Local Cultures – Global Spaces
Abstract
Since 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted numerous scheduled sports events, and resulted in postponements or cancellations. Today, when the pandemic is released, most authorities start to rearrange sports competitions as a strategy for boosting socio-economy and physical activities. Noticeably, localization has become an important strategy for organization, execution and management. This paper argues that different cities need to incorporate unique elements to facilitate sports events, especially like Hong Kong in which displays conspicuous geopolitical significance. Base on the above mentioned, this paper intends to explore the event organizer’s reaction to the consequences and impact of the pandemic whilst the competition is expected to be executable and successful. Moreover, this paper aims to analysis the differences in competition before and after the pandemic, and to explore their relationship with government policies. I argue, the impact of the pandemic not only is on the participants, it also affects the competition venues. This paper believes that there is a co-construction phenomenon which rises between the sports venues and their users. This paper interrogates the linear relationship between a place and its stakeholders. Taking Hong Kong as an empirical site, such an argument is testified through examination into its athletics competitions, as a representation of the immediate historicity. Methodologically, this study, from a participatory research perspective, explores the changes of the circulation and the spatial division in the Hong Kong’s sports venues in order to understand not only the post-pandemic agency of events but also its localization in Hong Kong.
Tam Sea Ching is a Building and Planning research student at National Taiwan University. Tam Sea Ching graduated from Social Policy and Administration program of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where she obtained first-class honours and was named on the Dean’s Honours List 2020/21 by the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences. Tam Sea Ching is particularly interested in empirical Asian research, focusing on sports venues, urbanism, and place-making. Her research primarily revolves around sociological and political science perspectives.