London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is shaping up and once again inviting the multitudes in - but is it helping to provide the kind of legacy the people of east London were promised?Some of the starkest images from the financial fall of Greece have been of its 2004 Olympic Games buildings: abandoned stadiums and peeling paint telling tales of broken promises and soured dreams. Whatever else might be said about London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park three years after the 2012 Olympics, it is no tumbleweed vista. The broader issue, though, is whether it is helping to provide the kind of legacy the people of east London were promised.Certainly the Olympic Park itself – all 560 acres of it – is shaping up, filling out and once again inviting the multitudes in. The London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) – formed shortly before the Games as the planning authority for the park and its environs – claims that, since it started to reopen two years ago, the park has had more than 4m visits. Neale Coleman, LLDC board chairman and Olympics adviser to London mayor Boris Johnson, says that these include “loads and loads of local people. It really is used by the community and it’s going to be even better for them in the future.” Continue reading...
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