{"id":2309,"date":"2012-12-25T12:05:46","date_gmt":"2012-12-25T19:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2309"},"modified":"2013-01-08T09:23:53","modified_gmt":"2013-01-08T16:23:53","slug":"london-calling-investigating-post-olympics-regeneration-in-the-east-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2309","title":{"rendered":"London Calling: Investigating Post-Olympics Regeneration in the East End"},"content":{"rendered":"

An earlier post about London<\/a>\u00a0on this blog was inspired by that city\u2019s August 2011 riots.\u00a0 In reporting the results of Hackney borough research by my former student Kiley Dowling I wondered if the urban improvements promised by London\u2019s \u201cRegeneration Games\u201d would produce a more equitable intercultural city or simply create gentrified enclaves in a much bigger sea of economic deprivation.\u00a0 The last great East London regeneration project\u2014Canary Wharf<\/a>\u2014did not improve local quality of life nor narrow the gap between rich and poor as much as some had hoped.\u00a0 Doubts that the Olympics could do any better for the borough of Newham<\/a>\u00a0and its neighbors were expressed by critics at the time of London’s 2005 Olympic bid (e.g., here<\/a>). Beginning later this week I\u2019ll be able to judge for myself the current state of post-Games regeneration\u2014the progress and the potential\u2014during \u00a0a two-week research trip to the English capital.<\/p>\n

\"Olympia<\/a>

Olympic Park, with Canary Wharf in the Background (Spiegal Online)<\/p><\/div>\n

London\u2019s Olympic Games themselves have been hailed as a success by most reviewers. \u00a0But the jury is still out on whether improvements to the East End promised by the 2012 Olympics Legacy Plan<\/a> will benefit long-time residents and newcomers alike.\u00a0\u00a0 Elements of the plan were contained in London\u2019s 2005 Olympic bid, which is nicely contextualized in this scholarly article<\/a> by John and Margaret Gold.\u00a0 The bid promised sporting venues for citizens, public parkland, better quality housing, improved transportation facilities, and other infrastructural amenities. It also promised that the Games would be leveraged to celebrate the city’s ethnic diversity and create greater social inclusiveness.\u00a0 According to Gold and Gold:<\/p>\n

The bid strove hard to offer a rebranding of London away from being identified by its historic heritage to that of a diverse city with a vibrancy based on its multiculturalism. Much was made of London\u2019s diverse ethnic identities and the multicultural character of the five \u2018Olympic boroughs\u2019 in the East End (Greenwich, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest), where the main events would be housed.\u00a0 The theme of the world coming to London to meet the world was\u00a0 carefully fostered in marketing the notion of London 2012\u2026<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A London School of Economics (LSE) series on the 2012 Olympics<\/a> is especially\u00a0helpful in framing the East End’s regeneration challenge. \u00a0The cumulative message of the series so far is one of mixed blessings and open questions.\u00a0 It notes that the Games were, in at least a few ways, a model of sustainability. \u00a0Wide pedestrian promenades and bridges linking Olympic venues will be retrofitted to human scale as the site is transformed into an urban park. \u00a0The park itself<\/a>\u00a0is a marvel that draws on English history and landscape design, celebrates native biodiversity, and incorporates absorbent flood control measures. \u00a0Several event structures will be shipped to other international sporting sites for reuse (e.g., the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games), or will have their constituent parts recycled. \u00a0The remaining structures\u2014like the Olympic Stadium and Aquatics Center\u2014will be downsized for club football and public use.\u00a0\u00a0Laura Mosca, writing in Metropolis Magazine<\/i><\/a>, has a hard time squaring the concept of sustainability with the Olympic Games but she still admits that<\/p>\n

London has introduced concepts of temporality in its buildings, unlike previous Olympic host cities. Most of the major sporting structures will decrease in size following the closing ceremonies, or transition into other programs and uses. For this, London should be applauded. They have stepped into the zone rarely taken by architects of impermanent place making.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"London<\/a>

Designed for Sustainability: Olympic Stadium and Aquatics Center (Spiegal Online)<\/p><\/div>\n

The extent to which local neighborhoods will benefit from other remaining infrastructure is another matter. Certainly, improved London Underground and Docklands Light Railway transportation services have better integrated the East End with the rest \u00a0of London. \u00a0Middle class people have been moving into the area and housing prices, at least in the boroughs surrounding Newham, have been increasing. But it’s a different story for long-time residents. \u00a0Olympic development has already displaced hundreds of people<\/a>\u00a0from their homes to places where rents are higher and neighborhood support networks are missing<\/a>. \u00a0<\/b>University College London\u2019s bid for new satellite campus near the Olympic Park<\/a> may doom the Carpenters Estate public housing complex and force additional displacement. There are questions about the availability and affordability of the 2,800 apartments that will be made public in the Olympic Village.\u00a0 Economic times being what they are, there likely will be fewer affordable units than originally planned, and most of these will likely be priced beyond the means of Newham\u2019s poorest residents. A new academy school<\/a> planned for the site may draw the best and brightest students from surrounding areas and leave local kids on the outside looking in. Jobs for young people is another critical concern.\u00a0 Olympic venue construction displaced 200 companies employing 5000 people. Most Olympic jobs didn\u2019t go to local residents, and the post-Olympics job market remains thin. The LSE reports that the income gap between Newham and rest of London actually widened between 2006-2011.\u00a0 Stratford<\/a> is presently a tale of two economies<\/a>: a new one exemplified by the upscale Westfield Shopping Centre<\/a>\u00a0and an old one rooted in the adjacent 1970s mall and its connecting, Starbucks-free High Street.<\/p>\n

\"London<\/a>

Westfield Shopping Centre, Stratford (Spiegal Online)<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the more recent essays in the LSE series by Don Flynn<\/a> is interesting in that it returns to the ethnic diversity and social inclusiveness theme of the original London Olympics bid. \u00a0 Success in fostering an intercultural and inclusive East End is imperative because London is an important symbol of truly cosmopolitan urbanism in British and other “national imaginaries<\/a>.”\u00a0 <\/b>Flynn writes:<\/p>\n

The legacy question is, how do we build on these weeks of showing the world what a global community in one city can look like? Will we find voices in other parts of the UK which are prepared to resist the doomsters who predict only disaster coming from internationalism, and who can map out perspectives for their cities and regions which are also about greater involvement in the wider world?\u00a0 Most of all, will the leaderships of all the political parties in Britain rise to the challenge and stop talking about immigration as a mistake that should not have been allowed to happen? If the voices in Parliament and in Whitehall\u2019s corridors of power prepared to speak out on this issue become more numerous and more confident in their arguments, then that might prove to be the very best legacy we can hope for from the London Games 2012.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To which the lone commentator on Flynn’s essay (\u201cSue\u201d) pointedly responds:<\/p>\n

What makes you think it\u2019s the politicians that are discussing this? It\u2019s us, the displaced, those who feel as though we are strangers in our own country that are openly talking about it. Many of us, ethnically cleansed<\/a> and driven from our homes in East London and other cities where our families have lived and worked for generations. We are the ones that have been forgotten. Immigration is fine if it\u2019s controlled. It has not and is still not being controlled. It\u2019s a shambles and has brought England to it\u2019s knees and alienated the indigenous population. So stick that in your leftie, progressive pipe and smoke it.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"fuck-the-olympics1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Clearly, along with the many open questions about East End regeneration there are many open wounds and simmering hostilities. \u00a0Nonetheless, there\u2019s evidence that multiculturalism in the UK can work<\/a>, and that it works best when native Britons support it. \u00a0Popular support clearly depends on many things, especially a more equitable distribution of political and economic resources. \u00a0Several LSE observers note that the open and flexible framework of streets in the Olympic area, along with other infrastructure, create the potential for coherent placemaking that can be interculturally integrative. \u00a0There are examples from other cities<\/a>\u00a0that illustrate what both the process<\/em> and product<\/em> of intercultural urban planning looks like. In London,\u00a0the word from master planners and participating architects<\/a> is that the new developments will connect with the old–including the East End’s “scruffy fringes”–using the urban fabric that’s already there and eschewing demolition. \u00a0Ideally this will be accomplished without losing the organic messiness that\u2019s long been part of East London\u2019s attraction<\/a>. \u00a0In short, East London’s primary challenge is the same one that exists elsewhere. \u00a0Innovative, inclusive placemaking requires a system of checks and balances (and compromises) to ensure that increasing land values and in-migration do not push existing communities out; i.e., that market forces and gentrification don\u2019t trump public housing and urban renewal. \u00a0Certainly, political and budgetary courage is also a requirement. Intercultural (East) London is a lovely \u201cimaginary,\u201d but it will take time and effort\u2014and perhaps some new ideas about how materiality and sociability work together to create place\u2014to make it a reality.<\/p>\n

\"Travel<\/a>

East London Street Corner (Spiegal Online)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An earlier post about London\u00a0on this blog was inspired by that city\u2019s August 2011 riots.\u00a0 In reporting the results of Hackney borough research by my former student Kiley Dowling I wondered if the urban improvements promised by London\u2019s \u201cRegeneration Games\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[18,19,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intercultural-city","category-london","category-urban-studies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-Bf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2309"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2961,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2309\/revisions\/2961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}