As London sought to use the Olympics to achieve an ambitious programme of urban renewal in the relatively socially deprived East London it attracted global attention and sparked debate. This book provides an in-depth study of the transformation of East London as a result of the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. Government and event organisers use legacies of urban renewal to justify hosting the world’s leading sports mega-event, this book examines and evaluates those legacies.
The London Olympics and Urban Development: the mega-event city is composed of new research, conducted by academics and policy makers. It combines case study analysis with conceptual insight into the role of a sports mega-events in transforming the city. It critically assesses the narrative of legacy as a framework for legitimizing urban changes and examines the use of this framework as a means of evaluating the outcomes achieved.
This book is about that process of renewal, with a focus on the period following the 2012 Games and the diverse social, political and cultural implications of London’s use of the narrative of legacy.
I. London: Moving East 1. Remaking the East – from Canary Wharf to the Olympic 2. East or West? The Story of the London 2012 Bid II. Evaluating London’s Olympic Legacy 3. Measuring and Assessing the impacts of London 2012 4. The Olympic Compact: Legacies of Gift, Debt and Unequal Exchange 5. Governance: Lessons from London 2012 6. Re-hashing and New Knowledge about the Games: a bibliometric analysis and assessment of Routledge’s Special Olympic Journals issues III. Creating Spaces and Re-constructing Places 7. The Olympic Games and Urban Development Impacts 8. Barriers and Borders: London’s legacy development ambitions and outcomes 9. The Olympic Host Boroughs: local authority responses to the London 2012 Games 10. Olympic Brandscapes: London 2012 and the seeping commercialisation of public space IV. Social and Economic Transformation in East London 11. Olympics Inspired Inward Investment – transforming East London? 12. The 2012 Olympics and Small Local Business: A five-year longitudinal study of south-east London 13. What do we mean by Paralympic Legacy? 14. Localism and a Sustainable Olympic Legacy 15. Edgelands and London 2012: the case of the Lower Lea Valley 16. Paralympic Branding V. Cultural Legacies of London 2012 17. Placing Culture at the Heart of the Games: achievements and challenges within the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad 18. A ‘Big’ Legacy? Evaluating volunteers’ experiences of London 2012 and beyond 19. London 2012 and Sport for Its Own Sake 20. Looking Back at London 2012: Recruitment, Selection and Training of Games Makers 21. The Olympic Regeneration of East London in the Official Discourse: Preconditions for the Construal of Public Space 22. Portraying Britain’s Past: English National Newspaper Coverage of the 2012 London Olympic Ceremonies VI. The Mega-Event City 23. A London Model?
Gavin Poynter is Professor Emeritus at the School of Social Sciences, University of East London and Chair, London East Research Institute, UK. Valerie Viehoff is a Research Fellow at the Geography Department, University of Bonn, Germany. Yang Li is Senior Research Follow, Centre for Geo-Information Studies, University of East London, UK.
