Ricky Burdett discusses the Olympics’ ‘Great Leap Eastwards’ and argues that the city is on its way to improving on the pattern of social inequality. However, the journey will be long and fraught with challenges. City government needs to retain control and ownership of the land, and put in place checks and balances to ensure that land values and gentrification do not push existing communities in the vicinity out

Burdett, Richard

English

LSE Research Online

blo gs.lse.ac.uk http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/po liticsandpolicy/archives/25604The London Olympics – making a ‘piece of city’Ricky Burdett discusses the Olympics’ ‘Great Leap Eastwards’ and argues that the city ison its way to improving on the pattern of social inequality. However, the journey will be longand fraught with challenges. City government needs to retain control and ownership of theland, and put in place checks and balances to ensure that land values and gentrification donot push existing communities in the vicinity out.What happens when the Olympic park perimeter f ence comes down? This is the singlemost important question that will test the success of  the games in creating a lastinglegacy. With only a f ew weeks to go and the venues and the Olympic Park complete, the city is alreadyenjoying the global limelight af ter a sustained period of  downright opposition, seen by some as anunnecessary intrusion and expense. With over 27 million visitors a year and still one of  the world’sstrongest f inancial centres, Londoners have been asking themselves ‘do we need the Games?’ and ‘whatwill they do f or London?’ The quick answer to the f irst question might be ‘yes’, if  we want to improve thecity’s pattern of  social inequality. But, it will take at least 20 years.As many LSE scholars have pointed out, despite being a prosperous city of  nearly 8 million people,London has its share of  deep-set social and economic problems.  In terms of  its spatial geography,London’s western half  is relatively wealthy and well served by public inf rastructure and transport, while itseastern half  is more deprived. The lif e expectancy of  a man, f or example, is f ive years lower in eastLondon compared to parts of  west London.For decades, central and city governments have been trying to address this imbalance. From the 1970sonwards there have been many plans and init iatives aimed a regenerating the Thames Gateway (underone of  its many pseudonyms).  The London Docklands Development Corporation (inspired by MichaelHeseltine), f or example, kickstarted the redevelopment of  the docklands, leading to the controversialrealisation of  Canary Wharf  in the mid 1980s which recently broke through the  100,000 jobs mark. TheOlympics is part of  this complex urban jigsaw.Ken Livingstone’s f irst London Plan (conceived bef ore the bid f or the 2012 Olympic Games waslaunched) identif ied two major growth corridors extending outwards f rom the centre along the RiverThames and to the north-east towards Stansted Airport. It is where these two corridors meet that theOlympic site is located, with Stratf ord at its epicenter. Boris Johnson has reinf orced this growth strategy,going so f ar as to give special planning powers to the newly created London Legacy DevelopmentCorporation (LLDC) to act as a ‘super development authority’ f or the entire area, granting itself  planningpowers over more than 200 hectares of  land that currently f alls within the f our London boroughs ofNewham, Walthamstow, Tower Hamlets and Hackney. Stratf ord is typical London town centre – a bit down-at-heel, yet versatile – but with exceptional rail andunderground connections to the rest of  the city and the commuter beltway of  the South-East. It is alsohoped international high-speed trains f rom Paris and Brussels will stop here f rom 2013 onwards. Rowsof  neat terraced houses inhabited by diverse ethnic communities sit next to 1970s social housing blocksand run-down shopping streets with discount stores and f ast- f ood outlets. A network of  canals andwaterways winds through a rough post- industrial landscape with redundant gas cylinders and railwaygoods yards. Nearby, the streets are crowded with an increasingly cosmopolitan population made up ofAsians, Af ricans, Caribbeans and a new inf lux of  Eastern Europeans who mingle with native Londoners.For the last decade this swathe of  East London – especially the Newham part of  it – has seen piecemealyet sustained investment, spurred on the Labour- inspired gospel of  the ‘urban renaissance’ (in which thisauthor is implicated!). There is no doubt that Stratf ord and its surroundings are a f ragmented, mildlydystopian, urban landscape much loved by psycho-geographers like Iain Sinclair, who in his recent novel‘Ghost Milk’, regrets its imminent ‘destruction’ by the Olympian conspiracy. Pseudo-iconic residentialtower blocks keep cropping up, responding in an uncoordinated f ashion to London’s housing need andnew institutions are become lured by the relative low-cost but high-accessibility of  the area.It is easy to f orget that a decade ago, well bef ore anyone in London thought seriously about bidding f orthe Olympic Games, a consortium of  developers joined up with London & Continental Railways (ownersof  much of  the redundant railway land) to propose a massive shopping centre with over 5,000 newhomes and several million square f eet of  of f ices. In ef f ect, a second, less glamorous Canary Wharf  hadbeen planned and conceived – and received planning permission – three years bef ore London won thebid to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Ref lecting London’s age-old pragmatism when it comes to land anddevelopment, the public sector simply ‘piggy-backed’ itself  onto a private sector init iative.In ef f ect the Olympic Plan is a sophisticated graf ting exercise. The £2bn shopping centre was completedby Westf ield last September promising nearly 10,000 jobs to the local economy. The housing componentof  the ‘private’ scheme was turned into the Athletes’ ‘Village’ – and has been sold on to consortia led bythe Qataris and social housing groups. Of f ice buildings and hotels will soon f ollow where temporaryf acilit ies and sponsors’ pavilions now stand.  And the Olympic Park with its sports venues, f uture housingsites, schools, health centres, roads and bridges will stitch this f ormerly disconnected site back into theintricate web of  East London. The project has become an elaborate chess game in t ime and space thatmirrors, in an accelerated f ashion, the normal, organic planning process that determines London’s DNA.As Tony Travers of  LSE London has put it ‘the Olympics has brought regeneration f orward by about 70years!’Today, the construction workf orce has passed its peak of  over 10,000 people in what had becomeEurope’s largest construction site. You can see the impact of  the £9.3 billion (about €10billion) of  publicmoney, a massive and time-limited injection of  cash into the social, physical and economic inf rastructureof  the area. Up to 2006, the 200 hectare site was mainly occupied by industrial sheds and low-leveleconomic activit ies which have been relocated as part of  the government’s investment strategy. The sitehas been cleared, electricity pylons and overhead cables removed, millions of  tons of  polluted soil havebeen cleaned, sustainable energy plants built and new roads, sewers, cables and inf rastructure havebeen provided f or what will become one of  London’s new urban communities.London has invented a new planning methodology f or the construction of  the Games and what it leavesbehind f or its so-called ‘Olympic Legacy’. Many of  the sports venues and f acilit ies f or the Games will betemporary but the investment in the inf rastructure of  a new piece of  city will be permanent. Only f ourstructures in the Olympic Park will remain af ter 2012: the elegant Velodrome by Hopkins Architects,  DameZaha Hadid’s expressive Aquatic Centre, Make’s less f lamboyant Handball venue and the (somewhat re-built) Olympic stadium (f uture users will be determined af ter the Games). The basketball and hockeystadia, the water-polo pools and other structures will be dismantled and either relocated or the buildingcomponents sold or recycled. Some will be shipped to Rio f or the 2016 Olympic Games or Glasgow f orthe 2014 Commonwealth Games, adding a novel dimension of  sustainability to the Olympic project.At the heart of  the masterplan is the recently named ‘Queen Elizabeth Park’, cleverly designed to makethe most of  the inf rastructure of  canals that wind up f rom the River Thames along the Lea Valley. A webof  promenades, bridges and walkways reconnect the park with its surroundings east and west – toLeyton and Hackney – reconciling the complex change in levels, interweaving between the heavy rail androad inf rastructure that criss-crosses and surrounds the site. Yet, no cars will be allowed on the siteduring the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012, with all visitors – except f or the IOC’s privileged VIPs –having to use public transport, with up to thousands taking advantage of  the high-speed Japanese bullet‘Javelin’ train service to St Pancras station in central London in less than ten minutes.Af ter the Olympics, the wide promenades and bridges f or the 1.5 million visitors will be reduced to theappropriate scale f or a ‘normal’ city park. The same approach is being taken to some of  the venues likethe Aquatic Centre, where the massive and visually obtrusive side wings with 17,000 seats will beremoved, returning the building to its original, intended sinuous f orm accommodating only 6,000 seats –an appropriate scale f or what will become East London’s major swimming and diving complex. A schoolf or 2,000 students (f rom ages of  5 to 18), a health centre and other community f acilit ies are beingconstructed now f or use by f uture inhabitants of  the area and the existing communities nearby, whilebiomass-powered energy centres provide state-of - the-art district heating system to the entire area.Most importantly, though, the land lef t vacant by the temporary venues af ter 2012 will become platf ormsf or an entirely new ‘piece of  city’. Over 8,000 houses, arranged along tradit ional London streets, terracesand squares will be erected over a 20-30 year t ime f rame, extending outward f rom the Athlete’s Villageand its relatively high-rise perimeter blocks now under completion around an elegant and inspiredlandscape terrain by Vogt. Here 3,000 units will be handed over in 2013, with half  already given over toaf f ordable housing and the other half  recently purchased by the a private real estate consortium led byQatari Diar, a Middle Eastern sovereign investment f und, and Delancey Estates. In this respect, the returnon public investment is beginning to happen with private sector interest growing in the developmentpotential af f orded by this new East London opportunity.But, all this will only be possible if  city government retains control and ownership of  the land, and puts inplace checks and balances to ensure that land values and gentrif ication do not push existingcommunities in the vicinity out. Some of  these mechanisms are in place. London’s af f ordable housingpolicies guarantee that a signif icant proportion of  any new residential development is reserved f or moredeprived f amilies (anything between 30% and 50%). Legacy uses which create jobs and activity f rom thepark are being sought and secured by the LLDC which owns the f reehold of  the site and will manage theactivit ies of  the park, bringing in private sector commercial and residential developers to invest in newhomes, of f ices and shops across the 2.5 square kilometre site. There has been interest f rom majorcompanies like the BBC, University College London and the Wellcome Foundation (a major medicalresearch f oundation) to relocate here. New hotels and of f ices are being built around Stratf ordInternational Station, creating a secondary but important cluster of  new jobs and opportunit ies. The legacy masterplan has been conceived in spatial and temporal dimensions. The open, rather f lexiblegrid of  streets does allow the potential f or assimilation and integration over a long and realistic t imeperiod of  over twenty years. So, when the f ence does come down in 2013, London may have achievedthe f irst step in its ‘Great Leap Eastwards’ on the back of  the London 2012 Olympic Games. It will be along and tortuous journey.Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the British Politics and Policy blog,nor of the London School of Economics. Please read our comments policy before posting.About the authorRicky Burdett is Professor of Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Director of LSE Cities.He was Chief Adviser to the Olympic Delivery Authority for the London 2012 Games and a member of theUrban Task Force.You may also be interested in the following posts (automatically generated):1. The impact of  the Olympics: making or breaking communities in East London (38.7)2. Listen to the latest LSE Review of  Books podcast on the London 2012 Olympics: What happenswhen global meets local? (29.5)3. The London Olympics catalysed the ‘Great Leap Eastwards’ but will its proposed legacy actuallydeliver? (29.4)4. London’s Olympics show that the links between sports, cit izenship, polit ics, and national identityare as tangible as ever (26.7)

The London olympics: making a piece of city

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