London Worries About East End Legacy of 'Middle Class Ghettos'

Without proper planning, redevelopment in London's East End for the Olympics could create a middle class ghetto after the event, warns the Olympic Park Legacy Company’s design head, Ricky Burdett.

Speaking during a public debate on the Olympic Park after 2012, Burdett warned that 30 years of investment in east London had done little to raise its socio-economic profile and that unless the Olympic Park was stitched into its setting, little would change beyond the park’s perimeter.

He said: “I am reminded by major urban developments of the last 60 years that have become nightmares that any large-scale intervention like this could do something very negative.

“The worst thing it could do is create a massive ghetto of people who are different from those who are there.”

Ricky Burdett warns against Olympic middle-class ghetto
Building Design
October 11, 2010

Mixed Use Coming to London's East End via Ikea

Swedish furniture corporation Ikea is building a 1,500-unit mixed use development near the Olympic village in London's East End.

it is here, at Sugar House Lane in Stratford, that Inter Ikea, the investment and construction arm of the Swedish furniture giant, has bought a 13-acre site. Within the next few years, Inter Ikea will have built a mixed-use development consisting of office and retail space as well as lots of Ikea housing – some 1,500 units or so – and it has already started working on a master plan for the site.

Peter Andrews, the chief executive of the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation (LTGDC) , says that he fully expects it to become "a Covent Garden in the East End". A retail, housing and leisure hub abutting the Olympic Park, this Ikea village will be one of the things making the new East End a place in which people will be proud to live, as well as a tourist destination to die for.

Home Swede home: A new 'village' on the 2012 Olympics site is to be designed by Ikea
The Independent
July 30, 2010

East End Regeneration in Question as Economy Worsens

Regenerating London's East End has been a major element of the city's 2012 Olympic plans. But with tight economic times, some worry that the $14.3 billion Summer Olympics will distract too much money away from the troubled neighborhood.

"The most enduring legacy," Britain promised in the bid, would be "the regeneration of an entire community for the direct benefit of everyone who lives there."

Yet while building progresses on schedule in the future Olympic Park—Europe's biggest construction site and one of the biggest regeneration projects in British history—locals fear the broad urban renewal so central to the bid could become a lesser priority. Since winning the right to stage the Games five years ago, London has gone through a deep recession and a collapse in the real-estate market that hasn't spared the Olympics. Private funding that was supposed to help pay for the athletes' village, for instance, couldn't be found, saddling the public purse with the entire construction cost.

East London Hopes for an Olympic Revival
The Wall Street Journal
July 27, 2010

East End a Bright Side of Dark London Olympics

The Economist rips into London's plans for the 2012 Olympics, which it has been against from the get-go. But despite the events being what the paper sees as wasteful and expensive, there is some potential for a positive: the regeneration of London's East End.

Its task is to create a place where people will want to live, work and play in a part of town that people have been eager to escape, where jobs have been hard to come by and where welcoming, wide, green spaces are too rare. There are hopeful precedents in the new towns built after the second world war, the garden cities of a century ago and in the private estates built in west London in the 18th and 19th centuries.

There are voices calling for much more social housing in the Olympic Park. It is true that London is short of homes for poor people. But concentrated social housing goes hand in hand with joblessness and enduring poverty: too much of the first will condemn the area to too much of the second and third. To imitate the success of the new towns and garden cities, and to generate jobs and encourage prosperity, the park will need a mix of homes as well as a good swathe of greenery. Get this right, and the games might almost be worthwhile.

Field of dreams
The Economist
July 22, 2010

London 2012 A Long-Term Impact on City's East End?

This piece wonders whether the UK's £8-billion investment in London's 2012 Summer Olympics will have the intended effect of transforming the city's East End into a vibrant part of the metropolis.

While parts of East London have been transformed — as any visitor to the financial centre, Canary Warf or the 02 Concert Arena will testify — large parts remain huge pockets of poverty. Newham, where around 60 per cent of Olympic events will take place, is among the poorest — and most ethnically diverse — boroughs in the UK, according to the government indices of multiple deprivation, with high rates of joblessness, homelessness, child poverty and infant mortality. Around 15 per cent of adults lack employment, according to the Trust for London charity, while the rate of infant mortality stands at 7 in 1,000.

Can the Olympics turn East London to prosperity?
Business Line
July 20, 2010