"On a bad day, Milan can feel less like a city than an open-air shopping mall. Since winning the bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2019, the urban landscape has been flattened into construction dust and swamped in corporate messaging. What started as a logo on a tram has gradually evolved into a feverish, full-scale takeover of the public realm."
"On the one hand, after so much buildup, most people were excited the big moment had finally arrived. But as the proceedings went on and the parade of familiar faces gave way to the peculiar sight of bobble-headed puppets of Rossini, Puccini and Verdi dancing to Italo disco hit Vamos a la playa, the melancholy kicked in. Was this really what these years of disruption had been for?"
Milan's hosting of the 2019 Winter Olympics triggered extensive construction, corporate branding, and appropriation of landmark public spaces with pavilions and mascots. The opening ceremony at San Siro blended traditional alpine imagery with modern spectacle but produced kitsch and stereotyped national tropes rather than showcasing diverse, contemporary voices. Performances that could have signaled multicultural inclusion, such as by Tunisian-Italian rapper Ghali, felt isolated amid a manufactured, marketing-driven presentation. Residents expressed excitement mixed with melancholy about the disruption, political repression, public inconvenience, and high costs associated with the event, questioning whether the spectacle justified the urban and social trade-offs.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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