What if winning the gold medal at the Olympics wasn’t the end? What if it was only the beginning? In 2036, Earth learns that humans have never been alone in the universe. A handful of summer and winter olympians are chosen to compete in the Universe Olympics, alongside highly adapted species from across the Milky Way Galaxy. No human is prepared for what comes next. Ambassador Liew will invite a swimmer, gymnast, snowboarder, skier, wrestler, sprinter, surfer, skaters, diver, a decathlete, and other celebrated athletes, to represent Planet Earth in the 100,121st Universe Olympic Games. Liew, as their alien Ambassador, will be guide them through this tremendous first opportunity for humankind to be challenged in sporting events. The Olympians will see new worlds, and meet new life forms. Join Team Earth on a lush, vivid, imaginative adventure through space, to discover if humans will adapt and overcome not only in their sport, but in their Universe Olympic adventure. www.UniverseOlympics.com Instagram:@UniverseOlympics Twitter: @UniverseOlympic Facebook: Universe Olympics UniverseOlympics YouTube: Universe Olympics

This book evaluates why cities choose to bid for the Olympics, why Olympic bids fail, and whether cities can benefit from failed bids. Attention is shifted away from host cities (or winners), to consider the impact of the bidding process on urban development in losing cities. Oliver and Lauermann show that bidding is often a politically strategic exercise, as planning ideas are recycled from one bid project to the next. As Olympic bids become more deeply embedded in urban development and bid teams engage in legacy planning, Oliver and Lauermann demonstrate that bid failure is rarely definitive and is often a desirable result. This volume adds a new and innovative perspective to Olympic Studies and mega-events more broadly, with appeal to a variety of other disciplines including geography, urban planning, spatial politics and sport and civic policy.

"Do the global sports media continue to ignore and downplay female sporting success—or is this invisibility changing? Does the world’s largest media event, the Olympic Games, which places sport at the centre of world attention, also represent a media showcase for the achievements of female athletes? This is the main focus of this book.

This book advances an alternative critical posthumanist approach to mega-event organisation, taking into account both the new and the old crises which humanity and our planet face. Taking the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games as a case study, Tzanelli explores mega-event crisis and risk management in the era of extreme urbanisation, natural disasters, global pandemic, and technoscientific control. Using the atmospheric term ‘irradiation’ (a technology of glamour and transparency, as well as bodily penetration by harmful agents and strong affects), the book explores this epistemological statement diachronically (via Tokyo’s relationship with Western forms of domination) and synchronically (the city as a global cultural-political player but victim of climate catastrophes). It presents how the ‘Olympic enterprise’s’ ‘flattening’ of indigenous environmental place-making rhythms, and the scientisation of space and place in the Anthropocene lead to reductionisms harmful for a viable programme of planetary recovery. An experimental study of the mega-event is enacted, which considers the researcher’s analytical tools and the styles of human and non-human mobility during the mega-event as reflexive gateways to forms of posthuman flourishing. Crossing and bridging disciplinary boundaries, the book will appeal to any scholar interested in mobilities theory, event and environment studies, sociology of knowledge, and cultural globalisation.

The Olympics have developed into the world's premier sporting event. They are simultaneously a competitive exhibition and a grand display of cooperation that bring together global cultures on ski slopes, shooting ranges, swimming pools, and track ovals. Given their scale in the modern era, the Games are a useful window for better comprehending larger cultural, social, and historical processes, argues Jules Boykoff, an academic social scientist and a former Olympic athlete. In Activism and the Olympics, Boykoff provides a critical overview of the Olympic industry and its political opponents in the modern era. After presenting a brief history of Olympic activism, he turns his attention to on-the-ground activism through the lens of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Here we see how anti-Olympic activists deploy a range of approaches to challenge the Olympic machine, from direct action and the seizure of public space to humor-based and online tactics. Drawing on primary evidence from myriad personal interviews with activists, journalists, civil libertarians, and Olympics organizers, Boykoff angles in on the Games from numerous vantages and viewpoints. Although modern Olympic authorities have strived—even through the Cold War era—to appear apolitical, Boykoff notes, the Games have always been the site of hotly contested political actions and competing interests. During the last thirty years, as the Olympics became an economic juggernaut, they also generated numerous reactions from groups that have sought to challenge the event’s triumphalism and pageantry. The 21st century has seen an increased level of activism across the world, from the Occupy Movement in the United States to the Arab Spring in the Middle East. What does this spike in dissent mean for Olympic activists as they prepare for future Games?

Which public and whose space? The understanding of public space as an arena where individuals can claim full use and access hides a reality of constant negotiation, conflict and surveillance. This collection uses case studies concerning the management, use, and transgression of public space to invite reflection on the way in which everyday social interaction is framed and shaped by the physical environment and vice versa. International experts from fields including geography, criminology, sociology and urban studies come together to debate the concepts of order and conflict in public space. This book is divided into two parts: spaces of control, and spaces of transgression. Section I focuses on formal and informal surveillance and the politics of control, using case studies to compare strategies in spaces including Olympic cities, luxury skyscrapers, residential neighbourhoods and shopping malls. Section II focuses on transgressive or deviant behaviour in public spaces, with case studies examining behaviour in nightlife districts, governance of homelessness, boy-racer culture and abortion protests. The epilogue concludes the book with an exploration of possible future avenues for research on public space, and a critical appraisal of the concept of public space itself. This interdisciplinary collection will be of interest to students, researchers and professionals in the areas of criminology, sociology, surveillance studies, human and social geography, and urban studies and planning.

A Tiny Universe's Companion accompanies A Tiny Universe, a textbook on astrology which is based on one version of the Birth-Chart of the Universe known as Thema Mundi. Companion expands on the fi rst book by exploring a number of techniques which were refined by astrologers several centuries ago, but have since lost their significance in modern times. Practices such as the division between day and night which creates the accidental dignity of Planetary Sect, and the forgotten rule of Contention (munakara) which warns of the danger of crossing boundaries, are both reminders of the impact of Sect on the seven original planets. A first century predictive system originating in Persia called Firdaria has been re-introduced in the past few years and is once more gaining in popularity. Firdaria relies heavily on the principles of Sect to direct the individual's lifespan via different planetary periods along with the sequencing of planets according to the Chaldean Order. This method is examined in detail in the final chapters of Companion using modernized interpretations of text from 1st Century astrologer Vettius Valens, and Johannes Schoener from the 16th Century C.E. Planets' rulership over the twelve houses is a cornerstone of traditional astrology's chart interpretation and a ruling planet's condition determines its success or failure in managing the aff airs of its house. Issues such as mediocre quality, troublesome relationships, poor placement, or lack of sight (aversion) suggest stress for the planet and indicate difficult repercussions in the areas of life for which the ruling planet is responsible. Patterns which normally lie unseen or dormant within the chart become animated through rulership, and with the reintroduction of lost models, the chart, and life on Earth once more become reflections of the larger Universe.

As London sought to use the Olympics to achieve an ambitious programme of urban renewal in the relatively socially deprived East London it attracted global attention and sparked debate. This book provides an in-depth study of the transformation of East London as a result of the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. Government and event organisers use legacies of urban renewal to justify hosting the world’s leading sports mega-event, this book examines and evaluates those legacies. The London Olympics and Urban Development: the mega-event city is composed of new research, conducted by academics and policy makers. It combines case study analysis with conceptual insight into the role of a sports mega-events in transforming the city. It critically assesses the narrative of legacy as a framework for legitimizing urban changes and examines the use of this framework as a means of evaluating the outcomes achieved. This book is about that process of renewal, with a focus on the period following the 2012 Games and the diverse social, political and cultural implications of London’s use of the narrative of legacy.