WINTER OLYMPICS AND SPATIAL PLANNING: BETWEEN LOCAL TERRITORY AND REGIONAL SPACE

The central argument of this contribution is that the urbanisation of the Western world during the 20th century can only be fully understood by considering the contribution of significant urban events. The Great Expos and the Olympic Games are two clear examples of this type of urban mega-event (Roche, 2000). Therefore, the study of the different urban planning experiences of the cities that organised the Winter Olympic Games during the 20th and 21st centuries allows us to propose the hypothesis of an evolution from mountain tourism resorts to specific and more complex urban planning models. Through the evolution of the 'Olympic Village', progressively built according to criteria similar to those of the Summer Games, the endpoint of this process would be the proposal of metropolitan and regional strategies (della Sala, 2023). According to the most recent experiences, the current model combines several places in a network: on one hand, the mountain resort areas and, on the other, the central city, as an expression of the actual scope of the modern metropolitan phenomenon.