The Latest Olympic Urban Renewal Project

"Turin definitely does not seem like a winter sports hub with its low elevation, generally ice-free streets and soul-sapping outskirts full of long, gray apartment blocks. In its grander, historic center, polished leather is a much more common sight than polar fleece. But after seven years of increasingly frantic and costly preparations, Turin is about to become the nexus of all things winter."

"...it is an opportunity that city officials have grabbed with both hands as they attempt to reshape the image and reality of a town whose fading industrial economy, once bound to the fortunes of Fiat, was in need of a new sort of engine."

"Welcome to the latest Olympic urban renewal project. It should come as no surprise that Turinese leaders have consulted with representatives from Barcelona, the Spanish city that used the 1992 Summer Games as a launching pad to increase its prominence and tourist arrivals."