Introduction
Just before 10pm on Sunday 5th August 2012, Usain Bolt, shortly to become the fastest man in the world over 100 m, lined up in his starting blocks in the Olympic Stadium. Across the globe the eyes of millions of people focused on the mysterious part of London known, if at all, as the Lower Lea Valley. Ten seconds later, the roar of 80,000 onlookers in the stadium carried across to the Aquatic Centre, the Copper Box Arena, the Velodrome and the Athlete’s Village. Heads turned in the Park’s numerous temporary venues and green spaces. Satellite images were beamed around the world from the International Broadcasting Centre.
Only ten years earlier, an advisor to the London Mayor visited the proposed Olympic site as London’s bid started to gather steam and commented ‘what a shithole’. The Lower Lea was then still one of the most remote, abused and neglected parts of the city, known only to a few Londoners beyond the dwindling number of small businesses still operating there, a handful of remaining residents and a disparate collection of allotment holders, hardy cyclists, indiscriminate fishermen, the odd flaneur and a scattering of evangelistic planners, like your authors.
London had chosen its most unglamorous corner as the site for its 2012 Olympic bid. This little book tells some of the story of how this happened, in the words of some of the people involved: people who created the first visionary narratives of what the Lea could become; people who assembled the plans and blagged the investment that began to suggest that radical change might actually be possible; people who, faced with the heroic Olympic challenge, rolled up their sleeves and got on with it.The stories are recorded here as dialogue, based on interviews.
Ralph Ward and Michael Owens