I agree with the point about hosting in major cities. The "Whistler" olympics were largely held in Vancouver and its local mountains, and the Olympic Village eventually came into its own as a nice place to live. Vancouver's always had housing shortages and plenty of people willing to move in. We were mostly able to use existing venues for the major events. Meanwhile, the previously treacherous two-lane highway to Whistler got a much-needed overhaul.
A far cry from the billions of public dollars sunk into backwater Sochi.
Compared to other housing developments the Olympic Village in Vancouver has been an expensive failure that has only just recently (four years later) sold off the last of it's overpriced units. I think it's reasonable to compare that to other developments built at the same time, rather than simply saying "it's better than nothing" because "nothing" wasn't really the alternative.
I can't knock the Skytrain line to the airport or the road improvements to Whistler, which are lovely conveniences for Vancouverites but which cost taxpayers in St John's a good deal of money (and which would have been done with federal money regardless) but it doesn't change the fact that the Olympics were a lousy way to get things done (the short platforms on the Canada Line are an example of the corners cut to meet the artificial deadline involved.)
So what we can say is that in a country with an effective, robust democracy, the Olympics were still an expensive, inefficient way of promoting public infrastructure. Sadly, they may have been "better than nothing" given our ongoing neglect of that infrastructure, but surely the lesson there is to improve our democracy, not volunteer to have a gun held to our head by the IOC.
The hosting of the Olympics by any city is prima facie evidence of democratic failure, and I would hope that no Canadian city will ever again act as host without a national vote posing the question, "Do we want to spend twice as much money on bribes and security as it would take to build a few useful infrastructure improvements, or do we want to give 1/3 the amount we would otherwise spend to the host city to build themselves a new LRT/highway/whatever if they promise to never put themselves forward as host for the five ring circus again?"
I would argue that regardless of the democracy's functioning, informed investment in long-term infrastructure projects is unlikely without an adjustment in incentives. People (of which voters are a subset) value short-term payoffs much more than long-term ones. Politicians hope to be re-elected, so projects which will not mature before the end of their term are unattractive.
Neither group has great incentives for good long-term investment in infrastructure. The Olympics are desirable for emotional/patriotic reasons, and at the same time happen to set up an incentive structure which supports infrastructure investment.
That was in my mind when I posted. I live in Ontario, so the news has kept positive about the Olympics influence, and with family from the UK I've heard similar on the Olympic Village in London. I mean London is trying to convert dockland into housing areas to meet the massive housing shortage.
The images of the aftermath of Sochi are just terrible. Russia pumped and dumped the city. They knew reporters only stick around for the Olympics and within a week they can abandon the city.
A far cry from the billions of public dollars sunk into backwater Sochi.