Our collective obsession with yoga and juicing has finally contributed to the greater good, as LA's updated 2024 Summer Olympics bid invites people to "follow the sun" to a healthy, sustainable and sunny Los Angeles.
Organizing committee LA 2024 accompanied the new campaign with a fresh logo, which draws from the city's athleticism and optimism, along with its literal name, the City of Angels.
The logo comes from locally-based firm 72andSunny, while other branding elements were handled by Bruce Mau Design. We should note that candidate city logos often look nothing like the selected city's final Olympic logo, so no need to get overly critical of the design—you know, like its blobby angel wing and wiry lens flare.
The announcement came as part of the first stage of the Olympic bid process, "Vision, Games Concept and Strategy," which LA was required to submit by today. Our ideal weather is one of the selling points of the 64-page brochure (PDF), which puts plenty of focus on "LA's brightest star, the sun"—even though our 2024 competitor, Rome, also enjoys a sunny Mediterranean climate.
There aren't any major surprises in the updated bid book, but it does reiterate the cost-effectiveness of the plans and the city's preparedness. It reinsures the public that the Games would be privately funded, that no existing communities or businesses would be displaced and that, theoretically, they would act as a catalyst for green spaces and healthy living. "LA 2024 is about what we have, not what we're going to build," reads a new promotional site; in fact, 97% of the proposed Olympic venues already exist. The only completely new, permanent venue we could find in the bid was a canoe slalom at the Sepulveda Basin.
Downtown would act as the recreational heart of the Summer Olympics thanks to its abundance of hotels, restaurants and bars. "Olympic Way," a pedestrian corridor along Figueroa Street, would link most of the nearby venues. Though any mention of the LA River's role is gone, the bid does promise an eight-week LA 2024 Arts Festival leading up to the games.
It would also be the location of most of the competitions; the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as track and field events, would take place at the renovated Coliseum. The still-to-be-built Los Angeles Football Club stadium would host swimming while combat sports would take place at the LA Convention Center, basketball at the Staples Center and archery at a TBA temporary venue on Bunker Hill—the halls of Grand Central Market? The Walt Disney Concert Hall rooftop?
The majority of the rest of the events would take place in three other major clusters. The Coastal Cluster contains the UCLA campus and Santa Monica Beach, which would host open swimming, beach volleyball and the triathlon. In the South Bay, the StubHub Center's multi-sport complex would host rugby, tennis, track cycling and BMX, while in the Valley, the Sepulveda Basin would hold equestrian, kayak and shooting events. Outside of those clusters, you'd find gymnastics at the Forum, golf in Griffith Park, soccer at the Rose Bowl and mountain biking through the serene Santa Monica Mountains. The Rams' proposed stadium in Inglewood is only mentioned in passing.
Each of those clusters would be an optimistic 30 minutes away from the Olympic Village at UCLA. The bid specifically calls out accelerating projects to bring the Purple Line to UCLA and a people mover to LAX—though all funding for those projects would come from the federal government, not the Olympic budget. Public transit friendliness is pitched as a positive for spectators, though good luck explaining to a tourist that they have to take light rail to a subway to a bus to get from LA Live to the Sepulveda Basin. That's probably why LA 2024 is also putting an emphasis on the flexible use of carpool and toll lanes. During the games, all transit agencies involved would be managed by a single command and control center, which would nudge spectators toward certain modes of transit depending on the current demand and available capacity.
The winning city will be chosen on September 13, 2017. If selected, LA would hold the Olympic games July 19 to August 4, 2024, and the Paralympic Games August 21 to September 1, 2024.
