"The Olympics were supposed to regenerate London's poorest boroughs. So what have we got to show for our £11bn? Lurid towers and faceless flats"
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| Link to The Guardian |
"On Friday, reports were published declaring the legacy to be a triumph for UK tourism, sports participation, volunteering and business. But what is the physical reality on the ground? One year on, and with £11bn of public money spent on the Olympics, the first part of the park will reopen this weekend. With national cynicism no longer suspended, now that the collective frisson of watching our Lycra-clad heroes has faded, how is the promised bounty shaping up?
"... The plan has [now, thankfully] been reconfigured to take in a mixture of traditional London typologies. Now scaled back to a total of 8,000 homes, the 'legacy communities' will be formed from familiar things: terraces and squares, mansion blocks and mews houses. They will sit among a surreal landscape of Olympic fragments from the elegant swoop of the velodrome to the skeleton of the main stadium and the hulking shed of the media centre – the only one changing its use. Reborn as iCity, it's a place for start-ups, media companies and a satellite of Loughborough University.
"Planner Eleanor Fawcett sums up the ethos:
"It should be like the surrounding neighbourhoods spilling in. The objective is that no one will ever know where the fence was."Given that the site is cut off on all sides by canals, railway cuttings and elevated roads – a secure island that made it particularly attractive to Olympic planners – this will be a struggle. Still, Fawcett has spent the last few years co-ordinating projects that try to stitch the severed site back into its hinterland, both physically and socially."
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| London Legacy Development Corporation “To promote and deliver physical, social, economic and environmental regeneration of the Olympic Park and its surrounding area, in particular by maximising the legacy of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, by securing high-quality sustainable development and investment, ensuring the long-term success of the facilities and assets within its direct control and supporting and promoting the aim of convergence” [All we get at Brent Cross is the Hammerson idiots] |
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