Fernando Fonseca

Sport mega-events, like the Olympics, are renowned for their urban and socioeconomic impacts. Based on a literature review, this paper proposes a holistic framework for an Olympic-led sustainable planning process, encompassing five key sustainable urban principles: accessibility, integration, flexibility/adaptability, security, and sustainability compliance. The framework provides a structured approach to assess these principles at three different temporal and spatial levels: location selection, pre-event planning, and post-event planning. The proposed holistic framework is applied to the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics, revealing a significant disconnection between the initially promised sustainable development goals and practical achievements. While enhancements in accessibility were observed, the other key sustainable urban principles exhibited limited or negligible improvements. The proposed holistic framework holds the potential to foster lasting positive impacts and sustainable urban improvements in host cities, particularly in developing countries.

Promoting urban sustainability has been on the agenda of researchers, planners, and policymakers. This paper uses quantitative and qualitative approaches to evaluate the sustainability of the Cypriot city of Limassol through transportation and green spaces indicators. The quantitative approach relies on a geostatistical evaluation of six indicators to describe the transportation sector and the proximity and provision of urban green spaces. The qualitative approach is based on a questionnaire (N = 387) conducted in the city. Results showed that car trips represent more than 90% of the modal share, and around 90% of the city’s transportation infrastructure is designed for cars. In terms of urban green spaces, only 5% of the areas with the highest population density are within 300 m of a green space > 2 ha. The questionnaire confirmed that 71% of the residents are not satisfied with the conditions provided by the city to walk and cycle, while 76% are not satisfied with the green spaces available in the city. This study contributes to informing planners and decision-makers about the need to promote walking, cycling, and greening policies to make Limassol and other similar cities more sustainable.