Cape Town catalyst.

Cape Town's ambitious yet far-sighted bid to host the Olympics in 2004 - which have never been held on African soil - aims to channel the huge commercial and political impetus of the Games into a comprehensive redevelopment of some of the city's most marginalised areas.

Africa as a continent has never hosted the Olympic Games. Yet how better could the international community show its support for both the continent and the new South Africa than by placing the world's most prestigious sporting event on once divided soil: a badly needed boost to economy and morale, epitomising Olympic ideals of world peace. Sam Ramsamy, President of the National Olympic Committee, realised that South Africa was a strong contender for the 2004 Games. Cape Town entrepreneur, Raymond Ackerman, and community spokesman, Ngconde Balfour were thinking along the same lines.

A formal competition was launched between South Africa's three largest cities: Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. Cape Town City Council gathered a committee of community, sporting and business representatives. A feasibility study proved it was viable to host the Games and a formal bid, co-chaired by Ackerman and Balfour, was launched. Of 40 professional submissions, the team led by Ove Arup Incorporated was selected and given the go ahead in September 1992. Competition was fierce and the stakes high. Both Johannesburg and Durban had gone for a municipal initiative with associated metropolitan financing. Cape Town argued that at this transitional stage in South Africa's affairs, with so many financial calls on the public purse, the use of public sector money could not be justified. Their bid was the only one to be entirely private-sector led and funded. Fifteen months and a new government later, Cape Town won national support.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) increasingly resembles a prosperous multi-national corporation of billion dollar turnover and associated vulnerabilities. Television syndicates and trade alliances wield enormous influence over choice of venue. But President Samaranch of the IOC is countering this image: he wants to use the unrivalled political and commercial power of the Olympics in an interventionist way before he leaves office in 1997. Two post-war examples in particular, record political and economic impact out of all proportion to two weeks of track and field events: Tokyo in 1960 and Seoul in 1988. In South Africa, the potential of the Olympic opportunity can be maximised by tying the next 10 years of preparations into the Mandela government's critical Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). The Arup team understood these multiple objectives and wove them together.

The urgent demand for housing, infrastructure and social amenities are priorities in the new South Africa. The RDP is a comprehensive programme which links industrial development and economic growth to providing jobs and essential services where they are most needed. Of parallel importance is economic empowerment and the involvement of newly emerging professionals and contractors in the delivery process.

Arup SA has experience in this field. The Stutterheim Forum, where Arup was involved in providing services and infrastructure for 1000 residential sites and a school, brought together community leaders, businesses and the local authority to create joint plans for this small town in a rural environment. Arup managed this collaborative participation, ensuring the maximum of local contracting and labour-intensive methods of construction, while developing training schemes as part of the project.

Cape Town has made an irresistible bid. Table Mountain is as iconic as the Sydney Opera House. Empty sandy beaches sweep as flaxen lawns below the stretches of fynbos and wild flowers forming one of six world-protected floral kingdoms. Yet future developments could threaten these fragile eco-systems. Eco-tourism, or travel-with-a-purpose, is the global growth sector. With this in mind the Cape Town 2004 Olympic Bid Committee is committed to an environmental charter.

Cape Town has a culturally diverse history and a liberal political tradition. It has sustained a context of relative peace and stability contrasting with the violence that has affected so much of South Africa. Lying in the second most economically powerful province, with three universities (plus a sports medicine faculty) and two technikons (technical colleges), it has a strong education and training structure in place. The metropolitan region comprises two zones of historical affluence and development - one running north-south down the peninsula, the other running east-west from the Central Business District (CBD). Between these some two million people - increasing rapidly as a result of inward immigration - live in relative poverty on the Cape Flats, many in informal settlements. To achieve their developmental objectives, the Games had to be planned to bring benefits to these areas. They had to be African and community based, addressing income redistribution and empowerment and capitalising on existing initiatives. They had to be feasible.

The priorities of the communities are for basic facilities which will improve their quality of life - shelter and social infrastructure for education and health. Balfour, as a member of the ANC, has taken the lead in demonstrating to the black communities (who may suspect that the Olympics represents an unnecessary expenditure of public funds on potential chimera) the benefits in terms of reconstruction and development. The vitality of the proposal lay in transferring intellectual ownership of the Olympics from consultants to community. The work of the bid team involved a great amount of community consultation (until the recent instigation of the new Metropolitan Authority there were innumerable local authority groups). Dialogue was especially necessary because of the unique political climate in which the bidding process was undertaken - a vacuum of political plans and policies in the purgatory between successive governmental eras.

Cape Town's transport infrastructure is at present focused on moving people to and from the CBD. By locating the proposed Olympic venues near these road and rail corridors it will be possible to provide the necessary transport. At the same time the Olympic planning process acts as a catalyst to co-ordinate the development of the system over the next 10 years, transforming it to a metropolitan-wide loop, giving people of the region greater mobility and access to employment opportunities. Travel costs a crippling proportion of the average income. The bid team decided to locate the main complex at Wingfield, with sub nodes at Philippi, Khayelitsha and the adjacent University of the Western Cape and Peninsula Technikon campuses. The Freedom or Olympic Flame will be lit on Robben Island - the political prison of Nelson Mandela and many others.

Wingfield was the dumping ground of the bull-dozed rubble from the houses of District Six, razed under the old Group Areas Act. As well as symbolism, the site offers everything a main Olympic complex could need. The 300 hectares are publicly owned, and can be planned for optimum Olympic use and after use. Strategically located 12 km from the city centre and in its growth path, Table Mountain will be full frame from camera positions on the roof of the 80 000-spectator stadium. The compact arrangement of the proposed athletes' and media villages (envisaged as private developments which will serve as well located and crucially needed housing afterwards) are all walking distance from the stadium and arenas, stimulating immediate mixed-use development of the site which will provide lasting benefits to the community.

Every stage had to bring benefits. The economic analysis concluded that tangible benefits, primarily from associated publicity and tourism, would flow from the bid process alone making the bid at R60m ([pounds]18m 1993) worth while even if the games were not secured in 1997. The proposed operating budget for the games shows a revenue of US$1.25bn ([pounds]830m) based on careful analysis of budgets of other cities which have hosted or bid for the Olympics over the last 12 years. A lower revenue from ticket sales has been assumed because of the need to encourage local attendance. Despite this, the budget indicates a surplus.

The estimate of gross capital expenditure over the 10 years leading up to the Games is R5.4bn ([pounds]1007m). The largest item being infrastructure - roads, railways and airport - followed by the sports facilities and the villages. The powerful impact of the Olympics is to ensure the co-ordination of projects necessary for the development of the region and in some cases to advance expenditure in time. Approximately R990m ([pounds]185m) of capital expenditure would have to be under construction or committed by late 1996 to ensure a credible South African bid to the International Olympic Committee. Most of this expenditure will be on infrastructure projects and sports facilities which best fulfil community needs.

The key to the economic benefits to be derived from Cape Town hosting the Olympics is synergy. Tourist growth potential and associated developments will be accelerated. The economic benefits derived from direct and indirect spending by visitors (208 000 expected on any day of the Games) accrue not only to the Western Cape region but to the national economy. South Africa faces high and drastically increasing unemployment which is unlikely to be alleviated in the medium term. Even with improving economic growth, most formal businesses and industries do not generate significant job opportunities. Construction and tourism are the industries with maximum potential to generate new jobs at modest cost and these are the beneficiaries of the Olympics and tourism development. Arup estimate that up to 200 000 new jobs will be generated by 2004.

The bid has public support. The Steering Committee contains a cross-section of Western Cape interests, while the list of patrons and sponsors is impressive. Its technical and economic architecture builds ingeniously upon constraints. But above all, this national and now international Olympic bid continues to unite people around tables of discussion in the earliest days of the new South Africa.