London Olympics Flashcards

The 2012 London Olympics had the potential to regenerate deprived area's of London. 

One of the ways it did this was through education. Since 2012, a large number of schools have opened. One school opened following the Olympics was Brampton Manor Academy. It is a state school however, it sends more children to Oxbridge universities than Eton (an elite public school costing £35,000 a year)  

However, some say this is not because working class children had better schools due to the olympics but because the regeneration made it too expensive for those on lower incomes to live there and therefore, the school has just attracted middle class children who already had a higher chance of getting into these universities. 

The London Olympics presented an opportunity to add more value to deprived area's. 

Prior to the London Olympics a target that 50% of housing would be affordable was presented. However, this has now been reduced to 30% - a significant reduction. This indicates that something called gentrification has taken place. This is also one of the reasons why the London Olympic regeneration scheme was so controversial as they had promised those who had lived there prior to the Olympics would be able to do so after. However, this was not the case as house prices had risen rapidly and more expensive supermarkets were present. This means that working class people could not take advantage of any of the new jobs or opportunities. 

Creating a positive legacy

Since 2012, the post-Olympics landscape has been transformed with more than 35km of pathways and cycleways, 6.5km of waterways, 4,300 trees, playgrounds and a park hosting year-round events and sporting activities.

Ken Livingstone, then the mayor of London, made it perfectly clear why the Olympics would be a boon. “I didn’t bid for the Olympics because I wanted three weeks of sport,” he said in 2008. “I bid for the Olympics because it’s the only way to get the billions of pounds out of the government to develop the East End – to clean the soil, put in the infrastructure and build the housing.”

Yet it’s easy to forget that what many people talk of as the benefits of the 2012 Games – new rail links and roads, Westfield shopping centre and the rejuvenation of a brownfield site – was earmarked to happen anyway, as part of the Stratford City project.