Features
Games changer
As the London Games approach, there is still a mood of
irritation about
the Olympics juggernaut. Simon Jones
asks not what we can do for the Games, but what the Games can
do for us.
They took out all the fish. Lifted them wholesale out of the Bow
Backs, the waterways that swarm around the new Olympic site, and
took them all to Birmingham. It was done as a key stage in clearing
out the canal, which hadn't been done for more than a century. Not
that anyone noticed. The water looks much the same, but has none of
the dangerous filth and effluent that had polluted it during
Stratford's industrial past.
Before building work began, allotmenteers objected to being
moved off the site. After they'd gone it was discovered that their
vegetables had been growing in soil that was radioactive.
Nowhere in London would there have been a more challenging place
to upend the landscape. The Olympic site sits on a decayed layer of
insecticide and fertiliser plants, paint factories, distilleries
and gas works. It seethed with vicious chemicals. It was the wrong
side of the River Lea - where London traditionally stopped - even
more estranged than the supposed badlands of Tower Hamlets and
Hackney. Even in boom time, developers ran scared.
Then London won its 2012 Olympics bid. Five soil-washing
machines arrived, cleaning a million cubic metres of oil, petrol,
tar, cyanide, arsenic and lead contamination. 220 knackered
buildings were demolished, with more than 98 per cent of demolition
materials being recycled into new venues. There are miles of new
clean riverbanks and over a hectare of additional wildlife
habitat.
In exchange we'll have to turn a blind eye to a summer overdose
of Coca-Cola and McDonalds. Swallow the vanity of principle, like
Jesus asked of the crowds who wanted to stone the adulterous woman.
It might even do us good to set down our pharisaical objections for
a while.
LOCAL INTEREST
I should declare an interest. I live in Newham, and stand to
benefit from the 2012 Games for some of the above reasons. Zaha
Hadid's impressive Aquatics Centre will become my local municipal
swimming pool, and my family will picnic in the new Olympic Park.
But this does also mean that I have had a close view of some of the
ways in which locals have been affected by the Olympics
juggernaut.
In some cases they have been pitted against each other. The
allotment holders found they were to be relocated to an area that
was common land being defended by the Lamas Lands Defence
Committee. 425 tenants from a housing co-op, on the site of what is
now the athletes' village, had to be relocated when the London
Development Agency was granted a compulsory purchase order.
(Tenants were dispersed into accommodation across London and lost
the community and social make-up of the estate.)
There have been local campaigns that I have supported, too. The
Metropolitan Police proposes to build a 'Mustering Briefing and
Deployment Centre' on Wanstead Flats, amending a Forest Act that
protects the area from enclosure and development. This seems to me
even less necessary than the rocket launchers on nearby buildings
and tanks in surrounding parks, but has been forced through on
Olympic grounds.
CORPORATE CONTROL
I do also struggle with the corporate takeover of the Games -
though it is a takeover that predates the 2012 Olympics by some
decades. As Lord Coe regularly points out, the event is the
equivalent of staging 26 world championships, before taking a short
break then doing it all over again with 20 Paralympics
championships. This is a huge undertaking (15,000 athletes; 20,000
accredited media; millions of ticket holders) that has historically
proved unaffordable.
In Montreal 1976 organizers sold sponsorship rights to anyone
who asked. The result was 628 official partners and a bill that the
city did not pay off until 2006. Everybody lost. 'A lot of people
were questioning the Olympic movement', says Stephen Wenn,
co-author of Selling the Five Rings: The International Olympic
Committee and the rise of Olympic commercial-ism. 'There was a
chill in municipal councils all around the world - whether there
was any viable reason for going ahead with the Games.' In 1984 the
Los Angeles organisers tried a different tack, selling sponsorship
rights only to a small cadre of multinational corporations. The
result was a $225 million surplus.
The IOC launched a similar sponsorship program the following
year. Nine corporations paid huge sums for global marketing rights,
generating more revenue. Suddenly the financial disaster of
Montreal was largely forgotten. Six cities jostled to host the 1992
Summer Olympics and five battled for the next. 'Once [the 1984
organisers] demonstrated a way to carry off the enterprise on the
backs of the private sector, there was renewed interest', says
Wenn.
But there were vulnerabilities in the model. Converse had paid
millions to be one of the few official partners. Yet when its
rival, Nike, plastered huge murals of swoosh-wearing athletes all
over Los Angeles, 42 per cent of Angelenos believed them an
official partner. So began the nasty inevitability of brand
control, with cities cleared of compromising advertising. This is
true of most modern sports events. At the last soccer World Cup in
Germany, hundreds of Dutch fans were stripped of their orange
trousers, which had been provided by a non-official brewer. My
local greasy spoon, known since 2005 as Olympic Café, has had to
rename itself, with a globby brushstroke, as Lympic Café so as not
to fall foul of brand regulations.
This is specious nonsense, no question, but balanced against a
bigger debt, or the lack of an Olympics altogether, it may be more
bearable than it first appears.
London, of course, is remembered for its austerity games in the
wake of the second world war. Back then British competitors
received just two bits of newly-invented kit: a pair of Y-fronts
and an anorak. There is undoubtedly more charm to this than 2012's
fielding of a volunteer army branded by Adidas and trained by
McDonalds, but the alternative now is the Games going elsewhere,
and Stratford remaining a chemical mess.
LEGACY COMMITMENT
There are fears that, despite the physical regeneration, the usage
legacy of the new park is not guaranteed. The sheer scale of the
site places is it on a supra-human level. Officially, Newham's
mayor, who heads a borough with poverty statistics to rival any in
the country, is circumspect about the changes: 'I believe the 2012
Olympic and Paralympic Games coming to Newham has accelerated the
pace of change, representing a unique chance to bring the scale of
growth and prosperity to significantly improve quality of life for
Newham's people. I am keenly aware, however, that regeneration
projects, and of course hosting the Olympics, won't inevitably
bring real benefits for local people.
Canary Wharf, for instance, is hugely successful in creating
wealth but has failed to transform the lives of the local
residents.' Unofficially he airs his concerns more robustly. 'There
is an element of people now saying, "Well, we've all put this money
in now. That's it. Done." No it bloody isn't. We've got to do the
people side.' He felt the same way about the vast Westfield
Shopping Centre attached to Stratford's new transport hub. 'I don't
want gentrification that drives people out. I want jobs for our
people, and I want them to be able to shop in places where they can
afford to. They may or may not shop at Westfield. I don't care. My
issue is to make sure they are able to work.'
In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane
Jacobs' influential work on the failures of 1950s/60s urban
planning, the author criticises 'grand project' urban design for
creating unnatural spaces, separating out residential, industrial
and commercial areas in too structured a manner. But her solution:
mixed use areas; high pedestrian permeability; density; and a mix
of old and new buildings, has formed part of the Olympic
regeneration. Although there are a number of new buildings, old
ones (such as the art-deco Estee Lauder factory and nearby mills)
have been refigured. The mix of commercial and residential
buildings seems at times haphazard, but randomness - a unique human
factor - is one of her key requirements.
We will not know for sure whether the site's legacy credentials
hold up for a decade or more, but the plan for the area is a world
away from the white elephant regeneration of Athens, the fear of
which has driven much of the London decision making. There is a
good argument to be made about whether the new housing will be
genuinely affordable, but so far it appears that planners, rather
than putting humans at the mercy of the big corporations, have
attempted to put humans at the centre of the plan and take
advantage of the corporations to help pay for it. In a sense, it
redeems the involvement of some dubious companies by putting their
resources to more noble use. Not making the scarlet white as snow
exactly - the campaign for ethical corporate behaviour continues -
but at least using some talents more appropriately.
Outside London, understandably the concerns are different. The
pull of resource to the south can be irritating. But do at least
enjoy the sport. And thanks for minding the fish.