LONDON’S OLYMPIC LEGACY The Inside Track GILLIAN EVANS London’s Olympic Legacy Gillian Evans London’s Olympic Legacy The Inside Track Gillian Evans Department of Social Anthropology University of Manchester Manchester , United Kingdom 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. 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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 For my daughters—valiant warriors well-versed in the ways of the world—they bring me honour. Pref ace 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. vii 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 Acknowledgements 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 xi 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. Contents P a r t 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 P a r t I I Th e New World 101 5 Odyssey Becalmed 103 6 Th e Doldrums 129 7 Unruly Suitors 151 xiii xiv Contents 8 An Interminable Saga 181 Afterword: Summer 2015 207 Bibliography 221 Index 227 Acronyms BNP British National Party BOA British Olympic Association CPO Compulsory Purchase Order CSR Comprehensive Spending Review DCLG Department of Communities and Local Government DCMS Department of Culture Media and Sport DLR Docklands Light Railway ECDST Economic, Culture, Development, Sport, and Tourism Committee ELBA East London Business Association EMT Executive Management Team EP English Partnerships EU European Union GLA Greater London Authority GOE Government Olympic Executive HCA Homes and Communities Agency IAAF International Association of Athletics Federations ICA Institute of Contemporary Arts IOC International Olympic Committee KCAP Kees Christiaanse Architects and Planners LCS Legacy Communities Scheme LDA London Development Agency LETF