The Olympic ‘catalyst’

The shared view of those interviewed, that the pre-Games site needed regeneration, was extended to claims that the Olympics was a ‘catalyst’ for achieving such development. A senior planner (Resp5) at the OPLC, the applicant for the LCS planning application, interestingly began the interview by stating that the Olympic legacy “plan, unashamedly, was for the regeneration [of the Olympic site] area”. This virtuous sentiment, of being

‘unashamed’, would suggest that the regeneration was a noble and necessary objective.

Indeed, he goes on to further state that the 2012 Games was a catalyst for regeneration as it was “accelerating things through a natural process”. This allusion to a development catalyst and a ‘natural’, causalistic relationship between the Olympics and the post-Games regeneration is reinforced by an unclear metaphor that states “the catalyst and chemistry put two products together – there’s quite a lot of heat and there’s a fusion”

(Resp5). This bombastic and ambiguous explanation does not provide an easily perceived understanding of how the Olympics acted as a catalyst to the development proposed in the LCS planning application. It does to an extent demonstrate, nevertheless, how some of the interviewees wished to de-politicise the planning process

115 by suggesting that development outcomes were governed through a ‘natural process’

rather than by political decisions and their supporting rationalities.

A former senior planner (Resp14) of LB Hackney was, however, able to detail in more grounded terms the opportunity that the Olympics provided for promoting development.

She was of the opinion that a “national strategic focus [was necessary] to unlock those land ownership issues and those remediation issues”. For her, the Olympics provided the political will and justification to compulsory purchase land for single ownership, as well as clean up the pollutants on site, so to “unlock that whole part of London”. This again emphasises the idea of the undesirable nature of the existing uses and that the

‘potential’ of the site had not been realised.

Resp22, a senior regeneration officer at the LB Newham, welcomed the “catalytic effect”

of the Olympics as he wanted to “make things happen” on the basis that planners and local authorities are “fearful of change”. This suggests that he sees planners as potentially inhibiting regeneration, although he does not elaborate on this claim regarding how planners are required to undertake development decisions based upon a plan-led system. He then asserts that, without the Olympics, the regeneration of the site “would be more piecemeal, iterative, probably lower quality [and] done in bits and bobs”, and thus it would have been “less likely that major investors would want to invest in that scale of commercial development”.

Whilst it is not possible to expand on the views of all interviewees here, what is of particular interest is that there was a general consensus that the Olympics was a desirable ‘catalyst’ that would hasten the development of the post-Games site. Like the aforementioned ‘blank slate’ approach to development and the criticism of mega-event regeneration, this accelerated process prioritises change over continuity (see 1.3.2).

Only one senior planner, Resp20, interviewed expressed the benefit of a more gradual development process that, within the context of linking emerging employment opportunities to local people, could have be a “bit more manageable and controllable”.

The plan-led approach to assessing development is obviously an important element of the English planning system, as noted earlier in the chapter, and thus in the negotiation and management of the LCS development. However, the appropriate scale at which development outcomes are addressed is often an issue that runs concurrent to policy considerations, influencing how rationalisations are presented for certain development agendas. The next section analyses how the objectives of the LCS development were rationalised with regard to geographical scale by the interviewed actors.

116 5.3.3 A local, regional or global scale development?

Many of the interviewees framed the objectives of the proposed LCS development at a broader geographical scale to the immediate site and surrounding boroughs. These interviewees included, surprisingly, a number of local councillors and borough officers.

One local councillor, Resp18, declared that he wanted to “set the agenda” with “our focus [on] repositioning east London as a significant [...] gear in the mighty machine that is London”. But rather than expressing a local focus for the LCS development, he saw the regeneration efforts as “all of us looking towards the future of London and maintaining that position in a global economy, as a world city”. He therefore saw the importance of setting a London-wide agenda so to enable the city to “secure its position to the end of this century”.

The explicit references to creating a vision to shape the development agenda were revealing as they demonstrated a conscious recognition of the importance of constructing a narrative from which to orientate discussions over the nature of the LCS development. Indeed, Resp22 was open in stating that the ‘Legacy’ regeneration was and should be framed through a “credible narrative about the changing face [...] of East London”. Further still, he states that his “forte” is ensuring the narrative is “communicated in a lexicon that can be interpreted by a specific group [for the] appreciation and knowledge of the changing face of what’s going on”. The open reference to narrative construction is interesting in that it is premised on the idea that there may be more than one narrative possible, and thus it is necessary to be proactive in communicating your own to shape the LCS development to meet your objectives. This is at odds with the

‘natural process’ of regeneration asserted by Resp5 above, which in this context can also be seen as a narrative to constrain opposition to his preferred development agenda.

What is also interesting about Resp22’s communication of a “credible narrative” is the desired recipient. Notably, he believes that a narrative must be provided in “a way that becomes informative, whether or not you’re a Head of State or you’re the chairman of some multi-national company”. This appeal to the influence of global actors does little to suggest that, in trying to attract capital investment, the narrative used was one that related to the needs of local residents. Indeed, he then went on to describe how the narrative was used to give “certainty to foreign direct investment”, followed by him offering a list of various developments around East London that have been funded by global capital because “the further away you get, the clearer that they see the opportunities”. Resp21, a senior planner at one of the local boroughs, also endorsed the global narrative of engaging international investors in the prospective regeneration, stating that the success of gaining planning approval for the LCS before the Olympics

117 had started was vital “to market on a global scale the continuing opportunity that was provided by the Olympic Park for Legacy [as it meant] we were able to say ‘look, there’s a huge amount of land here that’s available commercially’. We, as in UK PLC, are interested in development partners who want to work here and want to be part of the future of Stratford”. This shows a remarkable consciousness of issues concerning development finance considering that a local planner working in the Development Management department of a local borough would, in their day to day role, be focused on assessing development proposals on the basis of planning policy. This awareness may be a reflection of the broader political objectives of the council as well the influence of the OPLC and ODA PDT in providing this commercial context to discussions with local stakeholders regarding the proposals within the LCS planning application. Indeed, Resp21 did tellingly remark with some displeasure that “the frustration [was that] the Legacy Communities Scheme was very much driven by the Olympic Park Legacy Corporation, it was very much commercially driven”.

However, the objectives for the LCS development were not solely explained by the interviewees in commercial terms, and there were numerous occasions when those interviewed expressed the desire to achieve a ‘Legacy’. It was commonly the local planning officers, and variably those within the ODA PDT, who did highlight the need to achieve certain local outcomes (see below and 10.3.2). It is reasonable to assume that this is partially due to the fact that it is at the local level that the majority of planning policies are produced and applied, thus providing the professional frame to which planners orientate discussions around the LCS development. But they also frequently discussed the objectives and desired outcomes from the context of the Olympic promises that central government had promoted ever since the initial bidding stage (see 5.2). One example of this is provided by Resp12, a local borough planning officer, who stated the benefits from the development should be based on the promises “on which the Olympics was sold [...]. [T]he ‘regeneration of an entire community for the people who live there’”.

To justify why the benefits of the LCS development should be felt locally, he went on to highlight the socio-economic circumstances of the area, declaring that there is “nowhere in the country that has the need for regeneration on the scale of east London, [...] the levels of poverty which continue to exist, the appalling housing conditions which continue to exist [are] kind of Dickensian”. So there was a definite acknowledgement among a number of those interviewed, particularly those planners working within the boroughs, of the need for the LCS development to deliver the promises on which the Olympics was rationalised by central government as well as to address localised deprivation. Whether

118 the LCS could ever hope to achieve such objectives is something that has been contested, as discussed further in Section 11.2.5.

Notwithstanding the local emphasis expressed by a number of planners, the predominance of the ‘global’ narrative within the framing of the development may provide an explanation for the reasons behind some of the development decisions of the LCS development, a number of which were not always in line with established planning policy and the needs of local residents (as shall be discussed further below and in 6.2.3 and 8.2.3). However, it should also be noted that there were guiding constraints to the LCS development that may in turn have influenced the construction of this narrative. One primary constraint, as shall be detailed later, comes from the broader political desire from central government (and the GLA who took liability of the expenditure debt of the Olympic Park in 2012) to ensure that the expenditure on the Olympic stadia and infrastructure incurred by the Treasury, the main creditor, is recouped during the Legacy development phase.²⁷ As we shall see, the constraining influence of this political objective does help to explain the nature of negotiations around the LCS development, notably the amount of affordable housing being provided on-site and the priorities afforded to social infrastructure.

Given the context provided by the political desire to recover much of the expenditure on the Games-related infrastructure, it is necessary, according to Resp20 (a senior planner at a local borough), to attract international capital because it is the primary way in which to produce a large number of employment opportunities that would not “come from very inward activity in local economies”.²⁸ Also, due to Stratford’s existing and proposed transport infrastructure, which includes the International Station and Crossrail, Resp20 reasons that immediate decisions at local level will inevitably be influenced by the opportunity to attract employment and housing development due to the “broader reach”

such infrastructure provides in attracting the associated commercial benefits for those looking to invest. The merit of this strategy cannot be contested here, but it does provide an example of the perceived constraints of broader political objectives on the decisions of local actors around attracting development. It also highlights one fundamental tension that, whilst Resp20 believes that “the market is steered by whatever planning

27 The ownership of much of the land within the Olympic Park was transferred over to the OPLC debt free on 30 September 2010, with the GLA taking over the land debts from the LDA on 31 March 2012 (HOC, 2012). The pressure to repay the Olympic donor organisations is succinctly addressed by Smith (2013).

28 Although investment in housing development, which is proposed to dominate the LCS development (see Table 4 in 4.1.1) creates few employment opportunities outside of those related to the construction industry.

119 applications exist at the time”, it is in fact the market that is driving development decisions as it is, as she acknowledged, “the only game in town”. Loftman and Nevin (1995) indeed long ago noted, with regard to large prestige developments, that the urban spatial form becomes dictated by the demands of the global economy. The related role of development viability in the planning decision-making process shall be discussed later, but there is a discrepancy and tension worth noting here between the aforementioned stated Legacy objectives promised by central government and the reality of the funding mechanisms used for delivering the post-Games regeneration based on high-return commercial development.

5.4 Understanding the narrative of the Olympic regeneration –