Olympic Urbanism in Tallinn: Preparations for the 1980 Olympic Regatta

Abstract

As the Sailing Regatta of the 1980 Summer Olympics was going to take
place in Tallinn, it was accompanied by a large-scale and ambitious
plan for urban development, which shaped the city’s constructional
image remarkably. This article studies the preparations for the Tallinn
Olympic Regatta within the framework of the concept of Olympic
urbanism, treating the construction plans linked with the regatta as
an autonomous type of city planning. The aim is to analyse how the
planned, partially realised and unrealised building projects reflect the construction dynamics and spectacle characteristic of the Olympic cities. The article does not concentrate on the architectural
analysis of single objects, but on the building programme as a whole
– its political background, planning process, and impact.