Los Angeles is fervently vying to host the summer Olympics, for what would be the third time, in 2024. It's open to debate whether LA's assets—namely, our plentiful sports stadiums (Staples Center, the Coliseum, the Rose Bowl)—will work for the city or against it with the International Olympic Committee, which may be interested in having everything built new (because that worked out so well in Sochi) or want a cheaper option, according to the Daily News, and LA's spread-out nature could also be a serious security clusterfuck. After seeing the turmoil in Sochi, all the issues with incomplete facilities and the environmental destruction wrought on the way, why should LA even want to host the games? For starters, it set the precedent for doing it right (financially, anyway).

Los Angeles's 1984 Games are acknowledged by most as the first financially successful Olympics, because they were the first to be fully privatized. Publicly-funded Olympics are notoriously big-time money losers because, after all the expenses of the events themselves, "the venues are normally hard to use after the games," going on to become money pits say Olympics scholars. (LA has done some cool adaptive reuse with its old Olympics venues, however.) Sochi's taking two of their venues apart and moving them elsewhere for further use, but the remaining stadiums (there are 11 total) will likely fall unused (or perhaps be creatively reused). (There's a long-running photography project documenting the various stages of decrepitude of former Olympic facilities around the world.)

To boot, LA has thousands of hotel rooms in the works (granted, probably not enough to accommodate an Olympic influx, but a solid start), and revitalization spreading throughout the areas where those hotels are set to rise, so it could be in solid shape in 2024. Most Olympics experts agree that the big benefit of hosting the games now is the opportunity for a city to rebrand itself in front of the world. If Los Angeles could get bike lanes and complete streets, plus the epic LA River revitalization together by 2024, it would be a great chance to show the world a lush, green, walkable Los Angeles it's never seen before.

· Los Angeles redoubles efforts to win 2024 Olympics [LADN]

· Will the LA River Star in Los Angeles's 2024 Olympics Bid? [Curbed LA]