Olympics 2012

Olympics 2012

Introduction

The coming of the London 2012 Olympic Games has been presented as a unique opportunity for the regeneration of east London. Since the early 1980s, the Games have become intertwined with the broader discourses of urban renewal, image change and redevelopment to the extent that the International Olympic Committee now wants to ensure that the host cities and their residents are left with the most positive legacy of venues, infrastructure, expertise, and experience.

The main infrastructure for the London Games will be built in some of the poorest inner-city neighbourhoods in England and it is widely argued that focus on regeneration legacies played a key part in the success of the bid in July 2005. As the original bidding document claimed, only an Olympics has the capacity to “transform one of the most underdeveloped areas of the country for generations to come”. From the outset, therefore, the plans sought to legitimise the bid by presenting east London as a 'problem place' in urgent need of sweeping physical regeneration. It was argued that only a mega-event could mobilise the resources, political will and institutional coordination that could bring about the area's physical and social transformation.

Development agendas often reflect and reproduce dominant imaginations and visualisations of how cities function and should appear. Narratives are constructed in which so-called problem places become re-imagined as blank slates', ready for comprehensive redevelopment.

Discussion

This paper draws on research that was conducted on the potential that existed on the Olympic Village site in east London before they were evicted in the summer of 2007. The International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said in an interview with AFP that the proposed London 2012 Olympic Games, is a "notable example of regeneration of a city" and its most disadvantaged districts. "It's a great example of the regeneration of a city and how to leave a positive legacy," said Rogge, who was in London to sign a sponsorship of ten years between the IOC and the U.S. group of products Procter and Gamble. "East London was an area totally contaminated, abandoned, and we will give a new life. Let's give one heart, one soul, one life, with homes and new residents. It is extraordinary," Rogge said.

The East-End, which for years was a dangerous area with high-crime rates, great stadium to host future Olympics, the main building of the facilities being built. Research in other urban areas has shown that this group is particularly vulnerable to land clearance as they often exist in unsightly, low-cost neighbourhoods and are easily written-off as collections of old fashioned', uncompetitive firms whose decline is inevitable. The paper argues that their treatment is indicative of the ways in which those governing large redevelopment projects visualise the regeneration process and create imaginations of urban economies and communities. On a broader canvas, their experiences also reveal much about the processes of problematisation that shape contemporary urban planning and wider conceptions over desirable and undesirable urbanism, what is valued, and what a 'good' city is imagined to consist ...