DC as it moved toward the decision to field an American
city in the competition for the 2024 Olympic summer games (Mackay
2013).
The IOC’s Olympic Agenda 2020 reforms were discussed as a way of
combating commercialization, costs, and size of hosting the games.
These reforms were adopted in December 2014 ostensibly to give cities
more opportunities to learn about the Olympic bidding process and to
allow more interaction with the IOC before formally entering into a bid
(IOC 2015; also see Horne and Whannel 2020, pp. 187–192). The
Agenda 2020 process split bidding into two stages: the invitation
process and the candidature process. According to the IOC website, the
invitation phase was introduced to create a:

dialogue between the IOC and future Candidate Cities to

establish a strong basis for the next stages. The IOC provides a
range of services to NOCs and cities interested in bidding.
Potential Candidate Cities are invited … [to meet with the IOC]
and receive various levels of assistance and feedback ahead of
officially submitting a candidature. This includes the sharing of
best practices, provision of materials and a focus on
understanding the Games to put together a solid project that
 best meets the city’s long-term development needs.
Encouragement of legacy and sustainability begins right from
the outset of the Invitation Phase to ensure the Games act as a
catalyst for positive development of tangible and intangible
legacies for the city and region. At the end of the invitation
phase, NOCs and cities are invited to commit to the candidature
process and a city becomes an official Candidate City. (IOC 2019)

The candidate city process is more formal and expected to last for two
years. The IOC presented the candidate city process as occurring in
three stages: first, developing a vision and “games concept;” second,
designing the financial and governance structure for the games while
learning from other cities as part of the Olympic observer program; and
third, providing a plan to deliver the games and “ensure a sustainable
legacy” for the games in the host city or region. The IOC established an
Evaluation Commission to review the materials submitted by the cities
at each stage and conduct a formal visit of the city during the third
stage.
The Agenda 2020 reforms were intended to encourage more cities
to bid and to improve the quality of those bids. This system, however,
depended on having a sizeable number of cities interested in holding
the games and be willing to compete over many years to get them.
During the decade following the global financial crisis of 2007–2008, it
became clear that cities were less willing to meet the increasingly
difficult demands of the IOC and the various Olympic sports federations
with respect to financial guarantees, venue quality, and public support
for the games. During this period a number of cities including Berlin,
Boston, Budapest, Calgary, Hamburg, Rome, and Toronto publicly
considered bidding for the games but withdrew from the process, in
some cases after residents had voted against bidding for the games
(Maennig 2017). Of these, Boston, Budapest, Hamburg, and Rome were
in the 2024 bidding cycle. The problems of not having enough cities to
provide competition and in losing high-value contenders resulted in the
bids for the 2022 winter games being a competition between Almaty
and Beijing. Although Beijing was selected, the lack of competition led
to another set of changes in the IOC bidding process and to the rolling
out of the New Norm, or the IOC’s ideas for holding down the costs of
hosting (Murray 2018).
In June 2019, shortly after the IOC awarded Milan-Cortina the 2026
winter games, the IOC announced additional changes to the Olympic
bidding process. The new changes included eliminating the
requirement that sites be selected seven years in advance of the games.
Dropping the seven-year requirement allowed the IOC greater
flexibility in striking deals with cities for future games as the IOC did
when it made the deal for 2024 and 2028 simultaneously, announcing
Paris as the 2024 and Los Angeles as the 2028 host cities. Awarding
both the 2024 and 2028 Olympics gave the IOC time to continue
assessing the Olympics business model (Kassens-Noor 2020). In
addition, the new process replaced the old Evaluation Commission with
two new Future Host Commissions, one each for the summer and
winter games. These commissions have eight to ten members and will
recommend cities or joint-city bids to the IOC Executive Board. Under
the new process, the board may simply be asked to approve a host city
without other candidate cities to choose from. The new process may
also encourage evidence of popular support for the games in the form
of a referendum; however, the IOC Executive Board will decide this
before a bid is recommended. The goal of these changes is to create a
more flexible means for the IOC to cultivate and select cities through
negotiations rather than through a rigid, multi-year, and competitive
bid process where, as in the 2024 competition, Budapest, Hamburg, and
Rome dropped out leaving only Paris and LA. “‘It can come to a point
where there is only one candidate being proposed,’ IOC President
Thomas Bach said at a news conference. It chimes with Bach’s wish to
avoid ‘too many losers’—a phrase first heard during the 2024 race…
The new panels will be empowered to have ‘permanent ongoing
dialogue’ with potential bidders and pro-actively approach preferred
hosts. They will report first to the Bach-chaired Executive Board, which
will pick the members” (Dunbar 2019). As economist and Olympics
critic Andrew Zimbalist put it: “The largest prize in global sports—the
right to host the Olympics—will soon be won in private negotiations
with the International Olympic Committee’s inner circle instead of
unpredictable membership votes....Negotiations also will give host
cities more power to dictate terms. Gone are the days when the IOC had
the market clout to simply issue terms on a take-it-or-leave-it basis”
(quoted in Fischer 2019). While these rules changes seem to emanate
from a less-strident IOC and appear to establish a veneer of local self-
determination, early evidence points to the IOC’s self-preservation via
Agenda 2020, through its newfound willingness to provide some
latitude in negotiating host city contracts, and then allowing these to be
made public.
Furthermore, in its assessment in 2017, the IOC did not note any
specific changes for directly engaging with the general public. But, an
Olympism in Action Forum was initiated during the Summer Youth
Games in Buenos Aires in October 2018. This first forum was mostly a
public relations exercise, although Chris Dempsey of No Boston
Olympics was included as a panelist for “Hosting the Olympic games:
City perspectives.” His comments did not appear to be taken seriously
by the moderator and IOC President Bach was dismissive afterward.
The IOC considered making this forum a quadrennial event starting in
2023 (Morgan 2019). This limited effort at engaging with “the public”
shows that the IOC still is unsure about what “public” means. Clearly, as
Chappelet (2016) notes, the IOC sees its local stakeholders in the
abstract. Thus, while the matrix of who is involved in decisions
regarding the Olympic games is growing, it has not yet reached cities
that host the Olympics. In some countries, notably the United States
and Italy in 2020, national legislatures were examining their NOCs and
taking steps to potentially thrust themselves into Olympic decision
making (a fear of the IOC which also played into the revenue sharing
dispute; see Elcombe and Wenn 2011).
Finally, although there is no formal requirement for any public
opinion polling in host city candidatures set in the Olympic Charter, its
practice has been recurrent in the IOC host city selection process.
Jennings (2012, 216) notes that demands for transparency and
accountability, whether in government or private business, are the
bedrock for establishing legitimacy. Examining voting patterns in
candidate cities, however, suggested to Jennings that evidence of
national, regional, and local support is not a major factor in the IOC’s
assessment of a city’s candidature and instead might be a form of risk
assessment. Hiller and Wanner (2018) note that how a city’s residents
respond to hosting the Olympics should not be limited to the bid
decision because the seven-year long organizing period to host the
games has important consequences for how people’s lives are affected
by the Olympics. Their review of surveys of host city residents provides
a provocative glimpse at differences across host cities. One example is a
survey that included both emotional and infrastructural legacy
outcomes where residents of Atlanta and Sydney valued emotional
outcomes and residents in Athens and Beijing valued infrastructural
outcomes as more significant (see Kaplanidou 2012). Thus, the IOC
controls a sports marketplace that pops up in various locations using
production, marketing, and placement processes controlled by the IOC
to enhance the seductiveness of the Olympic games for many
consumers beyond those benefitting financially from the sports mega-
event. Or, in the words of Heying and Ryder (2006, 36), providing a
“balm for insecurity, the illusion of distinction, and the promise of
abundance.”

Contesting the Mega-Event Strategy

A cross-national analysis of the impacts of hosting mega-events
between 2010 and 2016 found that these were dependent upon the
urban context (Mü ller and Gaffney 2018). This finding is important
because it reminds us that while the IOC is a stakeholder in urban
policy making and the Olympic games are an important vector for
urban development, outcomes are not pre-ordained. Some outcomes
may not even be relevant to many urban residents, whose interests
conflict with the scope, scale, and speed of proposed urban changes
(Heying et al. 2007). During roughly this same period, anti-Olympics
contestation in 14 cities forced the withdrawal of support for bidding
for the Olympics, either in public referenda or by local officials rejecting
the Olympics due to the opposition claims and flagging public support
(Pauschinger and Lauermann 2018). Recent research on bidding for
and hosting the Olympics addresses the distortions, deficiencies, and
contradictions at the heart of Olympic city development and these anti-
Olympics contestations: building lavish amenities and supporting
hospitality for visitors, displacing residents and gentrifying
neighborhoods, privatizing public spaces, creating high security cities
and militarizing police forces, and false promises of widespread
benefits made by boosters (e.g., Berg 2016; Boykoff 2014, 2020; Dart
and Wagg 2016; Dempsey and Zimbalist 2017; Flyvbjerg et al. 2016,
2020; Gaffney 2019; Giulianotti et al. 2015; Gruneau and Horne 2016;
Hayes and Karamichas 2012; Hiller 2020; Horne and Whannel 2020;
Ichii 2019; Kassens-Noor 2012, 2020; Lauermann 2016; Lauermann
and Vogelpohl 2017, 2019; Lenskyj 2000; Mü ller 2015a; Oliver and
Lauermann 2017; Pauschinger and Lauermann 2018; Perelman 2012;
Russo and Scarnato 2018; Salazar et al. 2017; VanWynsberghe et al.
2013; Zimbalist 2015). As this research demonstrates the contradictory
ways that the Olympics and other mega-events facilitate the
restructuring of urban space to make it more profitable, anti-Olympic
opposition is providing new ways of thinking about the politics of this
restructuring and the possibilities of a more just city.
The policy formation process tells us much about the relationship
between society and government, revealing who is organized into the
policy making process, and who is left out (Schattschneider 1966).
Because conflict and contestation are built into the structure of
American politics, powerful political, cultural, and economic interests
exert influence over policy formation around mega-events, dominating
and trying to control or repress alternative interests and voices
(Burbank et al. 2000). The IOC selection system produces a system of
Olympic overlays such as sports infrastructures, visitor infrastructures,
security infrastructures, and connectivity infrastructures that have
affected local governance substantively and temporally. As the size,
scale, complexity, and commercialization of the games have increased,
critics have called the Olympic games an industry (Lenskyj 2000), a
sporting mode of production (Perelman 2012, 77–80), and a
construction event (Zimbalist 2015) that create a city of exception
(Vanier 2016). On the ground in Olympic host cities, the mega-event
strategy channels a particular set of policy strategies that benefit
growth interests and disadvantage the poor, working class residents,
and many small businesses. These policy strategies include changing
the city’s image, physically redeveloping the downtown to emphasize
consumption, entertainment, and leisure to draw in visitors and new
investment (Andranovich et al. 2001). Implementing these strategies
means utilizing increasingly large-scale projects and prioritizing visitor
amenities, luxury housing, and privatized urban space, all of which
needed to be secured (Gusmã o de Oliveira 2021). The Olympics
provided a new vector for the achievement of these policy objectives
and as decision making shifted, first from elected councils to special
purpose governments (so-called quasi-public agencies) and then
increasingly to the dictates of project and financial management that
also added a new element of temporality into governance (Davies and
Mackenzie 2014; Grabher and Thiel 2015; also see Raco et al. 2018;
Weber 2020). At the same time, it became easier to avoid engaging with
neighborhoods and communities. Indeed, increased complexity in the
Olympics required new, expert knowledge and the number and global
mobility of experts, consultancies, and host city models multiplied as
host city leaders sought to capitalize on their experience and expertise
in this field (e.g., Gonzalez 2011; Horne and Manzenreiter 2017;
Lauermann 2017; Silvestre 2013). These changes introduced a new
emphasis on meeting the requirements of technical standards including
securitization and financing, as well as stakeholders with transnational
interests, adding new layers of uncertainty and ambiguity into local
policy formation and governance while also providing new
opportunities for contestation.
Cottrell and Nelson (2010) examined the history of Olympic
contestation from 1896 to 2008. Cottrell and Nelson find an overall
increase in protest activity since the founding of the modern Olympic
games in 1896. They note that these protests have changed in
emphasis, starting as boycotts and bans of nations and more recently
being localized demonstrations by transnational groups. The broad
range of groups involved, including social movements, local groups,
transnational advocacy groups, international institutions, and nation
states, shows the power of the mega-event as a global stage and the
value of the Olympics as a political and policy space. This value stems
from four factors: the global accessibility and audience of the Olympics;
the attractiveness of the Olympics to potential allies and supporters;
the importance of relying more on soft power tactics when repressing
dissent because of the high profile saturation media coverage; and the
symbolism of the Olympics as a progressive force for social progress.
For Cottrell and Nelson (2010, 733), this symbolism makes the
Olympics a “discourse arena” that can be used to link common
experiences to a common set of references, providing a fixed horizon
for anti-Olympics contestation. Still, the scope and intensity of protest
activity varied and the responses to contestations by hosting nations
and the IOC were also a factor. After the publication of this research, the
IOC scrambled through three important changes to its bidding process
and introduced the New Norm—these changes produce variations in
practice that indicate spaces of institutional weaknesses and openings
for contestation.
In light of the IOC’s rhetorical emphasis on legacy, sustainability,
and human rights, a basic question about policy formation can be asked
when a city bids for a mega-event: in whose interest is Olympic city
urban development? This challenge is at the heart of the politics of
urban development policy making and the choices made ultimately
reveal who has a right to the city (e.g., Harvey 2008; Lefebvre 1996;
Mitchell 2003). This right, expressed in recent anti-Olympics
contestations, is for a more democratic city. A city where all residents
have opportunities for voice in the policy formation process so that
issues that are important to them—including affordable housing,
personal safety, health care, education, recreational opportunities, safe
and efficient transportation—are included in policy discussions and in
policy outcomes. Programs reflecting these broad social justice
intentions and purposes are not part of the menu of policy choices in
most American cities, where privatization, competition, cutbacks, and
repressive policing underpin the austerity politics evident for decades
and experienced in even harsher form since the 2007–2008 global
financial crisis (Peck 2015; Theodore 2020). “Expulsion” (Sassen 2014)
and “celebration capitalism” (Boykoff 2014) characterize the current
conjuncture with market-oriented austerity urbanism facilitating and
reflecting the drive for a sharpened calculus of capital accumulation.
This is the starting point for examining anti-Olympics opposition.
Henri Lefebvre’s framework for examining contestation is worth
revisiting in this regard because it presents the core concerns (1969,
1976; also see Purcell 2002). In The Explosion, his analysis of the events
surrounding the general strike in Paris in May 1968, Lefebvre argued
that a “system” of capitalism was evident, consisting of an “entire
complex of organizations and institutions engaged in management and
decision making … superimposed on the economic organizations” and
the state and state power were fleshing out this system (1969, 14–15).
For Lefebvre, this meant that government played an important role in
underwriting investments in urban space and holding ideological
power for “strategic intervention” to keep the economy going and
maintain order (1969, 44–46). The “appearance of a political
community” was a fiction that merely masked popular passivity and
acceptance of the status quo (Lefebvre 1969, 48). That is, in this
political community we “have ceased to be agents and political
‘subjects,’ [and are instead] ‘subjects’ of political power”—which state
power regulates in a variety of ways through the branches and levels of
government (Lefebvre 1969, 49). One result is the emergence of “voids”
between political institutions, processes, and practices and civil society,
providing space for activity that “lies outside state power” (Lefebvre
1969, 81). For Lefebvre, a shift back to agency and political subjectivity
occurs when a group becomes aware of their “marginal existence from
actual social conditions they feel justified in criticizing” and they refuse
to be integrated by the fictions into the political system, which
effectively separates and fragments differences but proclaims a sense of
unity (1969, 67). The void—which is a space of institutional weakness
—becomes a new political space when spontaneity and contestation
emerge in it, replacing uncritical acceptance of the status quo. As a
result, this contestation also transforms what was a latent institutional
crisis (also a consequence of the masking effects noted above) into “an
open crisis which challenges hierarchies, centers of power, and the
bureaucratization which has infected the entire society” (Lefebvre
1969, 68). We see these weak points between social and political
institutions and relations manifesting in the Olympic bidding process
which in turn opens new spaces that are “consistent—but not
necessarily formal, permanent or national—dimensions of the political
environment” (Tarrow and Tilly 2007, 438; Cottrell and Nelson 2010).
Examining the conditions underlying contemporary political agency
between and through urban and transnational spaces, Barnett (2013)
notes that communicative practices are a crucial link for determining
democratic legitimacy, and cities and urbanism are the communicative
field where connections occur. As the Olympic games move from city to
city across the world, so do new opportunities to enter, use, and expand
this discourse arena. Barnett (2013) shows how new communication
modalities under globalization provide alternatives to our traditional
thinking about political agency, specifically by redistributing agency
horizontally to social movements, organizational fields, and advocacy
networks. In particular, Barnett notes that right to the city claims
introduce a distinctly urban element into transnational political agency,
focusing squarely on urban infrastructures which are being
“reconfigured as political agents” allowing shared narratives to
circulate. Thus, in making urban development policy, especially when
an Olympic bid illuminates consumption-oriented economic
development, the neoliberal market narratives can be contested by
critiques of and counter-narratives to dispossession, discrimination,
other injustices, as well as a lack of public oversight and control in
governance matters related to Olympic city urban development. If
Olympic legacies, or more specifically the legacy planning process in
cities, result in feelings of exclusion and the loss of political agency, then
contestation provides opportunities to jump scale, including shifting
horizontally, to recover that agency.
To sum up, seeking the Olympic games brings a qualitatively
different type of framing event to urban politics. Presenting the
Olympics as “a project of heroic effort, celebration, and
internationalism” (Heying et al. 2007, 108) has not prevented conflicts
over whose city it is from gaining traction. It seems that “the point of no
return” has been reached and the impacts of mega-events must be
considered (Timms 2017, 123). The case studies that follow show how
the mega-event strategy unfolded in American cities in the present
conjuncture, highlighting the critiques, counter-narratives, and
practices of anti-Olympics opponents. In each city, anti-Olympics
contestation aimed to open the field of the possible and entertain the
chances of the impossible, if only in the imaginary (Lefebvre 1969, 62).

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© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
G. Andranovich, M. J. Burbank, Contesting the Olympics in American Cities, Mega Event
Planning
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5094-9_2

2. Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid and

Opposition
Greg Andranovich1 and Matthew J. Burbank2
(1) Department of Political Science, California State University, Los
Angeles, CA, USA
(2) Department of Political Science, University of Utah, Salt Lake City,
UT, USA

Greg Andranovich (Corresponding author)

Email: gandran@calstatela.edu

Matthew J. Burbank
Email: mburbank@poli-sci.utah.edu

Abstract
Chicago’s bid for the 2016 summer Olympics began in 2006 and ended
in 2009 when it was defeated in the first round of voting by the IOC.
The city’s Olympic bid had the support of the mayor and downtown
business leaders and appeared to provide an opportunity for
redeveloping parts of the downtown core in a manner fitting with the
city’s neoliberal development trajectory. Yet, the Olympic bid also
generated opposition, most notably from a coalition of community
activists calling itself No Games Chicago. The efforts of this opposition
group helped to raise concerns about the Chicago bid in the
international competition and establish a new model for effective
opposition to Olympic driven development.
Keywords 2016 Olympic bid – Book of Evidence – Community benefits
agreement – Gentrification – IOC host city contract – Neoliberal
development – No Games Chicago – USOC

Government and Politics in Chicago

Chicago was incorporated in 1837 and is a home rule city under the
Illinois state constitution. Illinois provides for local home rule and is
fairly permissive. Illinois law allows home rule municipalities to tax
income or earnings, or occupations, and does not impose a debt ceiling.
Chicago city government has a mayor-council structure, with 50 council
districts, called wards, with aldermen elected to four-year terms to
represent district residents. The legislative body, the city council, is
organized into 16 standing committees to conduct city business. The
council also elects a vice mayor. The mayor is the city’s chief executive
and is responsible for managing city government. Mayoral powers
include appointing city officers, directors, and commissioners
(including the police superintendent), as well as members of nearly
150 city boards and commissions (including the school board). The
mayor submits the city’s annual budget and presides over council
meetings. The mayor can veto council bills, which can be overridden
with a two-thirds vote. Although technically the mayor has weak
executive powers, the Chicago Democratic political machine has helped
centralize power in the mayor’s office. For example, the mayor picks the
aldermen he wants to chair the powerful zoning, finance, and housing
committees which help determine how public resources are allocated
in Chicago. Historically, Chicago has been a city of low voter turnout
(Bennett et al. 2017b, 272).
Chicago politics are dominated by the Democratic party, with race
and class central to manifesting and maintaining power. Spatially, this
plays out in both neighborhood boundaries and council ward
boundaries. The 50 wards are roughly contiguous with Chicago’s 77
community areas, and these are not exactly the same as Chicago
neighborhoods. Chicago, the third largest city in the United States, is
also one of the most racially segregated. The political geography of
council ward boundaries tends to reflect the city’s racial and ethnic
divisions, with poorer wards getting fewer resources. The South Side of
Chicago has the city’s poorest African American neighborhoods,
followed by the West Side. These neighborhoods were flash points for
urban riots in the mid-1960s (Abu-Lughod 2007, 84).
Historically, politically powerless neighborhoods became the
locations for public housing, the Kennedy Expressway, and the Chicago
campus of the University of Illinois, all of which contributed to white
flight. The highest concentration of public housing construction took
place in these politically powerless neighborhoods, amounting to 20%
of the total housing stock in communities such as Bronzeville (Abu-
Lughod 2007, 86). As core components of the city’s economic
development policy in the early 1960s, these projects did not employ
local workers, did not provide a community development infrastructure
for poor neighborhoods, and contributed to the separation and
segregation of these communities from the city (Anderson and
Pickering 1968; Goldstein 2012; Grimshaw 1992; Vale 2013). Smith
and Judd (1984, 187) noted three changes that emerged in this period:
fiscal welfare replaced social welfare, the uneven distributional effects
of growth exacerbated urban inequalities, and the privatization of
public decision making limited political and policy responsiveness.
When Chicago bid for the 2016 Olympics, Richard M. Daley was
mayor (serving from 1989–2011). Richard M. Daley is the son of the
legendary Chicago mayor and Democratic machine boss, Richard J.
Daley (who was mayor from 1955–1976). Patronage jobs, large
campaign contributions from the global economic sectors, professional
campaigning, and control over the city council were hallmarks of the
Richard M. Daley regime (Simpson et al. 2002, 132). Under the younger
Daley, urban development followed a neoliberal path, focusing on
corporate center redevelopment and gentrification that benefited
developers, investors, and property speculators over residents (Bennett
et al. 2017b). The corporate center scheme privileged the Loop and the
lakefront, and gentrification took investment into poorer areas where
land values were low (Spirou 2007). Since much of the South Side and
the West Side were potential targets for gentrification, this meant that
low-income housing units were targeted for future redevelopment.
These projects were paid for by a tax increment financing (TIF) scheme.
The state legislature permitted the use of TIF in 1977 and Chicago first
used this redevelopment tool in 1984 (Lentino 2017). As a result,
Chicago employed TIF rules for physical redevelopment activities.
Analyses of the city’s TIF districts show that power has become more
centralized in the mayor’s office and policy making was less
transparent (Kane and Weber 2016; Weber 2010). Furthermore,
redevelopment policy decisions are responsive to investors and
insurers. The city paid a premium to sell speculative TIF bonds for
redevelopment in nonresidential real estate, ultimately shifting the
costs to residents in terms of higher property taxes when the 2007–
2008 financial crisis hit Chicago which prompted public outrage. The
shifting of public resources toward business and corporate
beneficiaries has been ongoing for some time. As had been the case in
the past communities were neither considered in policy making nor
were they guaranteed any benefits from policy choices.
The old vision of Chicago-as-manufacturing-center had crumbled
and the new politics of economic development focused on remaking
Chicago into a global, consumption-oriented city, with familiar
components including entrepreneurial government, market-oriented
social values, and a better business climate (Wilson and Sternberg
2012, 983). Wilson and Sternberg (2012) describe Chicago’s
neoliberalization process as evolving through three phases. In the first,
Mayor Daley emphasized a narrative of decline that needed to be
changed. Wilson and Sternberg describe this rollback phase as
retrenching the welfare state and rehabilitating poor, predominantly
African American, neighborhoods.
The mid-1990s marked the second phase that used new rhetoric to
support a new vision. This rhetoric included an entrepreneurial city
government, the importance of public–private partnerships, and a
globally competitive city with a gentrified and redeveloped downtown.
The Commercial Club of Chicago, with a number of Chicago’s biggest
corporate, construction, and real estate businesses serving as co-
authors, weighed in with its Metropolis 2020 Plan, which envisioned an
upscale city built around a gleaming corporate center in the Loop. Tax
increment financing became the preferred method of implementing this
vision. The Loop, South Loop-Bronzeville, South Campus-Pilsen, and
the East-West Wicker Park areas became the places where this vision
took root in the form of 123 TIF supported projects in the 1995–2000
period alone (Wilson and Sternberg 2012, 983). Although this period
was a difficult environment, the political incorporation of some
neighborhood groups and community organizations occurred, albeit
without funding from a federal Urban Development Action Grant as had
occurred in the past (Boyd 2008). A coalition of Bronzeville community
groups formed the Mid-South Planning and Development Commission
in 1990 with a $271,000 grant by the McCormick-Tribune Foundation.
This community coalition worked with the Chicago Department of
Planning and Development to write the grant application and to
increase the number of organizations and residents involved (Boyd
2008, 59). As investment began to target poor and minority areas
outside the Loop, so did efforts to reduce the risk for investors by
isolating and containing the poor through more intensive policing
practices.
The third phase of Daley’s neoliberal program included shifting the
rhetoric about the poor as conditions on the ground changed (Wilson
and Sternberg 2012, 984). As in the past, the racism of Operation
Disruption, a policing approach that began around 1996, increased
both police crackdowns (using sting and shakedown tactics) and
surveillance activities (such as placing 30 cameras around African
American and Latino neighborhoods). These neighborhoods were
“seen” as uniformly crime ridden. But increased police activity was the
extent of what these poor neighborhoods received and the
deterioration continued. The terrorist attacks of September 2001
helped to further consolidate mayoral power in Chicago. There was,
however, little effect on the city’s political economy as the continuing
decline in local revenues was having increasingly dramatic effects on
administering city services (e.g., Simpson et al. 2002). For example, by
2005, before the national subprime mortgage crisis hit with
unrelenting force, Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods were suffering
seven times the national average of mortgage foreclosures, leading
Wilson and Sternberg to conclude that “these neighborhoods…seemed
to be consigned to an alternative reality” (2012, 986). As the city’s
budget woes grew, Daley looked for “creative” responses such as
privatization agreements for Midway Airport and for the city’s 36,000
parking meters. Daley’s administration sought to end Chicago’s high-
rise public housing and to restructure the public school system with an
emphasis on charter schools. These initiatives further divided
Chicagoans as the Olympic bid was rolled out.
After the failure of the Olympic bid, the city continued to pursue
mega-project developments funded by TIFs under the leadership of
Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The city established 135 Opportunity Zone
census tracts under federal legislation that covered tax breaks and
other incentives for development that cover the city’s most
economically distressed neighborhoods on the South and West Sides
(Ori 2019). One parcel sits across both: the 49-acre Michael Reese
Hospital site. This site originally was purchased for $86 million in 2008
by the city of Chicago as the intended home for the Olympic Village and
later offered as part of Chicago’s unsuccessful bid to land the second
Amazon headquarters (Nitkin 2019a).

The 2016 Olympic Bid

In his inaugural address to start what would be his final term in office,
Mayor Daley (2007) said:

Now, with the support of the people of Chicago, we’ve embarked

on a bold new vision for our city—hosting the Olympic and
Paralympic Games in the summer of 2016. We’re all proud that
Chicago was selected to become the United States applicant city.
Our bid committee and the business community provided the
plans, but it was the commitment and enthusiasm of people
across our city and region that made the difference. The United
States Olympic Committee understood that the people of
Chicago are its greatest strength. And it was the promise of what
the Games could do for all our people that convinced me to
support this effort.
They would be a catalyst for transit improvements, more
affordable housing and new facilities in our neighborhoods.
They would bring new businesses, jobs, revenue and other
economic benefits that would help all our people. And as we
move forward on the international bid process, we’ll make sure
that all Chicagoans have a voice in the plan. I believe deeply in
 the Olympic spirit—that people from different backgrounds and
ethnicities can come together to pursue their dreams.
In the period 2006–2009, Chicago bid to host the 2016 Olympic
games. Chicago’s bid ended when it was knocked out in the first round
of voting by the IOC in its meeting in Copenhagen in October 2009. The
origin of the bid was typical of cities using the mega-event strategy to
redevelop the downtown for tourism, gain short-term revenues, and
enhance the city’s image (Burbank et al. 2001). It started in May 2006
when Mayor Daley announced that a newly formed public–private
partnership, the Chicago 2016 Committee headed by a retired
insurance executive but with Daley serving as an honorary chairman,
would bid for the 2016 games on behalf of the city. The committee
numbered 300-plus members from the city’s corporate, business,
government, civic, neighborhood, and sports communities. Its board of
directors included a number of politically connected and powerful
Chicagoans such as former planning commissioner Valerie Jarrett and
financier John W. Rogers, Jr., both also personal friends of Barack and
Michelle Obama (Stein 2011). The bid was premised on the use of
public space and existing facilities in order to provide a compact spatial
footprint in downtown Chicago, providing “a games in the heart of the
city” (Zervas 2016, 217). Three locations ultimately were central to
plans for Olympic redevelopment: Grant Park and Monroe Harbor, east
of the Loop and adjacent to McCormick Place; Washington Park on the
South Side; and on the West Side spanning University of Illinois,
Chicago’s sports facilities, the United Center, and Douglas Park (Bennett
et al. 2013, 370). In addition to making it easily accessible to athletes
and spectators, this compact design would focus investment in the
downtown area’s tourism infrastructure—which would provide a
revenue stream long after the games ended—and would yield a $500
million profit for the city as the host.
In fall 2006, the bid committee decided that its Olympic Stadium
would be erected in Washington Park in Chicago’s mid-South Side; the
$400 million stadium would be a temporary structure capable of
seating 80,000 (Bennett et al. 2017a, 233). This plan was indicative of
the general thinking of the bid committee and its membership (city
government, the Chicago Park District, and the city’s business and civic
elites): Chicago parks and other public spaces, many located in poor
and working communities in the South Side and West Side
neighborhoods, were identified as the sites for most of the Olympic
venues (Bennett et al. 2013, 366). The Chicago bid book that was
submitted to the USOC in January 2007 indicated that the $1.1 billion
Olympic Village would be constructed at McCormick Place on a site
overlooking the lakefront on the Near South Side, adjoining the
convention center (Bennett et al. 2017a, 233). After being selected by
the USOC as the United States’ candidate city, the bid committee looked
to make the proposals for facilities and venues more concrete. As is
typical, the bid book was modified before it was submitted as Chicago’s
candidature file to the IOC in early 2008, although there was ongoing
conflict between the USOC and 2016 bid committee and between the
USOC and the IOC (Baade and Sanderson 2012; Macur 2009). When the
IOC announced that Chicago was among the four finalists for 2016
consideration, Mayor Daley’s chief of staff, Lori Healy, joined the bid
committee in January 2009 in a newly designated position, president of
the committee. The bid committee again modified its physical plan to
host the games (Bennett et al. 2013). In this iteration, the $125 million
swimming venue was moved to Washington Park, from Douglas Park on
the West Side (Bennett et al. 2017a, 233). The final candidature file was
submitted to the IOC in February 2009 and the IOC conducted its site
visit in April 2009.
In spring 2009, the bid committee announced the signing of a
memorandum of understanding (MOU) with a coalition of
neighborhood organizations, labor unions, and businesses. The MOU
established goals for local hiring and affordable housing from
Olympics-related construction and hosting operations, all of which was
contingent on Chicago actually getting the games. In June, the Chicago
bid committee (and the bid committees from the three other
international competitor cities) made its pitch to the IOC in Lausanne.
At the same time, the City of Chicago purchased a large property—the
Michael Reese Hospital—adjacent to McCormick Place for construction
of the proposed Olympic Village. After returning from Lausanne, the bid
committee visited all 50 council wards, holding “public hearings” to
present their 2016 plans to the communities. In September 2009, just
ahead of the IOC vote to select the 2016 host city, the Chicago city
council voted to provide a financial backstop for the costs of hosting the
2016 games, one of the conditions in the IOC host city contract (Bennett
et al. 2013, 378).

Contesting the Olympic Bid

Early in the bid process, there was very little broad-based criticism of
the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid. Over time, however, there were two
main sources of opposition to the bid. One was a grassroots coalition of
activists and community organizers with disparate interests calling
itself No Games Chicago (NGC). This avowedly anti-Olympics group
questioned whether the city could afford to host the games. This group
“as a rule, anticipated insider deals, profit taking, and cost overruns
that would be borne by the public” (Bennett et al. 2017a, 231). The
second source of opposition was from neighborhood activists mainly
from the South Side communities “who distrusted the Chicago 2016
Committee’s pledges to support sustainable economic development
and who feared Olympics-generated gentrification” (Bennett et al.
2017a, 231).
The NGC group came together in a kickoff meeting at the University
of Illinois, Chicago, in January 2009. The meeting coincided with
Chicago being named the United States candidate for the 2016 games.
This started a very busy year of anti-Olympics organizing and
contestation that followed the IOC calendar, including a candidate city
site visit in April by the IOC Technical Team, the June presentation in
Lausanne by the bid committee, and then the IOC host city selection
vote in October.
Social activist Bob Quellos became interested in the local
consequences of hosting the Olympics after reading an article by sports
journalist Dave Zirin on the human costs of the transformation of
Athens for the 2004 games when he was in graduate school (personal
communication, June 18, 2019). In spring 2006, as Chicago’s political
leaders established an exploratory committee for the 2016 Olympic
games, Quellos met with a like-minded activist, Ramsin Canon, in
Millennium Park and over a two-hour meeting they sketched out a
rough plan for opposing the 2016 bid. Their next year, 2007, was spent
doing basic groundwork such as setting up a website and other media,
developing factsheets, making buttons, and doing basic research on
how the Olympics affected host cities . Quellos (2007) contextualized
Chicago’s 2016 bid in a critical analysis published in Counterpunch.
Quellos noted the ongoing transformation of Chicago from a city of and
for its residents into a city for the wealthy and for visitors. Quellos also
spelled out the disregard for poor and working class Chicagoans and
the growing sociospatial inequalities in the city. As Quellos (2007)
stated “the Olympic torch will be blazing a trail of gentrification
through the South Side.” NGC focused on the “glaring contradictions
highlighted” by the Olympic bid on residents and neighborhood
communities, such as declining urban habitability and economic
dispossession punctuated by new housing rules making the right to
return to old neighborhoods problematic, diminishing public space, and
the lack of policy access to decisions about large-scale gentrification.
The NGC activists tried to meet with community organizations and
neighborhood groups in order to build a larger coalition, but the most
common responses they received were silence, or that these groups
would not oppose the mayor, or people simply would not show up for
meetings. Quellos attributes this, in part, to Mayor Daley and the power
of Chicago machine politics: “Daley was good at making sure people
didn’t oppose him; he kept the opposition close and used it to his
advantage” (personal communication, June 18, 2019). The city’s fabled
political culture, the “Chicago way”—where dissent is not tolerated and
information is provided on a need to know basis—was evident.
After reading 5 Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games
on the community-level effects of the Vancouver bid, Quellos contacted
the book’s author, Chris Shaw. Shaw was the spokesperson for the No
Games coalition in Vancouver and thus an excellent resource for the
Chicago activists because Vancouver had experienced what Chicago was
facing. Shaw was one of the featured guests at NGC’s kickoff meeting in
January 2009 at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Ramsin Canon
organized the meeting by bringing together progressive activists from
the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) in the Chicago Teachers’
Union (CTU), Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP), and the
Coalition to Protect Public Housing among others, and contacting the
press. The NGC organizational meeting was inadvertently aided by the
Chicago 2016 bid committee, which sent out an email blast about the
meeting. The meeting was attended by 200 people, including national
and local news media representatives, the heads of Chicago unions, as
well as some 2016 bid committee staff. The meeting opened with the
reading of letter of support from Martin Slavin of Games Monitor and
featured a number of speakers. The big story, however, became cost
overruns. When he left Vancouver that morning to fly to Chicago, Shaw
took the morning edition of the Vancouver Sun with him. The
newspaper’s headline story was news on the growing cost of the 2010
winter games: up to $6 billion. Shaw held up a copy of the newspaper
during his remarks at the meeting (Canon 2009), and this image
became the lead story on the local Chicago ABC news. After the kickoff
meeting, No Games Chicago emerged as a voice that the media relied on
to discuss costs and the issues surrounding the potential consequences
of winning the bid and signing the IOC’s host city contract. At their next
organizing meeting, NGC had 50 new attendees.
The remainder of 2009 was spent publicizing the community
consequences of bidding for the Olympics through dozens of
community meetings and 75 media appearances. Although the
privatization process had started earlier, the anti-Olympics opposition
narrative was built around the Daley policy of privatization as a
solution for Chicago’s growing financial crisis, the lack of transparency
and integrity in city hall, and the general dismay with the Daley
administration’s mismanagement of the city’s infrastructure services in
housing, education, health care, and transportation. These topics were
widely covered in the local news media, and NGC summarized these as
“no money,” “no ideas,” and “save the city with the games.” The
deleterious effects of the city’s problems affected the everyday lives of
Chicagoans but disproportionately affected poorer Chicagoans. NGC’s
Tom Tresser noted that message clarity and discipline were important
to the NGC media strategy, which he described as both “doing due
diligence for the IOC” and “speaking out for the public’s interest in
Chicago” (personal communication, March 20, 2020). For NGC, the
Olympics were “the wrong project, for the wrong city, at the wrong
time.” This message was consistently presented, and carefully
documented on the NGC website; the website remains available, is
regularly updated, and a resource for anti-Olympics organizing.
A number of different protests were on display for the IOC Technical
Team site visit in early April 2009 (Chicago was the first of the four
candidate cities on the IOC itinerary). Around 3000 off-duty members
of the Chicago police union protested at City Hall, one of the many
represented groups working without a contract for the nearly two years
of the financial crisis (Tareen 2009). The IOC visit gave this protest
added visibility and was a reminder of the financial problems facing the
city’s workforce, and the police chanted “no contract, no Olympics.” No
Games Chicago hosted a rally at Federal Plaza attended by more than
200 people to hear speakers, including Chris Shaw, discuss the city’s
financial problems, mismanagement of recent urban development
projects, crumbling infrastructures of housing, schools and hospitals,
and question the mayor’s and 2016 bid committee’s openness with
their pledge to privately produce an Olympic games. After the rally, the
protestors marched to the Aon Center, the home of the 2016 bid
committee, located adjacent to the Fairmont Hotel where the IOC
technical team was staying. The protestors chanted “IOC , leave us be”
among others chants. NGC requested a meeting with the IOC technical
team, following a suggestion by Chris Shaw based on his experience
with the IOC in Vancouver (Quellos , personal communication, June 19,
2019). Among the groups protesting were the coalition group
Communities for Equitable Olympics, which was seeking a community
benefits ordinance from the city prior to the IOC site visit.
In the month before the IOC site visit, the Chicago police conducted
undercover surveillance to monitor the activities of NGC and Bob
Quellos, attended NGC meetings, monitored websites, collected
pamphlets, and went through their trash. These activities were detailed
in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) public records request that
later was reported by a columnist in the independent weekly Chicago
Reader on six instances of police department spying on Chicagoans
during the Daley and Emanuel mayoralties (Joravsky 2015). Joravsky
noted the irony of the police protesting against the Olympics because
the mayor, pleading poverty, would not give police officers a raise but
was ready to spend “hundreds of millions” on the Olympics. In addition,
Joravsky (2015) reported that in a follow-up call regarding the FOIA
request, the FOIA officer told Quellos that he had the “First Amendment
worksheets” on NGC. This term was the name on the forms the Chicago
police department used to open a surveillance operation and
investigate groups exercising their First Amendment rights.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Nodes, 20, 52.
Nodules, 39, 40.
Nostoc, 184.
Notebooks, 3.
Nucleus, 144, 185.
Nuts, 164.

Oleander, 86.
Oögonia, 186.
Orchid, 35, 110.
Oscillatoria, 184.
Osmosis, 42, 48.
Ovary, 135, 144, 163, 170.
Overgrowth, 12.
Ovule, 144, 186.

Palisade cells, 86.

Palmate, 74.
Panicle, 158.
Pappus, 141.
Parasites, 107.
Parenchyma, 60, 86.
Pedicel, 162.
Peduncle, 62.
Peltate, 77.
Perennial, 17.
Pericarp, 164, 165, 169.
Petals, 134.
Petiole, 76.
Phenogam, 177, 180.
Photosynthesis, 94, 101.
Phyllotaxy, 84.
Pine cone, 27, 170.
Pinna, 181.
Pinnate, 74.
Pinnatifid, 76.
Pistil, 135.
Plantain, 157.
Plant societies, 9.
Plants, unlikeness of, 9.
Plumule, 20, 23, 25.
Plur-annual, 18.
Pod, 164.
Pollen, 135, 144, 180.
Pollination, 144, 145;
artificial, 153.
Polypetalous, 134.
Polysepalous, 134.
Polytrichum, 199.
Pome, 169.
Primrose, 140.
Propagation by buds, 121.
Prop-roots, 36.
Proterandrous, 146.
Proterogynous, 146.
Prothallus, 178, 202.
Protoplasm, 42, 94, 97, 185.
Pruning, 105.
Pseud-annual, 17.
Pteridophytes, 181, 201, 203.
Puffball, 194.
Pyxis, 166.

Quarter-sawed, 70.

Receptacle, 134, 163.

Respiration, in plants, 97, 103.
Resting spore, 184, 185, 189, 191, 192.
Rhizome, 52, 202.
Root cap, 44.
Root climber, 129.
Root hairs, 41, 42, 46.
Rootlet, 41.
Root pressure, 99, 104.
Roots, and air, 41;
forms of, 32;
function, 38;
structure, 38, 43;
systems, 32.
Rust, 192.

Samara, 164.
Sap, 67.
Saprophyte, 107, 108.
Scape, 161.
Scion, 125.
Scouring rush, 203.
Scramblers, 129.
Seed, 20, 163, 180;
coat, 21.
Selaginella, 204.
Selection, natural, 8;
artificial, 8.
Sepal, 133, 169.
Septicidal capsule, 166.
Sessile, 77.
Shelf fungus, 194.
Shrub, 19.
Sieve tubes, 66.
Silicle, 167.
Silique, 167.
Societies, 9.
Soil, 40, 47.
Soredia, 196.
Sori, 177, 192.
Spadix, 140.
Spathe, 138, 140.
Spermatophytes, 180.
Spike, 157.
Spirogyra, 184.
Sporangium, 177, 186, 188, 201, 203, 204.
Spore, 176, 178, 181, 184.
Sporophyll, 180, 201.
Sporophyte, 177.
Stamen, 135.
Starch, 95, 101.
Stem, 49;
endogenous, 59;
exogenous, 61;
kinds of, 49.
Stigma, 135, 144, 145.
Stipule, 76, 84.
Stock, 125.
Stomate, 87.
Stone fruit, 168.
Storage of food, 99.
Struggle to live, 4, 6.
Style, 135, 163.
Summer-spore, 191.
Sun energy, 95.
Survival of fittest, 7.
Swarm-spores, 186.
Symbiosis, 196.
Syngenesious, 141.

Teleutospores, 192.
Tendril, 101.
Thallophyte, 181, 184.
Thallus, 184, 197.
Thorns, 101.
Thyrse, 160.
Tillandsia, 110.
Timber, decay of, 195.
Tissue, 60, 62.
Toadstool, 194.
Torus, 134, 169.
Tracheid, 65.
Transpiration, 98, 103.
Twiners, 129, 131.

Umbel, 159.
Undergrowth, 12.

Valve, 164.
Variation, 2.
Vaucheria, 186.
Verticellate, 84.

Water-pore, 88.
Wheat rust, 192.
Whiteweed or ox-eye daisy, 155.
Whorled, 84.
Willow mildew, 190.
Wind travelers, 173.
Woody fibre, 17.
Wounds of plants, 56.

Yeast plants, 190.

Zygnema, 185.
Zygospore, 185, 189.
 GLOSSARY
accessory or reinforced fruits are those in which the ripened
pericarp is combined with other parts, as with the torus or
the calyx.
adventitious. Coming by chance or without order, as the sprouts
that arise where a limb is cut off.
aggregate fruits are those in which several distinct pistils cohere
to form one body, as in blackberry, raspberry, mulberry.
akene or achene. A one-seeded indehiscent fruit, usually small
and seed-like.
analogous. Like to, in function or use. See homologous.
anemophilous. Said of flowers that are pollinated by the wind.
annual. A plant that naturally does not live more than one year,
as garden bean, pea, Indian corn, buckwheat, cowpea.
anther. The knob or enlargement of the stamen, bearing the
pollen.
antheridium. The male or sperm-cell organ, such as occurs on
the prothallus of ferns and similar plants. See archegonium.
apetalous. Without petals.
apical. At the top.
archegonium. The female or egg-cell organ on the prothallus of
ferns and related plants. See antheridium.
assimilation. The building up of protoplasm from the materials
elaborated in the plant.
axil. The angle or place just above the petiole of a leaf (or
pedicel of a flower) where it joins the twig.
berry. In botany, a fleshy pericarp containing a number of seeds,
as current, orange, tomato, grape, cranberry, but not
strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, or mulberry.
biennial. A plant that lives two years. It usually blooms the
second year.
blade. The expanded part of a leaf.
bract. A small or much-reduced leaf, often a mere scale.
calyx. The outer row or series in the floral envelope. The outer
“leaves” of the flower, usually green.
cambium. Growth tissue, lying between the bark-part and wood-
part of the fibro-vascular bundle and giving rise to the cells
of both.
capsule. A pod consisting of two or more carpels or parts,
usually opening naturally.
carbohydrate. The compounds of the starch and sugar class.
carpel. One part or member of a compound pistil, or a simple
pistil itself.
catkin or ament. A raceme-like or spike-like flower-cluster that
falls away after flowering or fruiting, as of willows and
staminate flower-clusters of walnuts and birches.
centrifugal. From the inside out; as a flower-cluster of which the
inside, terminal, or uppermost flowers open first; a
determinate cluster.
centripetal. From the outside in; as a flower-cluster of which the
outer flowers open first; an indeterminate cluster.
chlorophyll. Leaf green. Chlorophyll is the pigment that gives the
characteristic colour to plants.
cladophylla. Stems that look like leaves, and function as leaves,
as in asparagus and the florists’ smilax.
cleistogamous. Applied to small flowers, usually hidden beneath
the earth, that are little developed as to floral envelopes,
and are self-fertilized; also to self-fertilization in flowers that
do not open.
complete flowers have all the parts,—calyx, corolla, stamens,
pistil.
corolla. The inner row or series of flower-leaves, usually
coloured, and often of irregular shape. It may be all one
piece or of many pieces.
corymb. A flattish flower-cluster in which the outermost flowers
open first.
cotyledon. A leaf of the embryo; seed-leaf. The embryo may
have one cotyledon (monocotyledon), or two cotyledons
(dicotyledon), or sometimes more than two.
cross-fertilization is fertilization by means of pollen produced in
another flower.
cryptogam. One of the group of flowerless or non-seed-bearing
plants, as a fern, fungus, moss, seaweed.
cutting. A shoot planted in soil or water for the purpose of
making a new plant.
cyme. A flattish or broad flower-cluster in which the innermost or
terminal flowers open first.
decumbent. Said of branches or stems that lop or lie over on the
ground.
decurrent. Said of a leaf that runs down on the stem, thereby not
having a distinct petiole.
dehiscence. The mode of opening, as of a seed-pod or an
anther.
deliquescent. Said of trees in which the leader or main trunk
disappears at the tree top, forking into several or many
 main branches.
determinate. See centrifugal.
dichogamy. The condition when stamens and pistils in the same
flower mature at different times; this prevents or hinders
self-pollination. See proterandrous and proterogynous.
diclinous. Said of flowers that are imperfect,—lacking either
stamens or pistils.
dicotyledon. Having two cotyledons or seed-leaves.
digestion. Change in the food materials whereby they may be
transported, or used in assimilation. Starch is changed into
sugar in the plant by a process of digestion.
dimorphous. Of two forms; as flowers that bear two kinds of
stamens.
diœcious. Said of plants that bear stamens and pistils in flowers
on different plants.
drupe. A fleshy pericarp or fruit, containing a relatively large
stone or pit, as peach, cherry, plum.
drupelet. A very small drupe, particularly one comprising part of
an aggregate fruit, as a drupelet of raspberry.
embryo. The dormant plantlet comprising part of the seed. It is
enclosed within the seed-coats. Its parts are the caulicle (or
stemlet), cotyledons or seed-leaves, and plumule. The food
may be stored in the embryo, or around the embryo
(endosperm).
endogen. A plant of the monocotyledon class, not enlarging in
diameter by means of outside rings; as palms. All grasses
and lilies and orchids and cereal grains are of this kind.
Now used, if at all, to express a general mode of growth
rather than a class of plants. See exogen.
endosperm. The food material that is packed around the embryo
(rather than inside it) in the seed.
entomophilous. Said of flowers that are pollinated by insects.
environment. The surroundings; or the conditions in which a
plant or animal lives. The environment comprises the soil,
climate, and the influence of the other plants and animals
with which or among which the plant or animal grows.
epicotyl. The internode or “joint” above the seed-leaves or
cotyledons.
epidermis. The outermost layer or part of the cortex; the skin.
epigeal. Said of seeds (as common bean) in which the
cotyledons or seed-leaves rise above ground in
germination. See hypogeal.
epiphyte. A plant that grows on another plant, or on other
objects above ground, but which does not derive much or
any of its nourishment from its host; an air-plant.
excurrent. Said of trees (as firs and spruces) in which the main
trunk or leader continues through the tree top.
exogen (see endogen). Of the dicotyledon class, the stem
enlarging by external layers or rings.
fertilization takes place in the flower when a pollen nucleus and
an egg-cell nucleus unite in a forming ovule.
fibro-vascular. Bundles or strands of tissue composed of sieve-
tubes, mechanical fibre and vessels or ducts.
filament. The stalk part of a stamen.
follicle. A single-cavity fruit or pod opening along its inner edge.
frond. A leaf of a fern and related plants.
fruit. In botany, the ripened ovary with the attached parts. All
flowering plants, therefore, produce fruits. The term is also
 used for the ripened reproductive bodies of flowerless
plants.
fruit-dot, sorus. A collection or cluster of sporangia, as in ferns.
function. What a plant or an organ does; how it works.
gamete. A cell or nucleus that takes part in fertilization.
gametophyte. The stage of the plant (as the prothallus) that
bears or produces the sex organs; sexual stage of the
plant.
gamopetalous. Said of a corolla with the petals united.
gamosepalous. Said of a calyx with the sepals united.
generation. The entire life period of a plant.
geotropism. Turning toward the earth, as the action of the roots.
glomerule. A dense globular or oblong flower-cluster in which
the upper or inner flowers open first.
graft. A cutting inserted in another plant for the purpose of
having it grow there.
gymnosperm (“naked seed”). A name applied to a group of
plants (pines, spruces, cedars, and the like) in which the
seeds are not contained in an ovary.
head. A very dense globular or oblong flower-cluster in which
the outer flowers open first; often applied to any dense
flower-cluster.
herb. A plant that never becomes woody and that dies to the
ground, or dies entirely, in winter.
hilum. The scar or spot where the seed was attached to its stalk.
hip. The fruit of the rose, which is a hollowed torus containing
the dry fruits or “seeds.”
homologous. Related to, or with, in origin or structure. Thus, a
tendril of grape is homologous with a branch; a tendril of
 grape is analogous to a tendril of pea (similar in function),
but not homologous, for one represents a branch (or flower-
cluster) and the other represents a leaf.
host. A plant or animal on which another organism grows or
feeds.
hypha (plural hyphæ). The threads of the mycelium of a fungus.
hypocotyl. The stem or internode below the seed-leaves.
hypogeal. Said of seeds (as garden pea) in which the
cotyledons remain under ground in germination. See
epigeal.
imperfect flowers lack either stamens or pistils.
incomplete flowers lack one of the parts or series, as the calyx,
corolla, stamens, or pistil.
indeterminate. See centripetal.
indusium. The scale or lid covering a sorus, in ferns and allied
plants.
inflorescence. Properly, the mode of flowering (page 160), but
sometimes used in the sense of a flower-cluster.
involucre. A set or whorl of leaves or bracts beneath a flower or
a cluster of flowers; sometimes looks like an outer or extra
calyx.
irregular flowers have some members of one or more of the
series unlike their fellows.
key fruit. See samara.
labiate. Lipped; that is, divided into parts, as the lips of a mouth.
Said usually of corollas that are lobed into two parts.
lateral. On the side; as a flower or leaf borne on the side of a
shoot rather than at its end. See terminal.
leaflet. One of the divisions or parts of a compound leaf.
legume. Like a follicle, but opening along both edges. In some
cases, as in peanut, the pod does not actually open.
leguminous plants are those that bear legumes or true pods, as
peas, beans, clovers, alfalfa, vetch, sweet pea, peanut,
locusts, red-bud.
lenticel. Very small spots or corky elevations on young twigs,
marking the place of former twig stomates.
locule. One cavity or “cell” in a pistil or anther.
loculicidal. Said of capsules when the carpels or compartments
open between the partitions.
mesophyll. The parenchyma in the leaf.
micropyle. The place on the seed at which the pollen-tube
entered when the seed was forming (when impregnation
took place).
monocotyledon. Having one cotyledon or seed-leaf.
monœcious. Said of plants that bear the stamens and pistils in
different flowers on the same plant.
mycelium. The vegetative part of a fungus, composed of threads
or hyphæ.
mycorrhiza. A root covered with or bearing a fungus that aids
the root in securing nourishment from the soil.
naked. Said of flowers that lack envelopes (calyx and corolla).
nectary. A cup, sac, or place in the flower in which nectar (or
“honey”) is borne.
osmosis. The passing or diffusion of liquids or gases through
membranes.
ovary. The lower enlarged part of the pistil, containing the ovules
or forming seeds.
ovule. The young or forming seed.
palmate. Palm-like; said of venation that arises from the base of
the leaf (top of petiole), or of leaflets similarly arranged.
panicle. A branching raceme. The lower or outer flowers open
first; but the word is often used loosely.
pappus. The hair, plumes, bristles, or scales on the top of a dry
fruit, particularly of a fruit (or “seed”) of the Compositæ or
sunflower family.
parasite. A plant or animal that lives on a living host (as on a
plant or an animal), taking its food from the host. See
saprophyte.
parenchyma. The general underlying tissue, from which other
tissue arises.
pedicel. Stem of a single flower in a cluster.
peduncle. A flower-stem, supporting a solitary flower or a cluster
of flowers.
perennial. A plant that lives more than two years, as most
grasses, docks, alfalfa, asparagus, and all trees and
shrubs.
perfect flowers bear both stamens and pistils.
pericarp. A ripened ovary, without counting attached parts.
personate. Masked; that is, so formed as to suggest a masked
face, in labiate corollas with a large lower lip.
petal. One of the parts or leaves of the corolla.
petiole. Stem or stalk of a leaf.
petiolule. Stem of a leaflet.
phenogam (phænogam, phanerogam). A seed-bearing plant;
that is, one of the seed-bearing or flowering group of plants.
phloem. Bark or soft bast tissue.
photosynthesis. The process whereby the carbon dioxide of the
air is appropriated in the formation of material for plant
growth.
phyllotaxy. Mode of arrangement of leaves or flowers on the
plant or stem.
pinnate. Feather-like; said of leaves in which the veins strike off
from a continuing midrib, or in which the leaflets are
arranged in a similar order.
pistil. The innermost member in the flower, bearing the forming
seeds.
pistillate. Of pistils only; a flower that contains pistils and no
stamens, or a plant that bears only pistils.
plur-annual. A plant of a tropical or semi-tropical climate that is
annual in a colder country only because it is killed by frost;
as tomato, castor bean.
pollen. The dust or grains contained in the anther, which, falling
on the stigma, grows and fertilizes the forming ovules.
pollination. The transfer of pollen from the anther to the stigma.
The transfer may be accomplished by wind, insects, birds,
water (in the case of water plants), or by the natural falling
of the pollen.
polypetalous (“many-petaled”). Said of a corolla with the petals
not united.
polysepalous (“many-sepaled”). Said of a calyx with sepals not
united.
pome. An apple-like or pear-like or quince-like fruit, with a five-
carpeled or en-carpeled “core.”
proterandrous. Said of a flower when the anthers mature in
advance of the pistils in the same flower.
proterogynous. Said of a flower when its pistils mature before its
anthers.
prothallus (“first thallus”). The minute leaf-like body or organ
produced by the germination of a spore, in ferns and allied
plants. It bears the sex organs.
protoplasm. The living matter in plants. It is the living part of the
cells, usually in a semi-fluid, translucent state.
pseud-annual. A plant that is apparently annual, but which is
carried over winter by a bulb, tuber, or similar body; as
potato, onion.
pyxis. A dry fruit or capsule in which the top comes off, like a
cover to a jar.
raceme. A simple (unbranched) cluster in which the flowers are
on short pedicels and open from the base upwards.
raphe. A ridge or elevation on some seeds caused by the seed-
stalk and seed-coats growing together.
ray. The elongated corolla-limb of some members of the
Compositæ family.
receptive. Said of a stigma when it is “ripe” or ready to receive
the pollen.
regular flowers are those in which all the members of each
series (as all the sepals, or all the petals, or all the
stamens) are like each other in shape, size, and colour.
reinforced. See accessory fruits.
respiration. Breathing; manifest by oxygen taken in and carbon
dioxide given off.
rhizome. A rootstock; an underground root-like stem. It has
joints, usually scales representing leaves, and is often thick
and fleshy.
samara. A key fruit, being an indehiscent (not opening) fruit
provided with a wing or wings.
saprophyte. A plant that lives on dead or decaying material. See
parasite.
scape. A flower-stem rising directly from the crown of the plant
at the surface of the ground or near it. A scape may have
bracts.
self-fertilization or close-fertilization is fertilization by means of
pollen produced in the same flower.
sepal. One of the parts or leaves of the calyx.
septicidal. A form of dehiscence or opening along the natural
partitions of the capsule.
sessile. Sitting; without a stem, as a leaf without petiole, or a
flower without pedicel or peduncle.
shrub. A low woody plant that does not have a distinct trunk.
When a plant normally has a trunk, it is a tree.
silicle. A short, more or less circular, capsule of the mustard
family.
silique. A long capsule of the mustard family.
society. An aggregation or company of plants, comprising a
more or less distinct group.
sorus (plural sori). See fruit-dot.
spadix. A spike of flowers (each flower usually minute), with a
more or less fleshy axis, and usually accompanied by a
spathe.
spathe. A corolla-like or involucre-like leaf or bract (or a pair of
them) surrounding or accompanying a spadix. In the calla,
the spathe is the large white flower-like part.
spermaphyte (“seed plant”). A seed-bearing plant; one of the
flowering-plant class.
spike. A dense and slender flower-cluster in which the flowers
open from below upwards.
sporangium (plural sporangia; spore-case). A body or receptacle
holding spores.
spore. A reproductive or generative cell; in flowerless plants
answering the purpose of a seed, but containing no
embryo. It may not be the direct product of fertilization.
sporophyll (“spore leaf”). A member or part that bears spores.
sporophyte. The stage of the plant arising directly from the
fertilized egg, and which ordinarily produces asexual spores
(as the “plant” or conspicuous part of the fern or of a seed
plant).
stamen. The pollen-bearing organ of the flower, of which the
essential part is the anther (usually borne on a stem or
filament).
staminate. Said of a flower that has stamens and no pistils.
stigma. The part of the pistil (usually on a stalk or style) on
which the pollen germinates; it is sticky, rough, or hairy at
maturity.
stipel. A stipule of a leaflet.
stipule. A leafy or scale-like appendage at the base of a petiole.
Stipules are usually two in each case.
stomate, stoma (plural stomates or stomata). The openings on
leaves and green parts through which gases pass;
diffusion-pores or “breathing-pores.”
stone-fruit. A drupe.
strict. Said of a stem that grows straight up, without breaking
into branches.
style. The stalk between the ovary and the stigma; sometimes
not present.