Kay Hughes and Eleanor Fawcett
There is a wide strategy for London. London’s growth is moving east.
Is this a good idea, we’ll all find out in many years to come, but it is definitely happening. In the desert of deprivation, on the borders of 4 councils : Hackeny, Walthm Foret, Newham and Tower Hamplets rises the new shining star of London. The numbers for the games are: 203 counties, 5.000 strong Olympic Family, 17.800 Athletes and Teams, 22.000 media personnel and 7.7 million tickets. They all will come and leave. ODA have presented us today with a vision of the coming and ending of the games. Their intention was always to give this area a better future. Vary beautiful concept one i would fear to star to embark on. Also one all planners are kind of obliged to peruse. Better future for 3 most deprived borough in London. How do you do that?
Olympic Park is no small scale intention. It shines a bit too bright next to the housing of Tower Hamlets. ODA have thought carefully about this, it seems. A large enterprise of downscaling and downgrading the site will happen just after the games end. Temporary structures will be taken away. Bridges will be made smaller. Structures will be reused or adjusted to fit their new functions. And suprose suprise! The infrastructure will be ready laid for new exciting developments to take place on those mega big leftover plots. I do admire the long term planning in this project. But it feels so big! There will be a long meantime between Olympic Games themselves and the time when the site becomes a fully integrated and full part of the city. A time filled with walks in the park.
Next to the Olympic Park with its high profile development, Low profile redevelopment of Stratford is also taking place. Quite obviously once glamour comes to one place some sparkles of it fall onto those nearby. The legacy of the Olympic park already started to work. Problem with the Olympic big brother is that it’s smaller sister Stratford would like some big scale interventions and it can only get a lift up. Few features corrected and Stratford can work smoothly, but councils don’t like small connections any more. The legacy of the Olympic park already started to work.
It is a really long time between the Games and when the area could be fully integrated, I really hope that the project would move forward as it plans otherwise it will make the area even worse if those sites were left empty and became the desert in the city. Also the legacy at the moment involves the park being closed off for quite along time after the game for all these development and no one could enjoy the park for quite a long while, I really hope something could be done so that London could have a new park sooner, and the residents from around the site could enjoy the benefit sooner.
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