Mega-events like the Olympic Games are often portrayed as neutral celebrations of sport and culture. But in reality, they are highly structured systems of control that reconfigure urban space, prioritise elite interests, and marginalise local communities. Host cities must sign legally binding contracts that hand significant authority to international governing bodies, granting them the power to reshape neighbourhoods, enforce zoning regulations, and dictate commercial access. These contracts often create what scholars describe as “sanitised” or “secure” environments—designed not for inclusivity, but for the smooth flow of capital and crowds.

Within this logic, the Olympic Transit Zone becomes a high-stakes funnel: a narrow path where spectators are shepherded from transit hubs to event venues. These spaces are typically dominated by official sponsors, uniformed security, branded merchandise, and surveillance infrastructure. Local traders and residents are either pushed to the margins or removed altogether. As a result, local economies are disrupted, and opportunities for spontaneous cultural exchange are lost.

What this reveals is that mega-events are not just spectacles—they are spatial and economic systems that privilege certain actors while excluding others. These systems often suppress the informal, the improvisational, and the unpredictable—all of which are fundamental to vibrant urban life. In the process, they risk stripping events of the very local character they claim to celebrate. Recognising this power dynamic is the first step toward reimagining how event spaces might be structured more equitably.

Rio 2016 didn’t follow the script. Financial crisis, political upheaval, last-minute security failures, and limited corporate activation combined to disrupt the usual top-down control mechanisms associated with mega-events. The Olympic Transit Zones—normally regulated, sanitised corridors—became open, messy, and porous. In this unintentional gap in governance, something remarkable happened: local entrepreneurs moved in, animated the spaces, and built fleeting yet powerful connections with visitors.

Rather than being funnelled quickly through corporate gauntlets, spectators found themselves in unpredictable, vibrant corridors filled with local music, food, street vendors, and spontaneous performance. Interviews and field observations from Rio show that these spaces were not abandoned or chaotic. They were claimed—by residents, micro-entrepreneurs, and cultural actors who used the loosened controls to experiment with forms of hospitality and commerce usually excluded from Olympic zones.

What emerged were liminoidal spaces—flexible, indeterminate zones that blurred the lines between official and unofficial, planned and improvised, commercial and cultural. These zones allowed people to dwell, to choose their own paths, and to engage with the city on their own terms. They enabled what Turner (1974) called communitas: a shared, egalitarian experience between strangers, created not by design, but by circumstance.

Far from being a security failure or logistical flaw, Rio’s disorderly Olympic Transit Zones served as accidental incubators of community engagement and entrepreneurial inclusion. They offered a powerful, if fragile, alternative to the corporate-dominated models of event design that have come to define the Olympic experience.

For years, the concept of “event leverage” has focused on pre-planned, top-down strategies to maximise the economic and social returns of hosting mega-events. Policymakers and organisers often follow a linear logic: identify legacy goals, align resources, implement formal programmes, and measure outputs. But Rio’s 2016 Olympic Transit Zones revealed something different—a form of serendipitous leveraging led not by institutional actors, but by everyday people seizing the moment.

Local vendors didn’t wait for formal inclusion. They set up makeshift stalls, improvised marketing strategies, and offered products and experiences rooted in Cariocan culture. They piggybacked on foot traffic, used humour and music to attract customers, and created micro-environments of warmth and welcome. These were not outcomes of a strategic legacy plan. They were organic, reactive responses to gaps in control—responses that produced tangible economic benefit and memorable visitor experiences.

This complicates the orthodox view that successful leveraging must be structured, sanctioned, and pre-approved. It suggests that leverage can also be emergent—an improvisational act that flourishes in flexible, open spaces. Importantly, these forms of leveraging require neither high-level investment nor lengthy planning cycles. What they require is room to move—literal and metaphorical breathing space in the event design.

By elevating strategy over spontaneity, many mega-events have missed this quieter form of grassroots value creation. Rio reminds us that sometimes the most powerful impacts aren’t those designed in boardrooms, but those that unfold in the spaces between control.

If Rio 2016 showed us anything, it’s that a little disorder can go a long way. What initially appeared as governance failure turned out to be a breeding ground for creative, inclusive, community-driven engagement. Yet, most mega-event organisers remain locked into a default setting of hyper-control—tight zoning, rigid commercial rights, heavy policing, and closed-off spaces that prioritise sponsor interests. This rigidity not only stifles local entrepreneurial opportunity, it also flattens the visitor experience into something generic, commodified, and disconnected from place.

It’s time to rethink that approach. Rather than viewing informality as a threat, organisers could treat it as a resource. This doesn’t mean abandoning safety or oversight—it means designing spaces within mega-events that tolerate ambiguity, encourage community participation, and allow informal economies to flourish responsibly. Call it “strategic looseness” or “curated liminoidality”: a deliberate allocation of space and time for local actors to innovate, entertain, and connect.

Incorporating these flexible zones—especially in transitional areas like Olympic Transit Zones—could offer a triple win. First, it opens up real economic opportunities for local entrepreneurs. Second, it improves the cultural authenticity and memorability of the visitor experience. Third, it strengthens community buy-in and softens the hostility often directed at mega-event organisers.

In short, flexibility isn’t a liability—it’s an asset. And if we want mega-events to serve broader publics, not just global brands, we need to embed that insight into the DNA of future event design.

Rio 2016 was exceptional—but it shouldn't be an exception. While the conditions that enabled liminoidal spaces and entrepreneurial spontaneity may have been unintentional, the outcomes are too valuable to be dismissed as a one-off. The challenge now is to extract lessons from Rio and translate them into a replicable framework that other cities—and organisers—can adapt to their own contexts.

This means moving beyond crisis-induced flexibility toward intentional design for inclusion. It means asking: What kind of spaces allow communities to participate meaningfully in the visitor economy? What policies can balance security and spontaneity? What infrastructure supports both global sponsors and street-level entrepreneurs without crowding either out?

It also requires recognising that inclusion doesn’t just mean representation in planning committees or access to official vendor permits. It means shaping event environments that allow for improvised participation—where people can respond to the event in real time, with cultural expression, commerce, and creativity.

Mega-events are more than logistical operations. They are living social systems, and like any complex system, they benefit from adaptive design. Rio’s case pushes us to see liminality and the liminoid not as abstract anthropological curiosities, but as practical tools for rethinking how we structure event space, power, and opportunity.

In what follows, we propose a new template for event managers and city officials—a simple but powerful way to rethink space, spontaneity, and strategy. It’s time to shift from control to choreography.