Olympic snapshots:A requiem for Stratford Marsh
I read the following in the comments on Londonist yesterday and the words struck a chord, so I thought I'd take the liberty of reproducing them here.
"As a person who does a lot of photography in the area which will soon metamorphise into Olympic city, I have mixed emotions about this. I can already feel the buzz of achievement in the London air, a positive feeling not often felt these days of smug negativity. Certainly there are going to be massive advantages to the economy, London will get oodles of money for infrastructure improvement, etc. Those of us who have, will certainly have more as a result. The poor sods who live in the area aren't going to benefit, they'll just be shifted to the next marginal area.
May I suggest to you all some nice day this summer to go to the Stratford Marsh area and have a walk around. Take the DLR to Pudding Mill Lane. Don't wear your designer trainers from Selfridges and leave your iPod at home. Walk up the Pudding Mill Lane towards Carpenters Road and Hackney Wick, walk along the river Lea as it is now, walk the Greenway and look out over the city. This area of London is unique, slightly wild and overgrown, derelict and somewhat dangerous.
What I like about it is that in a world of identical All Bar One's on every street corner in London where danger lies in looking at someone crosseyed at pub closing time, the Stratford Marsh has a character which is real and genuinely its own. Enjoy the hand scrawled signs with misspelled words, the multilayered rubbish revealing what happens at the other end of our disposable consumer society. Walk along the Lea down to the Thames with its sometimes overgrown towpath and wildflowers, it's magical.
But soon the big London construction firms will be homogenising it, cutting away the wildness and taming it with 10 foot tall sticks of sapling trees, manicured grass laid down in uniform strips, and install miles of concrete for parking. If you want to know what its going to look like 3 months after the 2012 Olympics have come and gone, go and take a walk around the Millennium Dome. It is nice for Britain to have finally come out on top on something, and I like the positive buzz in the air. But I also have some sadness, because we're losing another little chunk of something unique." [Eric]
Those are two of my own photographs of doomed Stratford, but you can see Eric's rather more extensive portfolio here. They may take some time to load, and you may destroy his bandwidth in the process, but they're rather special and they give a true flavour of life in the soon-to-be erased Olympic zone.
(live, via email) Oh. My. God. Down here in Trafalgar Square an ecstatic crowd is still cheering in elated disbelief. You might have seen me on the telly - I was the grinning geezer up the front beneath a sea of flags, balloons and waving hands. We still can't quite believe it, but London is both thrilled and stunned. Thank you IOC and thank you Seb. See you all down my manor in seven years time!
Singapore 2005: Election of the host city of the Games of the XXX Olympiad "And the 2012 Olympics are awarded to..."
London
I live at the centre of the world. Who'd have guessed? It'll be seven years before the rest of the world arrives, and they're planning on staying for less than a month but, come 2012, a massive global spotlight will be shining on that big patch of wasteground at the bottom of my road. The Olympic bandwagon is coming to Bow and I for one am delighted. Against all the odds a committee of international sports gurus has given the go ahead for the greatest transformation in East London since the massive rebuilding of the area following the Blitz 60 years ago, and it starts today. How bloody exciting.
So, what to expect over the next seven years? Increased council tax bills for a start, and endless pessimistic articles in the Evening Standard detailing how the whole venture will undoubtedly be a complete disaster. Plus, for us East End residents, the opportunity to be locked out of 1500 acres of local wasteland for several years while some multinational construction company makes vast profits by turning all the grass there into concrete. But, come completion on Friday 27th July 2012, fireworks will light up the sky over the Lower Lea Valley to announce to the world that East London can put on an Olympic Games like no other. I just hope I'll still be living around here to see it.
Paris
I live in the arse-end of nowhere. No change there, then. The faceless bureaucrats of the IOC have spoken and the hopes of my local neighbourhood have been extinguished. There'll be no Olympic Stadium in Stratford, no world class athletic facilities in the Lower Lea Valley and no international marathon running past my front door. The kingfishers can carry on nesting down the Bow Back Rivers, factories down Marshgate Lane can continue to pump pollution into the East London sky, and the last few days on my blog can be filed away for future historians merely as an online archive of what might have been.
Admittedly the Government has still pledged cash for some urban renewal around here no matter what the result of the Olympic vote, but I suspect any future projects will be be minor, piecemeal and underfunded. And all this planned future redevelopment has one major downside. If London ever chooses to put forward another Olympic bid, say in 8 or 12 years time, there'll be insufficient brownfield land remaining in the Lower Lea Valley for the construction of an Olympic park. 2012 was a one-off chance for local international glory and we blew it. Still, it was a nice dream while it lasted. Any other godforsaken London borough fancy giving the Olympics a try in 2020?
Which city would you like to see win the 2012 Olympics? (results of the diamond geezer vote)
City
Votes
London
63%
105
Madrid
5%
8
Moscow
6%
10
New York
3%
5
Paris
23%
39
167 votes total
Which just goes to show that the IOC might be better off sticking you lot in a committee room in Singapore instead of the gang of pensioners thay have voting there at the moment.
Olympic snapshots:A requiem for Stratford Marsh
"As a person who does a lot of photography in the area which will soon metamorphise into Olympic city, I have mixed emotions about this. I can already feel the buzz of achievement in the London air, a positive feeling not often felt these days of smug negativity. Certainly there are going to be massive advantages to the economy, London will get oodles of money for infrastructure improvement, etc. Those of us who have, will certainly have more as a result. The poor sods who live in the area aren't going to benefit, they'll just be shifted to the next marginal area.
What I like about it is that in a world of identical All Bar One's on every street corner in London where danger lies in looking at someone crosseyed at pub closing time, the Stratford Marsh has a character which is real and genuinely its own. Enjoy the hand scrawled signs with misspelled words, the multilayered rubbish revealing what happens at the other end of our disposable consumer society. Walk along the Lea down to the Thames with its sometimes overgrown towpath and wildflowers, it's magical.
63%
"As a person who does a lot of photography in the area which will soon metamorphise into Olympic city, I have mixed emotions about this. I can already feel the buzz of achievement in the London air, a positive feeling not often felt these days of smug negativity. Certainly there are going to be massive advantages to the economy, London will get oodles of money for infrastructure improvement, etc. Those of us who have, will certainly have more as a result. The poor sods who live in the area aren't going to benefit, they'll just be shifted to the next marginal area.
What I like about it is that in a world of identical All Bar One's on every street corner in London where danger lies in looking at someone crosseyed at pub closing time, the Stratford Marsh has a character which is real and genuinely its own. Enjoy the hand scrawled signs with misspelled words, the multilayered rubbish revealing what happens at the other end of our disposable consumer society. Walk along the Lea down to the Thames with its sometimes overgrown towpath and wildflowers, it's magical.
63%