Yulia Tsyplyayeva, chief economist at Moscow's office of BNP Paribas, said Friday that Russia badly needs structural reforms but the World Cup is unlikely to give an impetus to them.
In what city engineers said is a happy and surprising discovery, the cost of operating the facility has dropped by 40 per cent while recovery from heat generated from sewage pipes has risen.
As a result, the utility, which provides heat to all of the Olympic Village as well as surrounding commercial and residential buildings, has already met its target of being price-competitive with BC Hydro, Brian Crowe, an assistant city engineer, told city council Thursday.
Next March Hydro will raise electricity rates across the province to about $87 per kilowatt hour. But the city's utility, which services about 1,600 homes and businesses, is able to offer a price of $84 per kilowatt hour and still make a reasonable profit for the city, Crowe said.
The city of Rio and the federal government's national economic growth acceleration plan (PAC) envisages investment of 4bn Brazilian reais ($2.33bn; £1.46) for the city.
The investment will be concentrated in three areas: logistics (including roads, railways, ports, waterways, and airports), energy (including generation and transmission of electric power, petroleum, natural gas and renewable energy) and various other social and urban projects.
♦ FIFA should pay for at least 75% of all stadium renovation and construction projects undertaken for the World Cup. Infrastructure projects related to the World Cup cannot take form unless they were already indicated as part of a city’s master plan. If improvements in access and transportation to stadiums need to be made, they need to go through the same democratic planning procedures as other urban infrastructure projects.
♦ All World Cup stadium projects must include spaces that are dedicated to the preservation and continuation of local football cultures. This could take the form of “living museums”, soccer fields, education facilities, or cultural centers.
He said one of the most important benefits of hosting major events is not only improving infrastructure and building top sports facilities, but also to encourage the use of sports to aid communities.
"Part of the legacy is about what sport can do to society," he said. "Sport today is far more important that just sport itself. It can be used as a great anti-crime policy, a great health policy."
Blair hopes the London Games will give youngsters the chance to discover sports and learn what it can do to their lives. He added that many of them first learn basic social skills thanks to sports.
A dramatic example is that the anticipated $4 billion benefit for cities in the US of hosting the 1994 World Cup were later found to have resulted in a net cost to the host cities' economies of $9.26 billion. With independent academics now accepting that no economic benefits can be expected from hosting the Olympics or a FIFA World Cup, attention has turned to what is called ''legacy planning''.
The London 2012 Olympics legacy is intended to be urban renewal. But prosaic legacies are not being marketed in Australia.
So far only three parties are known to have expressed an interest but a "handful" of others are expected in the next fortnight.
They have until September 30 to submit their bids to the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC).
The OPLC is the body which is tasked with finding a tenant for the 80,000-seater venue in Stratford, east London.
Indeed, organizers are enthusiastically trumpeting their projections that the 9.3 billion pound ($15.2 billion) Olympic project is both on schedule and on budget.
Granted, original financial estimates almost tripled shortly after London was awarded the Games in 2005, beating out Paris and New York, among others. And once the budget was set, the global economy went into the loo, ensuring that finances would match logistics among the massive challenges to creating a successful Games in a city so old, complex and densely populated.
Though London will be the first city to play host to a Summer Games for a third time, it has been a while and the first time the city truly won a bid to do so.
Organizers also expect to use all of London's majestic sites as telegenic backdrops. The marathon course will take runners past Buckingham Palace and cyclists will race past Trafalgar Square. Wimbledon and its famed Centre Court will stage tennis matches.
But these Olympics aren't only about sending pretty pictures around the world, Coe said, or about providing the best atmosphere for athletes.
His vision is broader.
"The greatest driver of social cohesion in most of our communities is sport," Coe said. "The way the Games have galvanized communities the length and breadth of the country is extraordinary."
The problem is that the last Government promised to hand over ownership of the Olympic Park to the OPLC, debt-free, so that it could do the financial deals to sell or rent out the venues to the private sector after 2012.
It's a pretty fundamental action to take. Would you be able to sell your house if you didn't have ownership of it or possess the deeds? No chance.
But the new coalition Government has now put that decision on ice, while the Treasury reviews financial decisions taken by Labour.
The OPLC are now in charge of the legacy projects and making the site economically viable after the 2012 Games but Sir Peter predicted that it will take nearly a decade to be able to assess whether the organisation been successful in achieving their remit, he told the London Assembly at City Hall here today.
Sport's biggest showpiece was six years in the planning and came to define the national agenda, shaping budget priorities, infrastructure development and daily conversations from townships to vineyards.
Over the past month it has put South Africa at the centre of the sporting world, silencing the critics with its smooth operation and vuvuzela-blowing joie de vivre. It has helped challenge the way Africa is perceived around the world.
But when the final whistle blows at tonight's final between Holland and Spain at Soccer City, and the global gaze shifts elsewhere, it will leave a World Cup-shaped hole in many South Africans' lives. Tomorrow morning they will wake up with one almighty hangover.
[W]hile the world champion Springboks are set to play their archrivals, the New Zealand All Blacks, at Soccer City next month, other rugby sides are reluctant to move from their homes to the new stadiums, indicating tough prospects ahead for the future upkeep of the new venues.
"I think that clearly there will have to be good balance of both football and rugby together to ensure proper use of the stadiums," said Danny Jordaan, the chief organiser of South Africa's hosting of the World Cup.
Historian Peter Alegi views the whole thing as "a very expensive -- and very expansive -- branding operation. The World Cup is an opportunity to show that South Africa is a modern democracy, technologically advanced, business friendly and also an attractive tourist destination."
There is much to gain from such visibility. But it also carries risks.
Argentina's tournament in 1978 is an example. The country was ruled at the time by a sinister military junta, who, while murdering some 20,000 of its citizens also wanted to use the World Cup to make propaganda for its achievements. A U.S. PR firm was engaged to broadcast the message. But the junta found it hard to understand that the international press would not act like obedient soldiers. Some of the journalists would go looking for stories -- and an excellent one was the protest organization set up by mothers of the 'disappeared.' As a result of the World Cup, their tale was told all over the planet, bringing home to millions the true nature of the regime. There was no PR triumph, and the regime was not mourned anywhere when it collapsed five years later.