From the Times:
"London 2016: thousands of young East Enders return to their dream homes every day after work on the zippiest public transport links in the UK. Throwing open their balcony doors to view Europe's largest urban park, lined with oak, willow and birch trees, they may opt for an evening stroll along the green banks of the rejuvenated River Lea - unrecognisable from the waterway polluted from a century of heavy industry and neglect - before stopping at a wine bar for a glass of zesty riesling.Or they could decide to take their children for a dip at the Olympic aquatics centre, Zaha Hadid's £303million architectural showpiece, with its wavy roof, that inspired a new generation of British swimmers. It would have been the youngsters' second brush of the day with a legacy of 2012, after a lunchtime athletics coaching session in the Olympic stadium organised by their school in Hackney."
Ah, the prince of boroughs. But, in terms of legacy:
"David Mackay, the architect and a key figure in the success of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, widely touted as the 'model Games', believes that London has already left it too late. With better planning, he told The Times, they could have built a water park in East London, just as Barcelona built a seaside to transform the rundown Catalan capital into a European super-city.London could yet steal many of the regeneration concepts advanced by the 1992 Olympics planners. The comparisons are irresistible. Like Barcelona, where the east was traditionally home to the poorer sections of society, London's wealth is weighted heavily to the west. Staging the Olympics offers the chance to spread it more evenly. The trick will be to avoid that equating to a house price rise that causes the locals to ship out, as happened during the gentrification of Barcelona.
It must surely be the aim to encourage those people to stay and live in a better place where there are jobs, prospects and the best sports facilities in the country - if that does not sound too fantastical."
The whole piece is here.
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