Before Smart Cities: How Early World Cups and Olympics Shaped Industrial Cities [1930–1970] (Augmented with Perplexity and ChatGpt 5.2)

By Leke Abaniwonda - Industry 5.0 Interdisciplinary Innovation Consultant & Transdisciplinary Innovation Specialist / Founder Wonda Designs

Imagecredit - Perplexity

Long before smart cities, AI, or sustainability frameworks, global sporting mega-events were instruments of industrial power and national legitimacy. This article traces how early World Cups and Olympic Games shaped — and often constrained — host cities during Industry 2.0 and early Industry 3.0, and why their lessons remain critical for Industry 5.0–era cities like Toronto today.

How mega-events turned industrial cities into stages for power long before “smart” or “sustainable” became part of the story.

Before Smart Cities: How Early World Cups and Olympics Shaped Industrial Cities (1930–1970)

When modern cities debate whether hosting a World Cup or Olympic Games will “transform” their future, they often forget an uncomfortable truth:Mega-events did not begin as tools of urban transformation.

They began as expressions of industrial power. Between 1930 and 1970 — spanning late Industry 2.0 and early Industry 3.0 — global sporting events functioned less as civic accelerators and more as state-led demonstrations of capacity, order, and legitimacy. Cities were not platforms for human experience. They were machines of production, nodes in national industrial systems. Understanding this era matters because many of today’s failures stem from repeating its assumptions with more advanced technology — but without more advanced governance.

The Industrial Context: Cities as Machines, Not Systems

Industry 2.0 and early Industry 3.0 were defined by:

• Electrification and mechanization

• Mass production and standardization

• Centralized political and economic power

• Strong nation-states with limited civic participation

Cities existed to organize labor, logistics, and production. Urban planning emphasized efficiency, hierarchy, and monumentality. Social inclusion, adaptability, and long-term resilience were not primary concerns.

In this context, hosting a mega-event served three strategic purposes:

1. Signal industrial maturity to the world

2. Reinforce national identity and unity

3. Demonstrate centralized state competence

Urban legacy was assumed, not designed.

World Cups as Industrial Theater

Uruguay 1930

The first FIFA World Cup was less about football and more about nationhood. Uruguay used the tournament to announce itself as a modern industrial state. The Estadio Centenario was built rapidly, symbolizing national ambition rather than long-term urban integration.

Italy 1934 & Germany 1936

These events represented the most explicit fusion of sport and industrial nationalism.

Infrastructure investments prioritized:

• Monumentality over adaptability

• Centralized control over civic use

• Symbolism over everyday function

Cities were stages. Citizens were spectators, not stakeholders. From an Industry 5.0 perspective, these events illustrate a core principle:When people are not treated as system participants, they absorb system costs later.

The Olympics and the Rise of Monumental Urbanism

The Olympic Games of this era followed similar logic.

Cities invested heavily in:

• Single-purpose stadiums

• Grand boulevards and ceremonial zones

• Infrastructure disconnected from daily life

The assumption was linear: build → host → benefit.

What was missing was feedback.

There were no mechanisms to ask:

• How will this infrastructure age?

• Who maintains it?

• How does it integrate with everyday mobility, housing, and work?

Industry 5.0 would later identify this flaw clearly:Linear planning fails in complex systems.

Early Warning Signs: When Industrial Logic Met Urban Reality

By the 1950s and 1960s, cracks began to appear.

Some host cities found that:

• Stadiums sat underutilized

• Maintenance costs exceeded benefits

• Urban investments favored visibility over livability

Yet these issues were rarely framed as governance failures. They were dismissed as execution problems or temporary setbacks. Why?

Because the dominant industrial mindset assumed:

• Central planning was inherently correct

• Scale equaled progress

• Social impacts were secondary effects

These assumptions would carry forward — largely unchallenged — into later decades.

The Missing Concept: Legacy as a Designed Outcome

What is striking in retrospect is not what these cities did — but what they never asked.

There was no concept of:

• Institutional legacy

• Social license

• Long-term system resilience

Mega-events were treated as projects, not interventions into living systems.

From an Industry 5.0 lens, this omission is foundational.Legacy is not an output. It is an emergent property of aligned systems. Without alignment, events leave artifacts — not benefits.

Why This Era Still Matters in 2026

It is tempting to dismiss the 1930–1970 period as irrelevant to modern cities equipped with AI, advanced analytics, and sustainability frameworks. That would be a mistake.

Many contemporary failures echo this era’s logic:

• Infrastructure optimized for the event, not the city

• Governance bypassed for speed

• Citizens engaged late, if at all

• Long-term costs deferred beyond political cycles

The tools have evolved.The assumptions often have not. Industry 5.0 exists precisely to correct this historical trajectory.

Industry 5.0 Insight: Mega-Events as Mirrors, Not Motors

This early era teaches a lesson that remains true across every industrial revolution:

Mega-events do not create values. They reveal them.

If a city sees itself as:

• A machine → the event optimizes machines

• A brand → the event amplifies image

• A system of people → the event strengthens institutions

The industrial era framed cities as machines.Industry 5.0 reframes them as human-centered, adaptive systems. That shift is not cosmetic. It is existential.

Implications for Toronto and Future Hosts

As Toronto and other North American cities prepare for 2026, the relevance of this early history becomes clear. The risk is not repeating old infrastructure mistakes.The risk is repeating old mental models with new technology. Industry 5.0 demands a different starting question:

• Not “What can we build?”

• But “What systems must still work — and work better — after the world leaves?”

Cities that fail to ask this question do not fail immediately.They fail slowly, expensively, and publicly.

Closing Reflection

The earliest World Cups and Olympic Games were products of their time — rational within an industrial logic that valued scale, control, and symbolism. But history has been unequivocal:Cities that treat mega-events as industrial projects inherit industrial failures. Industry 5.0 offers cities a chance to break this cycle — not through smarter technology, but through smarter alignment between people, institutions, and infrastructure. That is the real lesson of the pre-smart city era.