London’s Olympic legacy

LONDON’S OLYMPIC LEGACY

The Inside Track

GILLIAN EVANS

London’s Olympic Legacy

Gillian   Evans

London’s Olympic

Legacy

The Inside Track

ISBN 978-0-230-31390-3 ISBN 978-1-137-29073-1 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-29073-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016949488

© Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2016

Th e author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Th is work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether

the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of

illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and trans￾mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or

dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.

Th e use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication

does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant

protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

Th e publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book

are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or

the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any

errors or omissions that may have been made.

Printed on acid-free paper

Th is Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

Th e registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London

Gillian   Evans

Department of Social Anthropology

University of Manchester

Manchester , United Kingdom

For my daughters—valiant warriors well-versed

in the ways of the world—they bring me honour.

vii

On the eve of the 2016 Olympic Games, in Rio, this is a book about

London’s Olympic legacy. I have written it, because I believe that London

will become the planning-for-legacy test case city, against which all future

Olympic cities will be judged. London has done better than any other

host city to plan legacy uses for its Olympic Park, and sporting venues,

both in advance of the Games, and in the few years immediately after.

However, London still has lessons to learn, even while it also has lessons

to teach the world, and especially other future host cities, about how to

plan better for Olympic legacy.

Mine is a story about the drama at the heart of London’s legacy plan￾ning operation between 2008 and 2012, a drama that centres on the

fi ght for the political prestige of the Olympic legacy, and the struggle of

a few determined individuals to take seriously and to honour the prom￾ises made in the Olympic bid to transform the heart of East London

for the benefi t of everyone who lives there. Th e heartening thing was to

witness, inside the Olympic Park Legacy Company, the practical power

of a vaguely left-wing political idealism inspired by, or in tune with, the

promises of Ken Livingstone’s Olympic bid, and Tessa Jowell’s framing of

the legacy challenge.

Pref ace

viii Preface

From the privileged perspective of a researcher on the inside of the

planning operation, I capture here, a sense of the unfolding drama as

attempts were made in London to harness the juggernaut of Olympic

development, and its commercial imperative, to the broader cause of

meaningful post-industrial urban regeneration and transformation in the

Olympic host boroughs of East London.

Th e book is very purposefully written for a public audience, because

the public deserves to know what happened with their money, what went

well, and why, what failed, and for what reason, and who some of the

champions of legacy were, and still are. I want the general public to be

able to follow me on what is a diffi cult journey into the heart of a com￾plicated situation, so my language is plain. At the end of each chapter,

I include a list of ten suggested readings for those who wish to fi nd out

more, and some of those books, or articles, will lead the interested reader

further into the considerable body of academic work that now exists

about London 2012, and which is also a legacy of the Games.

I make no attempt to be exhaustive in my treatment of the Olympic

legacy; there are many themes and issues that I do not cover at all. My

focus is very specifi cally on the life and death of the Olympic Park Legacy

Company, which came into existence in 2009, and met its end just before

the Games in 2012. I speak here of unsung heroes behind the scenes, and

the battle they fought, to hold fast to a set of principles they believed in,

even when it often looked like all hope was lost. I describe too some of

the scandals and controversies, and I shine a light under the carpet where

one or two things have been swept. I do this not to be sensational, but

to allow for refl ection on how things were done, and what could have

been done better. I show how there was nothing straightforward about

the attempts to plan for, and deliver an Olympic legacy from the 2012

Games, and despite outward appearances, the whole thing was an experi￾ment, from start to fi nish, in how to do something that had never in the

world been done before.

Th ere is no need for any future host city to reinvent this wheel, and

part of the legacy ought to be that host cities learn from each other about

how to ensure that the multi-billion pound spectacle of the Olympic

Games yields more than the fl ow of international capital accumulation

to cities competing for world-class status through 4 weeks of fabulous

Preface ix

sport. Th ere is the potential, instead, for the development of a new model

of twenty-fi rst-century urban transformation in which dispossession,

disrespect, and violence towards those people living in relative poverty

is rendered globally unacceptable, and replaced by the attempt to solve

the problems of urban marginality through an unfailing commitment to

regeneration properly conceived.

My hope is that this book will provoke members of the public, policy￾makers, academics, students, other host cities, and people who were part

of London’s Games and legacy-planning operations, to want to add their

own perspectives about London’s continuously emerging Olympic legacy.

I have created a website for this purpose, so that an ongoing archive can

be produced and enlivened by the contesting voices whose multitude it

was impossible for me to capture. I encourage you to contribute.

www.gillianevans.co.uk

Gillian   Evans

Manchester, UK

xi

Th is book has been a long time coming. To a certain extent, I got lost in

the labyrinth I describe here, and it has seemed a surreal eternity, trying

to fi nd my way out.

For their endless patience, I want to fi rst thank my editor at Palgrave

Macmillan, Harriet Barker, and her assistant Amelia Derkatsch. For its

constant support, and the inspiration of that intellectual and collegiate

environment, I wish to express my gratitude to the Department of Social

Anthropology at Manchester. Th is research was funded by an RCUK

Fellowship, which was hosted at the Centre for Research on Socio￾Cultural Change (CRESC) at the University of Manchester. I am grate￾ful to CRESC Directors, Professor Penny Harvey, and Professor Mike

Savage, without whom this project would have been impossible.

David Ryner, thank you for long walks, engaging conversation, and

for giving me a way in. For their openness to my project and for their

tolerance of my presence, I am indebted to the Olympic Park Legacy

Company, and all who worked there between 2008 and 2012. I am espe￾cially grateful to Tom Russell, Richard Brown, and my boss at OPLC,

Emma Wheelhouse (now Frost), whose support for my project, along

with the rest of the Comms. Team, was tireless. Th ank you to Paul Brickell

for teaching me about urban planning as a problem-solving process, and

Acknowledgements

xii Acknowledgements

to Adam Williams at EDAW (AECOM UK) for taking a chance and

allowing me to witness something of the master-planning process.

To the many organisations and people of East London who opened

their offi ces and homes, and took time to talk to me, I am most grateful.

And, fi nally, deepest thanks to Sola, and to all my family and friends, for

keeping the faith and waiting for me to emerge on the other side of this

undertaking.

xiii

Contents

Part I Th e Old World 1

1 Enter the Labyrinth 3

2 A Herculean Eff ort 19

3 Future-Scaping 51

4 Fighting to Be Heard 75

Part II Th e New World 101

5 Odyssey Becalmed 103

6 Th e Doldrums 129

7 Unruly Suitors 151

xiv Contents

8 An Interminable Saga 181

Afterword: Summer 2015 207

Bibliography 221

Index 227