Olympic Site Photos

I took a rainy ride on my bike back to Stratford from Victoria Park today.  I’d put my camera in my pocket with the idea that I might see some interesting Olympic sights on the developing Olympic site. I’ve caught glimpses from the car and the train but cycling through, I thought, would give me a chance to get up close.

I ended up getting pretty lost and confused as the geography of the Stratford/ Hackney Wick borders  has changed thanks to the blue fence.  I wanted to go this way but I couldn’t.

Turning around, I found myself down by Hackney Wick station and I was glad for the diversion as I snapped this place that I’d seen a while back from the train.

It was good too, to see the spirit of the Olympics celebrated in skip form.

Eventually I made it to the Greenway and got a great view from there of the Stadium works.

There was a lot of security guards up on the Greenway guarding the access to the site. There’s a strange temporary covered bridge (that I didn’t photograph close up as there were too many official looking henchmen around) that gives access to the site and has two guards on the entrance and signs warning that only “Team Stadium” are allowed inside.

I talked to one of the guards a bit further down and asked him if his job was to stop people getting on to the site who are not supposed to be there. He said that it was. I asked him if anyone had ever tried and he said. “No, not yet”. He also told me that his job was very boring unless people came by and talked to him. It was funny to think of him as one of the often quoted gainfully employed locals that the Olympic construction work has provided a job for.

On that note, I took this nostalgic photo too, representative of the industry that the site has displaced. Kay

Slumlords

It’s not unusual for people to tell me how well I’ve done when I tell them that yes, I co-own my flat and yes, I live near the Olympic site. It’s meaningless to me. However, because I don’t want to move, this is my home. People get saucer-eyed when they talk about property values in Stratford and I want to say a few things about how this is affecting my immediate neighbourhood. There are a number of housing blocks going up, but there are changes that aren’t so apparent too. The area is changing from a medium density part of the city to an ultra-high density area.

I live in a Victorian terrace and the flat upstairs used to be occupied by one man. It is now occupied by between four and six people, including some migrant workers. The house next door used to be occupied by a small charity. Now there are twelve student rooms.

Noise never used to be a problem, and now it is. We hear people fighting upstairs and next door. The garden next door is now neglected. The people who live here are young and transient. Landlords are laughing in Stratford as they turn what could be beautiful housing stock into cheap and profitable slums.

Charlotte

Stratford City

It’s not just the Olympics that are going to change the face of Stratford. Coming hot on its heels is Stratford City. This development was planned with the possibility in mind that London would host the 2012 Olympics, but was going to happen whether or not the bid was successful. Parts of it overlap with the Olympic park though, the athletes’ village bit I think.  

I’ve been thinking about Stratford city recently, specifically about the planned shopping area. Read all about Stratford City on Wikipedia, and visit the official website. I tried to see what the street plan would look like on the official site, but all I found was a master plan in such a tiny scale that I couldn’t work anything out. I did find out that the main drag in Stratford City will be called First Avenue. Sounds classy doesn’t it? The Stratford City development declares itself as providing a new town centre for Stratford to the west of where the current one is.

 

A topic for another post is about streets that have disappeared under the Olympic site. Over the course of Stratford’s history, streets have been lost and new ones created. I think Stratford’s history is interesting in that its centre and geography has shifted a few times. If you look for them you can see the clues. Look at the Theatre Royal standing as a lone survivor of the bit of Angel Lane that used to form a crossroads with the High Street before the Mall and the one-way system was built. The Stratford City development means that it is due to shift again.

 

Although now I’d call myself a Londoner, I’m originally from Birmingham. As such I know a bit about how town planning can change the face of familiar places. Going back to visit, I find a city centre that has changed beyond recognition. My teenage territory has all but disappeared under the developments of Broad Street, New Street, Chamberlain and Victoria Square and,  of course, the redeveloped Bull Ring, which is testament to a new and dynamic Birmingham, encapsulating the spirit of the city’s motto: “Forward”. I like the new Bull Ring, especially now I have sophisticated London tastes to satisfy. I’m glad of the showcase Selfridges, though who is ever going to buy this rendition of the Bull Ring bull in sweets for two grand is a mystery to me.

 

  

 

But I miss the small stalls and shops that made up the old bull ring centre. You can no longer buy a hairpiece from the wig stall next to the meat counter in the covered market, or go to the old Druckers café, or find somewhere to buy hoover bags or vegetables. These kinds of shops, shops for ordinary people, for poor people, are not welcome in the city centre now.

I guess my fear for the future of Stratford as a place to shop started when I first saw an artist’s impression of Stratford City, probably in early 2003 when the planning application was first submitted. Back then, there were no Olympics on the horizon, London was yet to bid and Stratford felt like an ordinary place on the outskirts of London. The picture I saw of smartly-dressed white people shopping at Dolce and Gabbana just made me laugh. It looked so far from anything I knew about Stratford that it was beyond belief. I imagined a white elephant of windswept and deserted shops that no one local would use. Of course now things seem very different and a Dolce and Gabbana is not so far-fetched. It seems as though something that was beyond my imagination was not beyond the imagination of the planners. I resent that, how Startford’s future, where people shop in Dolce and Gabbana, has been imagined for me. It’s as though now I’m going to be living someone else’s dream.

 

If you’d asked what I wanted for Stratford, the Stratford of the future, I’d have wanted to keep it how it was, though I might have demanded that the Golden Egg returned.

 

Kay