Paris has pulled off a coup! While fewer and fewer cities seek to host the Olympics, fearing cost overruns, terrorism and resident displacement, Paris has wowed the world with its eternal splendor.
Los Angeles will host the Olympics and Paralympics in just four years. If the last three weeks teaches us anything, it’s that we’re woefully unprepared. Grappling with a seemingly intractable homelessness crisis, LA’s Mayor must now galvanize our notoriously fractious region to get its act together – and fast!
Not everyone is looking forward to hosting the world. The Olympics have become a colossal corporate global media extravaganza that bears little resemblance to the ancient Greek spirit of amateur athleticism. The social, environmental and security footprint of putting on the Games has become nearly crushing in its weight.
Yet the Olympics are coming to greater LA – and with them both the opportunity and jeopardy of the world watching.
Pasadena has a unique opportunity to both capitalize on the potential and minimize the peril.
We’ve done this before. For the 1984 Games, Pasadena hosted the men’s soccer final where France outscored Brazil 2-0. The massive enthusiastic crowd in the iconic Rose Bowl led directly to our winning the World Cup final ten years later. City officials are negotiating now to host soccer in 2028.
But merely again being a venue city will add little luster to our community in the midst of the more intense focus on Los Angeles and Inglewood.
No, Pasadena should seize the banner of being an international city to create an enduring legacy from the fleeting moments of the Games.
We’re an older city coasting on our out-of-date reputation as a genteel, green suburb of Los Angeles. Our longtime economic strategy of promoting office towers and retail districts is growing stale – and obsolete. Our new initiatives to foster more tech and biotech have yet to make much impact.
Yet we need a revived economic engine to pay for our decaying infrastructure, quality city services and social investment in affordable housing. This November, local voters are being asked to approve $1.1 billion in school and library bonds, a school parcel tax and a countywide 1 percent sales tax to fight homelessness. Pasadena faces another nearly $2 billion in unfunded needs for our water, electricity, sewer, street, park and other vital systems. We also need high-paying jobs for the next generation to have a prayer of affording sky-high housing costs.
All this argues for Pasadena to embrace our potential as a center of global goodwill, learning, arts, hosting, dining and commerce.
We already have five sister cities across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East (although we curiously don’t have a Latin America one despite our significant Latino population). Two of them date back to the immediate aftermath of World War II when we reached out to rebuild ties to our former enemies of Germany and Japan. Pasadena also has a long history of organizing around international peace from the local United Nations Association to the American Friends Service Committee.
Let’s embrace that sentiment with a truly welcoming spirit of international goodwill that also encompasses those struggling amongst us.
Pasadena is already a global center of learning. Caltech boasts a multinational roster of 47 Nobel Prize winning professors (and graduates). Art Center, PCC and Fuller Theological Seminary all attract international scholars and students. EF Academy has recently opened a $200 million high school campus drawing students from more than 30 nations. And the Huntington (just two blocks from our southern border) is an increasingly worldwide hub for academic research.
The Huntington, of course, is also a stunning asset for international arts and horticulture with its famed British and European art treasures and its array of Japanese, Chinese, Australian, tropical and dry climate gardens. The Norton Simon and the Pacific-Asia Museums are each gems of sophisticated global arts. We are also a venue for a broad range of performing arts with an international flavor in music and theater.
Pasadena began as a nice place to visit for Easterners and Midwesterners to escape the cold. That led to the midwinter Rose Parade — which is now viewed worldwide and for decades has featured international floats and bands. Every day, our roster of hotels welcome international business and leisure visitors.
Few cities our size can match the range of cuisines featured in our restaurants, street vendors and food trucks. We boast authentic and fusion offerings that draw on Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Italian, Thai, Japanese and dozens more national traditions. Local ethnic grocery markets are also strongly represented.
Commerce is also increasingly international — from our global engineering corporations to the strong Armenian small business presence on East Washington Boulevard and elsewhere. Few firms of any size in town lack immigrants among the workforce – and many newcomers have become energetic entrepreneurs. Companies both do business around the world and bring the world home. The first Trader Joe’s opened here in 1967, because local Joe Coulombe was prescient enough to notice that globe-trotting Americans would crave access to the food and drink they were sampling on their adventures.
All this, and more I couldn’t fit in, give a unique opening for Pasadena to use the next four years to hone our message and get ready to welcome the world as a truly international city. If we take up the challenge, it comes with immense rewards, but also significant responsibility.
We live in a world increasingly fraught with war and zero-sum economic competition. Being an international city means fighting the creep of xenophobia and hostility toward other nations and immigrants. Being an international city means respecting human rights abroad – and at home. It means rejecting the militarization of security in advance of the Olympics and embracing their original spirit of international goodwill.
Our name itself is derived from an indigenous language. “Pasadena” won a vote among town pioneers over the alternatives of “Indianola” and “Granada.” We chose to be known as a shining “city on a hill” — the “crown of the valley.”
In 2028, let’s embrace that sentiment with a truly welcoming spirit of international goodwill that also encompasses those struggling amongst us.
I like this sentiment. What can citizens do to help Pasadena take a central role in the Olympics?