Hosting the Olympics 2012

The main Olympics site is the Olympic Park located at Stratford. The Olympic Stadium is at the centre of this park. This stadium is proposed to have seating capacity for 80,000 spectators. However, this capacity would be reduced to 25,000 after the Games and it will act as residence for British athletes. The park will also have an inbuilt aquatic centre which will be at its south east corner. This Aquatic Centre was planned to be built even before the success of the London bid. It is proposed to be completed in 2008 and will consist of a 50m pool and 25m diving pool. The centre’s capacity to hold people is proposed to be reduced after the Games from 25,000 to 3,500 and would be utilised for major swimming competitions as well as by the local community. The Olympic Park will also consist of an indoor multi-sport complex, a velodrome and a hockey complex. Other permanent venues would be completed in 2011 but the velodrome and BMX circuits are expected to be completed by 2008. The Athletes Village will provide residence to 16,000 athletes and officials of the team and would be located at a distance of 5 – 15 minutes

Velodrome and permanent BMX track for the London 2012 Olympic Games with seating for 6,000 spectators.

from the their venues. Although the permission for construction was granted in September 2004, the actual construction started in mid 2007. 

Thanks to the technology that allows CGI and computer graphics to superimpose a reasonably realistic visual image of the intended buildings in situ, we can imagine what the Olympic stadium may look like on completion in its environment.

Like the Dome, the Olympic stadium will be a circular construction. As the Dome was a flying saucer, the Olympic stadium will be a doughnut or plump pincushion (depending on the aspect), related in shape as well as proximity in time and place. They are both 21st century buildings and have endeavored to showcase the best of modern engineering and architectural design much as the Crystal Palace did in 1851. The ‘bowl’ has been designed so that the ground floor made of concrete and steel rakers will permanently seat 25,000. The portion above it will have an open weave wrap to surround the 1000-yard circumference and will be decorated with a mixture of sponsors’ logos, Olympic champions and the flags of participating countries. It will be made available to seat temporarily, 55,000 bringing the capacity for spectators at the Games to 80,000. The cable net roof with sports lighting containing primary and secondary cables will also have an open weave fabric curtain to extend over the truncated fabric membrane roof that covers only two-thirds of the spectators (budget restrictions) and a compression ring.

The circular components layer upon each other but not as easily as the animations would have one believe. The use of steel and concrete has been for aesthetic purpose, a celebration of contemporary affordable materials, as much as functionality and the design allows for maximum light whilst providing protection and shade from the elements for spectators and athletes. Until there is something beyond the abstract plans, one can only speculate and formulate imaginings of the finished article. It certainly makes a statement without being threatening or overpowering, displaying practicality above frivolity or one-up-manship. The curves in the design of the stadium and the surrounding roads are feminine, welcoming and strong, complimenting the environment rather than jarring against it in geometric dominance. Doubtless there will be an opportunity for the ‘techies’ to display their skills with technology for security and admission being employed and the opportunity to show how optic fibre cables, lasers and LED displays can make spectacular light shows at the touch of a button or the click of a mouse.

                   

Computer generated impression of new Stratford city

The main Olympic Park is located in East London, an area which had already been earmarked for regeneration and development in 2004. According to the London Plan of 2004, East London would be able to accommodate one third of the increase in London’s population and would contribute to 40% of its net job growth. But now, with the award of Olympics, the regeneration plans have received an additional boost. The sites which have directly benefited from the Games are Stratford and Lower Lea Valley. Stratford has an area of about 124ha and is expected to yield 30,000 new jobs and 4,500 new homes by 2016. There are further plans to make it a new Metropolitan Town Centre as it would be well connected with public transport specially the new Stratford International train terminal, serviced by the Eurostar. On the other hand, the Lower Lea Valley occupies 250ha and is expected to yield 8,500 jobs as well as 6,000 new homes by 2016. It is mainly an industrial site and thus any improvement in this area would improve the environment.12       

The Thames Gateway Plan

Certain backward areas earmarked for development in areas like employment, housing, health, education and dependency by the London Plan will also see major regeneration initiatives particularly accelerated by the Olympics development. Some of these areas are the Boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets and Hackney. These also contain several brownfield sites which need to be treated. The Thames Gateway Development Plan which would create 30,000 new homes and 50,000 new jobs by 2021 has been largely benefited by the staging of 2012 Olympics. The Thames Gateway was less known to the public before the Olympic bid as it lacked identity. But the success of London bid and its regeneration plans have led to an increased interest in the development of the Gateway. The organisational and social setting of the Thames Gateway development is a complex process and integrating the agencies along with the local and regional plans is a difficult affair. The development process requires a mix of private or public partnerships to finance infrastructure and the creation of housing, retail, business and leisure provisions.  

Olympic specific infrastructure developments should not only facilitate post event usage which is sustainable but also encourage long term private investment in East London. However, the effect of Olympics may not always be positive as it will suck all the investments which would have otherwise been used for urban renewal. This is referred to as displacement effect. This effect can only be diminished by internal investment which would lead to long term employment opportunities. London should take some lessons from Barcelona and Beijing. Barcelona depended completely upon the Olympics for its long term development. However, due to Barcelona’s added advantage of becoming a centre for the growing EU services and thus connecting northern Europe to Iberian Peninsula, it attracted huge foreign investments. Similarly, Beijing already has a dynamic national economy and staging of Olympics attracted not only inward investments but also technology for further growth. On the contrary, the UK does not have a central location as Barcelona nor can it benefit from inward investments as the UK investments have fallen to a very low level recently and majority of its projects are state financed. Hence, the effect of Olympics would be subdued in UK.

However, the Olympics regeneration programme would generate some positive effects also. Firstly the number of open spaces and parks would increase by replacing several brownfields, thus leading to an improved environment. Secondly the overall improvement in housing and social infrastructure would lead to an increase in the market value of the houses. Lastly, about 37,500m construction jobs would be created on a temporary basis spanning the six years of Olympics construction.

From the first year of 2012 preparations itself, the costs started escalating and time limitations were tightened. An indication of how much and how rapidly costs have spiralled is not reassuring: 

                                                         July 2005    July 2007

Total funding package                      £2.38bn      9.35bn

Total cost of venues                          £573.1m     3.08bn

Regeneration                                     £1.044bn    1.67bn

Main stadium                                    £281m         496m

Aquatics centre                                 £73.1m        150m

The Olympic site which consists of the main sports facilities is expected to cost £690 million. The past Olympics cities faced similar issues. Athens, 2004 had a frightening experience with construction projects starting late and the costs skyrocketing. In Beijing, to deal with escalating costs, designs for five Olympic avenues were cancelled and a new revised construction plan for the entire site including the national stadium was created. These changes enabled Beijing to save $363 million. 

Midst all the rhetoric about the Dome, the pro and anti voices, there is a neutral who actually talked about the building’s structure. Angus Macdonald from the Department of Architecture at Edinburgh University, had an extract from his book, Long Span Structures, published in Architecture Week in 2003: “In the 1990s, a new generation of mast-supported synclastic (doubly curved but with both curves acting in the same direction) cable networks  (doubly curved but with both curves acting in the same direction) was developed. The principal advantage of these over the earlier anticlastic forms was that, due to the greater simplicity of the form, the manufacture of the cladding was made easier. The Millennium Dome in London, which is not a dome in the structural sense, is perhaps the best known of these. In this building, a dome-shaped cable network is supported on a ring of 24 masts. The overall diameter of the building is 1175 feet (358 metres) but the maximum span is approximately 738 feet (225 metres). The size of the span makes the use of a complex form-active structure entirely justified. The cable network to which the cladding is attached consists of a series of radial cables, in pairs, which span 82 feet (25 metres between nodes supported by hanger cables connecting them to the tops of the masts. The nodes are also connected by circumferential cables which provide stability. The downward curving radial cables are pre-stressed against the hanger cables and this makes them almost straight and converts the surface of the dome into a series of facetted panels”.

   

In some important ways, the Richard Rogers Partnership accepted an almost impossible brief when they took on development of the Peninsula as well as the Dome. They had to combine a short-term vision of the Dome and how to present it both as a freestanding jewel and with its functional infrastructure because it had an intense job to do for twelve months, the so-called Millennium Experience. At the same time, they were involved with its incorporation in the long-term plans for the entire Peninsula, this marriage of parkland and homes in the Millennium Village for thousands of people. The outcome is an evolving landscape that is similar in important respects, particularly in the way local people will participate in it and enjoy it as is the case in New York’s Central Park, which was based on Birkenhead Park designed by Paxton.  Throughout, the designers of this hinterland, Desvigne + Dalnoky, had to recognise that whatever they did they couldn’t disguise the dominance of the Dome. They have provided a sustainable context for it rather than try to hide it. So they followed the French style of mathematically precise landscape and planted more than 3,500 trees, mostly hornbeam, arranged in geometric blocks, more than 60,000 shrubs and laid 20,000 m2 of turf.  Opinion is that it is all too cold, that it needs people to animate it, to ruffle its formal style by walking the dog or kicking a football or jogging.

But it is only the more formal of two parks. As well as this Central Park, there is a smaller South Park nearer to Millennium Village with views toward the Thames Barrier. Certainly the run from the Dome into the Peninsula is no Versailles, and no-one could call it picturesque, but it does have a lot going for it. There is a third open space of four acres, towards the tip of the Peninsula. This, the Ecology Park, has been developed in close association with the Millennium Village, with its rows of brightly coloured private dwellings which are set to cut energy costs by 80 per cent over more conventional housing.  

At the end of the Millennium experience there was a change in ownership of the freeholds to the consortium Meridian Delta (MDL) who commissioned Terry Farrell & Partners to take over development of the Peninsula. Nothing much obviously changed, except that plans became more committed to ‘high density urban living’.  His description of the design problem sees the site ‘as an urban grid laid out over the pattern of land ownership responding to the geometry of the Dome. This created a network of streets, squares and parks ensuring clear lines of connection north to south and arching cross streets around the curve of the Dome’. 

A central authority in the nexus of experts involved with the regeneration of both Greenwich and Stratford is English Partnerships, now part of the National Regeneration Agency (NRA), which describes its function as ‘helping the government to support high quality sustainable growth in England’.  NRA involvement with the Peninsula began in 1997 when it purchased the site. It then spent more than £225m on detoxing the site, improving the transport network and ‘masterplanning’ the development. In 2004, it agreed with Lend Lease and Quintain Estates & Development plc on a programme which ‘will deliver over 25,000 jobs and guarantee homes for 28,000 people’, and Greenwich Council provided the planning permission.  Between now and 2017, NRA sees MDL’s job as one in which they use the Terry Farrell plan to ‘create a new urban quarter for London’. The plan includes a commitment to build more than 10,000 houses ‘of which 38 per cent will be affordable housing for people on low earnings and key workers like nurses  and teachers’.  The first residents moved in December 2000. A few weeks later, a wood-clad school and health centre were opened. Housing Minister Yvette Cooper said on a recent visit to the Greenwich Peninsula, “The government has pledged to build 3m new homes by 2020 to help young people and families get on the housing ladder. We must now be sure that the homes of the future are sustainable as well as affordable and the types of housing are places where people want to live”. 

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CHAPTER 4

Financial Implications: Where does the money come from and how does this affect citizens?

According to Brown and Massey, hosting the Olympics does not always bring financial rewards. The 1972 Munich Olympics and 1976 Montreal Olympics made losses of £178 million and £692 million each respectively. Whereas the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and the 1992 Barcelona Olympics made surpluses of £215 million and £2 million respectively. The improved economic performance of Olympics can be attributed to factors like wider markets, higher costs, increased competition and higher expectations for performing better than the previous venues. The economic impact of Olympic Games can be measured in terms of the financial performance of the organisers, the number of visitors and how much they spend in the host city, long term benefits from the infrastructure investments and long term legacy benefits through increase in tourism

According to the bid documents, London needs to invest £9.9 billion to host the Olympics. This includes expenditure on transport infrastructure as well as development of Olympic venues and related amenities. Seventy two percent of this expenditure would be on transport itself. Some transport services have to be developed exclusively for the Olympics. But majority of the transport infrastructure to be constructed was already under planning prior to the Games. The construction of the Olympic facilities would cost about £2.7 billion. It would be chiefly spent on the Olympic Park, venues and athletes’ accommodation. This is roughly equal to 4% of the UK’s total construction output in 2004.13

The cost of Olympics facilities will be financed through both public and private funds which would include ticket sales, marketing and sponsorship, and the sale of television rights. Approximately, £2.375 billion would be provided by public sector funding package. This package would consist of £1.5 billion of Lottery funding, up to £625 million from London council tax and £250 million from the London Development Agency.

The economic impact of Olympics on London can be divided into direct impacts and long term impacts. Direct impacts consist of expenses involved for the preparation of the Games itself. The long term effects can be divided into showcase effect and positive legacy effect. Among the previous host cities, Barcelona has been successful in using Olympics to create a great impact on its economy. Barcelona emerged as an attractive tourist destination and drew huge investments after staging of the Olympics. This was due to its enhanced image owing to the successful completion of regeneration projects and other infrastructure related to Olympics. The Sydney Olympics in 2000 displayed another success story by accomplishing record ticket sales and creating a positive Olympic legacy. Thus, it became a hot tourist destination and acclaimed international reputation.

On the contrary, London is a global city with a service oriented economy which attracts sufficient foreign investment and tourists from all over the world. It is estimated that 27 million visitors come to London on an annual basis. It has a highly developed infrastructure and sporting facilities which are essential for staging Olympics. Thus it needs to spend very little on the development of these facilities as compared to the previous hosts. Hence, London does not require the Olympics to boost its economy or enhance tourism or attain an international standing. It only needs to maintain its reputation through the successful delivery of the Games.

In 2012, apart from a substantial temporary employment effect, the London tourist industry is also expected to benefit from visitors and their spending. The number of overseas visitors is expected to be between 500,000 and 1 million. The revenue generated by spending of both national and international tourists is projected to be £350-700 million.

The economic impact of Olympic Games on the host cities are shown as below:

                                Economic impact                Jobs generated

Barcelona (1992)                        $30 million                        296,640      

Atlanta (1996)                        $5.1 million                          77,026

Sydney (2000)                        $4.5 billion                          90,000

Athens (2004)                        $10.2 billion                        300,400

The impact of Olympics on London economy has been estimated by the Capital Economics as £9 billion. London’s total output could be boosted by an average of around 0.5% per annum in the period up to 2012. But this amount is considered to be very insignificant for the entire economy. However, there would be significant localised economic impacts due to the positioning of the main Olympic site in Lea Valley and improvement in the key transport links to the Games. The economic importance of the Olympics is also greater at the boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets and Hackney as compared to the whole London economy.

The Olympics budget as presented in the bid has increased from £2.4 billion to £9.35 billion in a time span of less than two years from July 2005 to March 2007. This budget is expected to reach £12.6 billion till 2012. The reasons behind the increase of budget in just two years are that costs were not included as whole categories in the bid and the original bid projected a very high private sector funding i.e. £738 which cannot be achieved. There are indicators that show that the budget will continue to increase till 2012. A good example is Athens whose initial projected cost was £840 million but the final cost rose to £4.4 billion which was approximately five times over the budget. Hence, if London’s budget increases in a similar way, it would reach £12.6 billion. The budget may overrun due to higher construction inflation, the uncertain amount of work related to remediation, groundwork and demolition, insufficiency of the new emergency plans and incomplete negotiations for the deal of development of the Olympic Village.3 

Analysing the situation, Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, stated:

“It’s alarming that the costs of the Olympics have already quadrupled and the prospect of them rising to £12.6 billion will fill taxpayers with dread. It is beginning to look like the Olympic Delivery Authority, the Olympics Minister and the Civil Servants in charge lack the management experience and subject knowledge to deliver the Games on time and on budget. This situation is extremely worrying and we hope that our new 2012 Watchdog will defend the interests of taxpayers over the next five years.”

An in-depth study of the economic consequences of the Games by a team from Barcelona University provided something more substantial than hearsay. Tourism certainly recorded a massive leap forward from two per cent of the city’s GDP pre-1992 to the current 15 per cent. While the city’s airport handled 2.9 million passengers in 1991, the year before the Games, numbers this year are running at 23 million. In terms of the willingness of businesses to locate in Barcelona, dependent on the attractiveness of the city, availability of labour and services, development of markets and extent of competition, Healey and Baker reported in 2001 that Barcelona had improved in the European league table from 11th position in 1993 to 6th in 2001. For the man and woman in the street, however, the so-called ‘transformation’ of Barcelona has been greeted with mixed feelings. Employment and the new prosperity have certainly spread around (apart from a blip immediately after the Games in which unemployment rose by 21,000) but employment has been variable, seeming to follow the general economic pattern rather than any post-Olympics boost, being up until 1993, down after 1995.

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Chapter 5

Citizen’s rights and freedoms Versus Security

Is the consent ‘manufactured’?

Various surveys show the consent of people in putting London up in the bid for Olympics, however, the majority of these have been only indirectly consulted. Usually, a bid is framed in the form of a community benefit like better transport, urban renewal or improved facilities which claim to counter the potential projected costs to the community. This is so because such public opinion polls are commonly used by proposers of the bid as evidence of public support. This can be seen in several bid books which are produced by Organising Committees and which highlight the public support for the Games and thus render invalid any potential opposition. For instance, in Australia, the Sydney Bid Book suggested that there was ‘universal enthusiasm’ for the Sydney bid and claimed that ‘support within New South Wales for the Sydney 2000 Bid was at 90 per cent and continuing to grow’

Consent can be manufactured with yet another tactic. The bid organisers may incorporate key personnel from various minority groups like ethnic communities, indigenous communities and welfare groups to demonstrate public support across the various sections of society. Whereas these groups usually provide opposition to an Olympic Games and organise protest movements showcasing the deplacement effects and other adverse effects of regeneration. Critiques of bidding like Douglas Booth and Colin Tatz suggest that these processes do not amount to real consultation and therefore are nothing but ‘manufactured consent’. The question then arises that when it comes to safeguarding citizens’ rights and freedoms, then do the polls and surveys aptly represent public welfare?

The impact of the Games and community consultation

It is commonly accepted that community consultation should be actively done before undertaking any project of an international scale like the Olympics. However the degree of community consultation that actually happened is debatable. Some common practices include fast-tracking of venues because of the enormity of the task of making suitable arrangements for the Games in a short period. This result in limited community consultation and many times local concerns are over ridden and this is justified in the name of national interest.

All contemporary Olympic Games have some measure of community opposition. Although the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games were cited as successful and was known to be well supported by the city’s people, yet it did face some opposition in the lead-up period. The media along with the public often criticised the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) for being too secretive and excessively high-handed. Construction of certain facilities also faced community opposition during the Sydney Games. For example, the Bondi Beach Volleyball Stadium raised much controversy because it closed off a significant part of a popular surfing beach for a period of around six months and it was also speculated that the stadium would cause environmental damage to the beach. Besides this, the development of the Ryde Pool, which was the venue for some preliminary water polo matches, caused the closing down of a public pool for two years and also converted part of a public park into a private leisure facility.

The local government in Australia, which forms the third tier of governance, also complained that the views of local councils had not been taken into consideration adequately. The Auburn Council, which is one of the poorer municipalities in Sydney, suggested that its ratepayers had to suffer an unfair burden from the construction of the Sydney Olympic Park, which fell within its boundaries.26 In addition, the Mosman Council forum talked of the impacts of the Olympics and stated that ‘local authorities have been largely locked out of the [Olympic] decision-making process’ and ‘have received very little information on key issues like anticipated transport flows’ which are vital for ‘the formulation of local transport plans’

Anti-Games lobbying helped Toronto probably lose the bid for 2008 Olympic Games. The city spawned one of the most prominent anti-Games lobbies called ‘Bread not Circuses’ which was a coalition of left and green groups who argued that the Games adversely affected the poor, the homeless and the environment. These activists also demonstrated that in order to pay for the Games money was taken away from the environment, health and welfare budgets where it was most needed. They argued that public money must much rather be on necessities (bread) instead of luxury sporting festivals (circuses). This lobby has now after the defeat of the Toronto bid shifted its attention to the Vancouver bid for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

Internet is also becoming increasingly popular among anti-Olympic alliances to voice their Olympic critique. For instance, the Sydney based lobby used a website called PISSOFF – People Ingeniously Subverting the Sydney Olympic Farce. Then there is the IOCC Coalition - The Impact of the Olympics on Community Coalition - which was formed in conjunction with the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Bid. It represents a new type of community coalition which defines itself as a community watchdog instead of being labeled as an anti-Olympic group. The IOCC says that it’s an independent group which is dedicated to ensuring that social, environmental, transportation, housing, economic and civil rights issues related to the Games are addressed from a community perspective. They aim to ensure that community issues are prominent and to promote, as suggested on the web site, an ‘Olympics for all’. However, even though there has been a proliferation of anti-Olympic and watchdog groups, eveidence of their support base is very limited. Hence it is difficult to assess their significance and to determine if they speak for anyone other than radical fringe groups.

Human Rights issues in the host city

The staging of Olympic Games may lead to erosion of human rights for the people of that city and country as so much is at stake when such Games are held and both the city and the country need to look at their best. In addition, there are greater requirements for tighter security which leads to organising committee or government introducing laws which may restrict individual liberties especially during the Games in order to eliminate any negative incidents. The safety of the public, media, athletes, visitors, and dignitaries need to be ensured by the host city. But even so the people in the host city do not want security to be overbearing. In the aftermath of terrorist attacks on WTC on September 11, 2001, such security measures have tightened further and are leading to higher erosion of human rights. For example, the security in Salt Lake City was tighter than ever before because it was quite unlikely that the US citizens would complain about it or the new curbs on their freedoms as they will largely view it as the ‘price of freedom’.

Similarly, in the lead-up to the Sydney Olympic Games, special legislation was introduced by the New South Wales State Government which was so designed to give police and security forces more powers than what they normally with even though such arrangements were termed as ‘temporary’. This legislation enabled the police to question and search citizens in the central business district. In addition the Australian Secret Service got more powers of surveillance which included the power to tap into phones for example. In addition, for Olympic-related investigations, the Freedom of Information Act was also suspended. It was feared that this erosion of civil liberties during Olympic Games could be extended and hence become the excuse for ‘temporary’ measures to be imposed for a longer term.

Disruption and inconvenience caused in the Olympic city

Generally, the people living in the Olympic city are well prepared in terms of the changes they have to face during the Games. Those who do not wish to participate in the city celebrations may choose to leave the city during the Games. However, the host city population is not as well prepared for the continuing changes that occur in the city’s built environment that take place over a span of several years before the actual Games. For example, the construction of Olympic venues, projects of urban renewal and major changes in urban transport infrastructure can lead to several unexpected inconveniences for people living in an Olympic city.

In some cases, Olympic venues can deprive citizens of local access to various public facilities for months on end. This was winessed during the creation of a 10,000 seat Beach Volleyball Stadium at Bondi Beach which resulted in the partial closure of the Beach and the Bondi Pavilion (used for local cultural events) for up to six months from May to October 2000. There were some local protests complaining that community resources had been used for a large-scale temporary mega event. The Olympic Co-ordination Authority felt that that the local council should bear any costs ‘for the benefit of being Australian, as part of the Olympic Games’26 

Social legacy is one of the most important areas of Olympic legacy. The extent of consultation and communication of developments related to Olympic Games to the host communities who affected is an integral part of this legacy. At the 2002 Legacy conference, president of IOC, Jacques Rogge stated that an Olympic Games should produce a sustainable legacy which should prove to be of long-term benefit to the communities of the host city and country. The social impacts of events on host city have been examined in a small but growing body of literature. It is important to have an appreciation of the impact of sporting events on society and therefore to develop techniques that can adequately such impact and thus allow for improved management of events. The events do have an economic benefit and are also capable of adding value to the promotion of community participation by increasing community creativity and enhancing community well-being. A sense of pride and self actualisation is often linked to the hosting of sporting events. It is important to understand why and how some regions may be affected differently from others and why such impacts are perceived differently among different communities. It should be borne in mind that the quality of the event is much related to issues of quality of life and the rights of various stakeholders.

As far as 2012 Games are concerned, it is important to develop an understanding of host community attitudes towards the 2012 Games, especially in connection to the construction of sport-related facilities. Such an understanding will have practical significance as event organisers, , regional development agencies regional, county and local tourist boards, regional and county-wide sporting governing bodies, regional government offices and other stakeholders try to take into consideration the needs of local residents, sports competitors and sports fans. The central government of the UK suggests that construction of facilities and hosting of major sporting events like Olympics 2012 may act as a catalyst for promoting sports among the local community, and therefore have potentially long-term benefits for the health of the nation. The strategy for physical health is currently high on the government agenda in ‘Game Plan’. According to this view, events offer two main opportunities for community development - first by strengthening of the community through better quality of personal relationships resulting from extensive volunteer efforts linked to such events and secondly by initiating or reinforcing behaviour or activities that contribute towards community wellbeing.

The current UK government policy, for instance may include an increased level of sports participation from hosting major sporting events in the future. Therefore it is suggested that sports development policy connected to the 2012 Games must concentrate on improving access to sport and physical activity among the general population of Britain, and not just focus on elite performance. Nevertheless, there may be witnessed a certain  ‘double-edged sword’ effect, wherein certain communities may get alienated, yet on the other hand a sense of community pride or image can be developed. Such sense of well being and pride is an indicator of the social capital of the community. It is important to note that in case the social impacts related to the 2012 Games are not fully investigated, along with its economic impacts, then certain sporting events in the UK may end up losing their base of community support.

The Sydney 2000 Games saw various volunteer programmes successfully contributing to a sense of local ownership. Unfortunately the previous Games appeared to engage those people who were active already. Thus a challenge for London 2012 is to engage more groups in society so as to increase volunteer numbers. Social sustainability is already being developed in the UK around sport development legacies and certain programmes related to healthy living promotion, community legacies at Olympic venues education related to sustainability, reducing economic and physical barriers to Games participation, inclusion of marginalised communities and celebrations of cultural diversity.

Related to the 2012 Games, there is a need for longitudinal research that can track the extent to which residents accept sporting events, and to determine whether public approval ratings and support rise or reduce in the periods before, during and after the Games. The key challenge is to bring local ownership and enjoyment of events and making sure that residents are involved and benefit. The Olympic and Paralympics Games provide an excellent for civic engagement, empowerment and community participation, for building social capital.A legacy of driving change can be brought about by London 2012 and for this initiatives linked to the Games must be embedded in local programmes and policies such that in the long term the benefits reach the the local needs of host communities.

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Chapter 6

Transportation issues

30

In the early stages of bidding, a great emphasis was laid on the transportation system. Significant investment was to be undertaken to improve the transport of London. A reliable public transportation system will be needed from Hyde Park to Stratford and many more places to achieve success in Olympics. The organising of the Games in summer will benefit the transport system as there would be 20% fewer commuters who will be using the transport system as compared to a normal weekday. As per the estimates of Transport for London (TfL), the Games will lead to an increment of 5% in the daily total journeys around London.

However, the main objective of the transportation strategy is based upon 100% use of public transportation by the Olympic spectators and workers to every venue. The transport system will cater to both national and international spectators. Each venue will be connected by one overland rail line or tube station. There will be three or more transport options for 90% of the venues. By 2012, the spectators will have a range of ten rail routes for Olympic Park to choose from. The majority of the transportation schemes had already been planned before the award of Olympics. However, now these schemes have to be completed within a given time frame and thus accelerated construction is required. Some of the major schemes are described below.

St Pancras station will be connected with Channel Tunnel via Stratford International by the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL). The largest station serving the Olympic Park will be Stratford International. The portion of the railway connecting St. Pancras to Stratford International is expected to be completed by early 2007. This new line will pass through the Thames Gateway and will be considered as an important route for the Olympics.

The Olympic Javelin, which is a high speed rail linking King’s Cross, St. Pancras Station, Stratford international and Dartford International, will follow the same route as CTRL (with some minor modifications) during the Games. The frequency of this shuttle service will be 10 trains per hour, i.e. a train will be available after every six minutes. Moreover, it will take just seven minutes to cover the distance between St Pancras and Stratford. Thus, during the Games, this will be the main rapid transport route which will connect Central London to the Olympic Park. The last station of the train will be Ebbsfleet in North Kent.  A large car park at the terminus will be available for passengers where they can leave their cars. The estimated cost of this project is £10m.

Major improvements in the Jubilee Line had already been planned before the bid for the Games. This line will connect Stanmore to East Stratford via Central London. The TfL has plans to add a seventh carriage to every train from 2006 onwards. This will lead to an increase in the passenger capacity by 17%. Full upgradation of the line by 2009 will further increase the capacity. This will lead to a 45% increase in the passenger capacity by 2012 as per TfL estimates.

                                           

The earlier project of Docklands Light Rail (DLR) was to extend the services from Canning Town to Woolwich Arsenal. But with £67m of the Olympic transport funds allotted for improved services, the line will now cater to City Airport, Silvertown as well as ExCel Centre. The ExCel Centre will act as a host to a variety of events. Hence it has to be well connected. The improvements in DLR will cause an increase in the passenger capacity by 50%  

There is also a plan for constructing The Olympic Park Loop which will be a ring road around the Olympic Park. It will be located in the west Stratford City. It will be a permanent road on its completion due in 2009. It will cost around £60m. During the Games, this road will be used exclusively by athletes, press members and emergency services. After the Games, the road will act a permanent link to the Aquatic Centre and the Olympic Stadium.  

The existing East London Line will be extended and upgraded into a new metro style service through the East London Line Project. The services will be extended to Highbury and Islington, West Croydon and Clapham Junction. The project will be completed in two phases. The first phase will be delivered in June 2012. This is a North-South extension, with major interchanges at Whitechapel (District and Hammersmith & City), Shadwell (DLR) and Canada Water (Jubilee).

Major station improvements and installation of a new state-of-the-art signalling system will upgrade the whole Northern Line Network by January 2012. This will lead to an increase in the passenger capacity by 21% and improvement in journey times by 18%. These improvements will have a long term effect on the passengers travelling within Central London.  

Another significant project is the Thames Gateway Bridge (TGB). This bridge will cross the Thames at Gallions Reach, thus connecting Beckton in the Borough of Newham to Thamesmead in the Borough of Greenwich. Links will be provided by new approach roads. Initially, the completion of this project was scheduled for 2012/13. But with the staging of Olympics, the work will be accelerated as soon as it gets clearance from the public inquiry.13 The following paragraphs consist of a detailed analysis of the impact of this transportation strategy.

It is conceivable that if the Jubilee line with its Canary Wharf, North Greenwich and Stratford stations had not existed, along with Docklands Light Railway (DLR) running from Bank to Stratford with plans for the development of a station at Stratford International, London would not have succeeded with its Olympics bid. Canary Wharf, North Greenwich and Stratford – these three stations and others were central to the argument that this stretch of east London has the beginnings of a transport system which could carry a mass of spectators to a stadium which will hold 80,000 people and continue to help local people get to and from their place of work in some comfort. It is more technically accurate to talk about the Jubilee Line Extension, because it was added on to the old Metropolitan railway which runs across north London via London Bridge and Waterloo to Stanmore in Middlesex. The extension was completed in 1999, in good time for the opening of the Dome and the Millennium Experience and in position for the development of Stratford City as the transport hub for continental Europe and other parts of London and the South East.

The Jubilee line is only part of the infrastructure that has served Canary Wharf and the Dome pretty well, and will go on contributing its capacity when the Olympic Village opens in 2012. But that capacity will not be enough. In the opinion of commuters and others coming into central London to work, it never was. The sardine analogy comes to mind, given the discomfort of travelling even a short distance at the beginning and end of the day during the rush hour. The intention always was to add more capacity by opening more lines; the development of the Euro tunnel was the stimulus.  The London end of this fast route to Paris and Brussels began at Waterloo, was moved to the renovated St Pancras and will soon have a station at Stratford City in time for the Olympics. At the same time, Crossrail, which has been talked about of and on since 1974 and before as a way of linking Paddington with Liverpool Street stations and subsequently Chelsea with Hackney, only received government approval for the first route in 2007, in a bill which received the royal assent in 2008. This was only after a funding deal had been secured with public and private bodies for £15.9bn.  The authority was also set in place with the decision that Crossrail’s promoter, Cross London Rail Links Ltd, should become a subsidiary of Transport for London (TfL), the body set up in 2000 as part of the Greater London Authority (GLA) to manage transport across London.

The magazine Construction News was wildly enthusiastic. “Crossrail has to be a votewinner”, David Taylor wrote. “It’ll be the biggest civil engineering project in Europe, create almost 30,000 new jobs, pump an extra £20 billion in the UK economy, cement London reputation as one of the world’s main financial centres, ease congestion on all main commuter routes and encourage more people to use public transport, thereby reducing CO2 emissions and saving the planet.” Trouble is, as far as this dissertation is concerned, the first trains are not expected to run until 2017, so Crossrail will be of no help at all in easing congestion at Greenwich North and the Dome or at Stratford City and the 2012 Olympics.

In fact, Crossrail is better seen as part of the overarching plan for regeneration, which includes Canary Wharf, Greenwich Peninsula and Stratford City, called the Thames Gateway. This 40 mile stretch of land runs from Westferry in the borough of Tower Hamlets to the Isle of Sheppey and is said to contain ‘some of the most deprived wards in the country, characterised by lack of access to public transport, services, employment and affordable quality housing’. Completion of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, High Speed 1, will help of course, but not to any great extent. It has been designed in two sections of track, one running from the Channel Tunnel to Fawkham Junction in north Kent and the second from Southfleet in Kent to London St Pancras International via Stratford International and Ebbsfleet International, near Dartford; domestic services will start in 2009. It was described by Richard Brown, chief executive of Eurostar, as ‘Britain’s entry into the European high-speed club’ and there are plans to extend it to Birmingham. Trains can run at 186mph, cutting the journey time to little more than two hours on the inaugural run from Paris in November 2007. Trains that run on this line, the aptly named Olympic Javelin, are intended to provide a shuttle service to Stratford during the Games. It is also intended eventually to connect with Crossrail so it can be regarded as a contributor to the Thames Gateway development.

The Thames Gateway has been a jewel in the government’s eye since 2003, when the first funding programme was arranged. Four years later, the Thames Gateway Delivery Plan set out a number of objectives in respect of the Olympic Games in the form of a mission statement: “The London 2012 Games will take place mainly in the new Olympic Park, being built in Stratford, East London. The area of the Olympic Park and the Lower Lea Valley requires the government department to work closely with the five Olympic Host Boroughs (Newham, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Greenwich and Waltham Forest) to ensure that the Games leaves a lasting legacy that includes physical, economic and social regeneration that benefits local communities through reducing worklessness and improving training, skills and ambitions. The Olympic Park, together with Stratford City, forms one of the Thames Gateway’s four “Strategic Transformers”. ”

The Docklands Light Railway tends to be overlooked in discussions of the regeneration of east London, if only because it has been around since 1997. It is 19 miles long and has four operational branches: Stratford to Lewisham, Bank to Lewisham, Bank to King George V and Tower Gateway to Beckton. Some measure of its popularity with Londoners is that in 2006 it carried more than 60 million passengers. And this number should increase, particularly among foreign visitors to the Olympics and other tourists who are expected to be intrigued by the DLR’s computer controlled, driverless trains when an interchange station opens at the new Stratford International.

The quality of the developments in and around Stratford is of course the key to the success of the London 2012 Olympic Games. The project always was independent of the result of the Olympics bid, fortunately perhaps because the entirety is not expected to be finished until 2020. Planning permission was obtained in 2005, one of the largest ever submitted in the UK. The site, 1,300,000 m2 of an old railway goods yard, will be converted into what Iain Sinclair pinpointed cynically as “the largest retail-led mixed-use urban regeneration project in the UK”. The development plan includes space for shops and department stores, which it is hoped, will help to make Stratford City London’s third most important shopping centre after the West End and Knightsbridge, and will have 5,000,000 m2 of office space and almost 5000 new homes. In addition, it will boast of two skyscrapers by Richard Rodgers. The Olympic Park will be west of this site, on which work started in 2007.The new town centre will be close to the existing one. There will be a sizeable office district with some houses, a little like the Barbican. A residential district close to parkland will be fitted out with a health centre, campus and new schools. And there is another mostly residential district, which features a series of stepped lakes, close to the Olympic Park. ‘Stratford is preparing itself’ says the SRP ‘for the role of East London’s new capital’. 

Finally, this chapter will look at contribution made by London’s Jubilee line to the city’s architectural heritage. It is a principle of design on the line that all stations should have some architectural feature that provides some daylight wherever possible on the platforms. Norman Foster at Canary Wharf achieved this by incorporating three glazed canopies at the two main entrances and, a smaller one, known archly as the Fosterito that indicates an overflow route out of the station.  The installation engineers, MERO, say, “The double curved canopies are constructed of fabricated tapering arches with integral lighting bolted down to a concrete horseshoe. Circular members tie the arches together and act as the glazing purlins, supporting steel spiders and the rotules of the curved point fixed glazing panels, to a tolerance of just ± 3mm… Each canopy has an integrated entrance screen, which incorporates the lighting, electronic displays and CCTV equipment. The screens feature specialist sliding glazed doors that stack in front of each other when open, and enable the entrances to be closed and locked at night or during a security alert.”

Will Alsop’s North Greenwich is nothing like this. Unlike other stations on the line, which are more like Canary Wharf in that they are designed to admit natural light, its cut and cover approach preserves the possibility of any future building on top of it. It still conveys a sense of lightness with an intense blue mosaic finish and a hint of red on columns and walls seeming to tint the air itself. According to a CABE case study,the station is a long rectangular box, 360 m long, 30 m wide and 13 m deep, about a third of which is visible. “The roof is supported by 21 pairs of V-shaped concrete columns, cast in situ and clad in mosaic glass tiles which also face the walls flanking the entrance escalators and the ticketing hall. The concourse is suspended from the roof by 80 mm diagonal solid steel tie rods with stainless steel finish…. Access to the platforms is via escalators, a cantilevered steel scissors stair or a lift… Glazed partitions at the platform edges form a barrier between the platform and the tracks”. These partitions open to coincide with the doors of a train, Moscow metro style, and like the other newer stations on the line, from Greenwich to Westminster, when a train pulls into the station they open; they close when the train pulls out so it should be impossible for anyone to fall on the track and equally impossible for the mice, that seem to nest behind the track, to get off it. North Greenwich is the largest station on the Jubilee line extension, and the only one to be approached through a new bus station which takes passengers to many destinations in the West End and south of the river.

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Chapter 7

Anticipating the aftermath

Host cities mostly pay inadequate attention to the post-Games period and the legacy of the Games. The main focus is always on winning the bid, planning the Games and staging a successful Games. Planning for the post Games period should be on the priority list as sometimes a feeling of post Games depression develops in the host city. Celebrating the Olympics and Paralympics anniversaries can be considered as an important step towards dealing with such feelings. Sydney celebrated the first anniversary of its Games as an Ignite festival in which the cauldron was relit and its flame continued to burn during the celebrations which were spread over three weekends.

Another important aspect of the post Games period is to decide the utility of the Games infrastructure, specially the new venues. If such facilities cannot be reused again then they tend to become white elephants or in other words, a burden on the tax payers. If it is decided to maintain the venues then they should be cost effective. The Aquatic Centre at Sydney has been reused to serve dual purposes i.e. it provides facilities to both an elite sports centre as well as all venue sports. However, the reuse of the main Stadium at Sydney is still undecided.

The legacy of the Games requires greater management and investment. Proper initial planning would lead to increase in tourism and other business. The intellectual property or in other words, the experience and knowledge gained from hosting the Games is an important asset and can be sold to other countries, thus bringing valuable capital. The memory of the Games can be kept fresh in the minds of the host community by creation of a building like the Olympic Museum. For example, Sydney transferred the Games cauldron to a nearby park and converted it into a public sculpture with a waterfall flowing out from one of its side. It also contains the names of all the medallists of the Sydney 2000 Olympics and Paralympics. 

Regarding the London Olympics legacy, many promises were made during the bidding process. The key emphasis was on increasing sports participation among the public as well as regeneration of East London. However, there is a need for clearer goals and the means to achieve it.

After the Games, the Olympic park was initially proposed to be used as a 30,000 capacity stadium by both national and international athletes for training purposes. Currently, it is proposed to be used for other purposes like staging international athletics events.  Another view under consideration is to use it as a home for one of the London football teams. Moreover Olympic Park will also lead to an attractive and improved environment.

The seating capacity of the Aquatic Centre will be reduced to 3,500 and it will be used by a non profit organisation for elite athlete training. It will be maintained as a commercial health and fitness centre with a public swimming facility and competitions will be organised here. Funding will be done by the Lea Valley Regional Park Authority (LVRPA) and the University of East London.

Out of the three arenas in the Olympic Park, only one will remain after the Games while the rest two will be demolished and relocated to some other area. All three arenas will be used as sports hall for both the locals as well as the elite athletes. An anchor tenant in the form of a specialist basketball operator will reside in the arena within the Olympic Park.

The Velodrome will have a reduced capacity of 3,000 seats and will be used for the community, club and elite. Its ownership will be transferred to the Lea Valley Regional Park Authority.

The Hockey Centre will be under the control of a non profit organisation but will remain within the Olympic Park even after the Games. It will be able to stage national and international events with a capacity of 5,000 permanent seats. The local community and clubs will have access to the pitches and the anchor tenant is expected to be a hockey club.

Small businesses and media industries will benefit from the new role of the International Broadcasting Centre (IBC) and Media & Press Centre (MPC) as a data centre including a managed studio space and workshops. This will create an industrial legacy for East London.

 

About 3,600 town houses and new apartments will emerge out of the Athletics Village after the Games. Half of these houses will be affordable and could be used for both rent and sale purposes. The remaining half will be private market housing exclusively built for sale. At present, the Clays Lane Estate is the only housing around the Athletes Village. But after the Games, the site will be demolished to create new housing. Thus, reutilisation of the Olympic sites will add 4,320 housing units to the Stratford City. Additional Olympic sites capable of housing another 4,760 dwellings have been identified by the Olympics and Legacy Planning Applications Report. Thus, increase in the supply of houses is expected in the coming 10-20 years and people will have a variety of choices to select from. The dwellings closest to the Olympics sites are expected to sell like hot cakes with increased prices.

Large portions of new and developable land around the Olympic Park will be available immediately after the completion of the Games. Hence, price distortions or oversupply among the house builders need to be controlled through supply management. Another emerging issue is the anticipated growth of population post Olympics which will lead to insufficient supply of infrastructure and services. This issue has to be sorted out in advance.

The Olympic Games will lead to the fulfillment of wider objectives of urban regeneration and social and economic development of backward areas. But these aims have to be pursued even after the Games are over. This requires comprehensive and long term commitment from planning authorities including the Central Government. The emphasis should not be solely on the construction of more houses but efforts should be made in the direction of evolution of communities. This will require binding investment in the transport infrastructure, enhancement in public services and amenities and redesigning the area in such a way that people get attracted to use it either for business or household purposes. All these aims have to be achieved while focusing on environmental improvement as well. Hence, the Olympics area should be integrated with the urban structure in such a way so as to attain a long term as well as durable benefit.  

The aspirations from Olympics have been different for different host cities. For example, Atlanta aspired to be commercially developed and did not focus on urban renewal. Hence, Olympics had very less or nil impact on the lives of its residents. On the contrary, people of the deprived communities were relocated owing to the Games’ development and became much frustrated. There is also no improvement in the status of employment and skills development. There is still a huge gap between the sub urban dwellers and the inner city residents.

Athens, on the contrary showed substantial land remediation and improvement while keeping a check on the housing prices. There was enhancement in residential areas in and around the city as well as transport improvements. But employment sector showed a severe decline after the Games. Moreover, there was little or nil focus on environmental improvement.     

The modern Olympics movement was intended from its inception in 1894 to bring peoples together in harmony and healthy competition. Yet from the era’s first Games in 1908, it has known some remarkably turbulent, some might even say explosive, moments.  Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the movement’s 19th century founder, inspiration and boss of the Olympics Committee until after the Paris Games in 1924, summed up its purpose in quasi-religious language which would not have been out of place in the Greece of 1500 years before, when the games were last staged. “The Olympic Games, with the ancient Greeks, controlled athletics and promoted peace. Is it not visionary to look to them for similar benefactions in the future?” Since then, the Games themselves, let alone the aftermath, have not been plain sailing. For example, the 1908 Games came to England when Italy withdrew after an eruption of Vesuvius prompted them to spend the Olympics money on rebuilding Naples. Germany too has had an unfortunate recent history. The Berlin games of 1936, which were meant to showcase the purity of spirit of Hitler’s Nazi athletes, became less than triumphal when the black, and therefore inferior, American, Jesse Owens, ran away with three gold medals on the track and one in the long jump. The grim look on Hitler’s face suggested that he at least did not buy the Coubertin philosophy that ‘it isn’t the winning, it’s the taking part’. And Munich in 1972 remains notorious for the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists. The 1996 games in Atlanta were marred by a terrorist incident.  The Moscow Games were blighted by the boycott of the Americans because of the Russian ‘adventure’ in Afghanistan, and the same fate was threatened to befall Beijing in 2008 with many national governments objecting to the Chinese behaviour in Tibet. So far, the only physical damage done by the 2012 Olympics has been to some sufferers from epilepsy who have reacted badly to the angular design of the Olympics logo. These are all wounds that the Olympics movement seems able to recover from without much heart searching.  It is the monetary cost that is difficult for many people in host countries to live with that remains a running sore long after the closing ceremony, the flame has been doused and the flag has been furled, folded and handed on to the next participant, or as some would have it, spendthrift.    

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Chapter 8

Conclusion

By acquiring the bid, London has made a good start as Olympics will aid in its ambitious plan of urban renewal. A legacy is difficult to achieve. But by setting ambitious targets and starting the work early, success can be guaranteed. London should keep this in mind that people never ask for Games as they do not need it. In other words, Games happen to people. So, the planning and development process should ensure maximum benefit to the people from the Games.  

This is also a great opportunity for the London government to improve its track record of numerous project failures. The Games also provides an opportunity to perform better than the previous hosts by fulfilling the legacy targets particularly in areas such as environment, sports participation and disability awareness. London should try to incorporate Barcelona’s legacy momentum approach where each phase of investment builds upon the earlier one.

The question has to be asked: is it possible for any major costly public event to live up to its promise?  The answer has to be ‘yes’ in terms of tangible benefits from hosting the Olympic Games according to Atlanta, Barcelona and,  in PR terms at least, for Beijing to whose government money seemed no object.  Atlanta’s PR agency, for example, ACVB, claims that since the run up to 1995 and following through after the Games, the city was improved by US$2 billion of investment in construction of new parks and plazas, extended and upgraded rail and highway systems, new and extended hotels. However, the Games themselves were marred by inadequate organisation and a terrorist bomb which killed two people and injured more than 100 in the new, privately funded, US$57 million Centennial Olympic Park. And in Barcelona, while it enjoyed the not inconvenient coincidence of being the birthplace of the then Olympics president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, it became, also coincidentally, because its timing was right in 1992, an opportunity for the Games to be a welcoming showcase for the newly united East and West Germany and North and South Yemen, and the emergent Baltic States, provinces in the former Yugoslavia, and a broken up USSR, all of which had become independent republics.  Changes to Barcelona, already an exciting city,  helped to make the Games memorable for visitors and resulted in Barcelona remaining high on any tourist’s ‘must see’ itinerary.

It can be and has been argued that all of the benefits in Atlanta and Barcelona could have been achieved given the will and an unconcern over spending vast sums of money to improve the lives of ordinary people without hosting the Olympics at all, and any downside could have been avoided.  Can the London Games do any better for the people who live in its East End and need to use public transport?  

Summing up, The Greenwich Peninsula is a done thing and will go on developing.  Canary Wharf will expand but not change much. The area known as Lea Valley in East London had been talked about for years as a rundown riverside stretch ripe for development.  In fact, Joan Littlewood, doyenne of East End theatre, seriously discussed turning part of it into a people’s ‘fun palace’ but nothing came of the idea before she died.  The district follows the line of the River Lea forming the outer boundary of the boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Newham before running into the River Thames.  It had become a flourishing habitat for wildlife, an opportunity for walking and relaxation darkened only by miles of derelict commercial and industrial buildings. The major local township is Stratford (Chaucer’s 14th century Stratford atte Bowe, and the home of the internationally celebrated, radical Theatre Royal), particularly the area to the north to be known as Stratford City.  The Lea Valley and Stratford City were subject to development plans before an Olympics bid was considered as an ‘improvement’, so many of the post-Games commercial and infrastructure advantages would  have continued to be on the agenda if the Games had been, as was  commonly expected, particularly by the French, awarded to Paris. However, with the developments already taking place did help to influence the International Olympics Committee (IOC) in the direction of London. And finally, the overarching Thames Gateway development is proceeding at whatever pace and funding the boroughs involved can summon up.

Will London and the rest of Britain benefit from all of this?  It is to be hoped so.

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