london to export it's poor?

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Stratford has truly been transformed.

Gentrified to be exact, thousands of people lost their jobs to make way for the Olympic park, and now they've been parceled up to be shipped off because they're not the sort of people London wants any more.
 
Gentrified to be exact, thousands of people lost their jobs to make way for the Olympic park, and now they've been parceled up to be shipped off because they're not the sort of people London wants any more.

The redevelopment of Stratford is far from the gentrification that has happened certain other parts of the East End and surrounding areas.

And nobody from the area was forced to leave London - that's a preposterous suggestion (and you know it). Businesses were offered handsome compensation in addition relocation deals and other assistance. As a result, some of them decided to simply shut up shop, but anyone with a viable business that wanted to continue to trade was able to do so, albeit from a different location. It's not the end of the world, though.
 
How could brand new planned housing become a ghetto?

Ghettos are formed by those that live in them. It has little to do with the bricks and mortar.

If you clump hundreds or thousands of socially deprived people into one area, they will tend to bring the area down with them. This has been seen in various social studies, where people that have little purpose in life tend to form poor communities.

However, if you keep social developments on a smaller scale and intersperse these communities with people who have a vested interest in creating a pleasant environment, both elements of society tend to benefit.
 
The redevelopment of Stratford is far from the gentrification that has happened certain other parts of the East End and surrounding areas.

And nobody from the area was forced to leave London

The reality is that £735milllion of taxpayers money was used to put 204 businesses employing around 7000 local people, out of business, for the sake of 10 days of sport.

They were forced out and cannot return.

Social cleansing, what was considered by the elite as grotty businesses were forced out, now the grotty people are off to who knows where to make room for the rich.

"Once we got the Games, everyone knew it was going to be a nightmare,” Freail said by telephone. “It was a horrible feeling knowing that a year later, you were going to be offered an amount and told to leave. It meant I couldn’t carry on.”

The London Development Agency spent about 735 million pounds ($1.2 billion) to buy land and compensate businesses that owned or leased space at the site that will be used for the Olympics, according to the development agency’s latest accounts. The strategy hasn’t prevented more than 100 companies from going out of business or becoming untraceable after the owners were forced to vacate the 246-hectare (608-acre) site that will be used for the Olympics, public records show.


Most of these businesses, which range from auto-repair shops to fast-food manufacturers, depended on local customers. As a result, the money they received from the agency didn’t make up for the cost involved in moving to another location and building up a new client base, according to Juliet Davis, a researcher at the London School of Economics, who wrote a paper on the event’s legacy of urban regeneration."

"Bell, a 47-year-old company director, was given 60,000 pounds for the site where his automobile garage was. He closed the operation after failing to find a new site with similar rents to what he was paying in the city’s East End.

To stay in business, Bell had to leave London and move 12 miles (19 kilometers) to Rainham, Essex, where his rent has doubled. He also had to purchase new equipment as regulations prevented him using his old equipment.

Freail was less fortunate. After closing the business in 2006, he sold his tools and equipment for a loss to avoid paying storage costs. The 62-year-old was compensated 50,000 pounds by the LDA with the caveat that he couldn’t start up the same business within 30 miles of London for at least five years.

“The East End lost out big time,” he said. “I felt gutted at the time, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.” "

London Shops Vanish After $1.2 Billion Olympic Payout - Bloomberg
 
So should the people in the east end of London have been left to fester?

Stratford has already become a centre for commerce, offering jobs to those who once relied on the dole. That alone will help to change people's lives, not just the area. The development has also been implemented in a sustainable way, with what are probably the best transport links in the country. This is no one-trick outpost - Stratford has truly been transformed.

But inner city development has been going on in the regions too over the past two or three decades - Liverpool, Manchester, Cardiff, for example, have all benefitted. Probably more places if I bothered to look them up.

Stratford is getting attention now because London was chosen as the Olympic location, but by no means was it first in the queue.

Billions are being withdrawn from the rest of the UK in parallel with this and at this time. If you are right about it developing let it do so with private capital...but not another public subsidy ontop of that delivered by funding the infastructure
 
Billions are being withdrawn from the rest of the UK in parallel with this and at this time. If you are right about it developing let it do so with private capital...but not another public subsidy ontop of that delivered by funding the infastructure

The problem is that private capital had no incentive to invest in Stratford originally. Large-scale regeneration of this type usually has to be instigated by the government, and then acts as a catalyst for private business to start investing. Witness the Westfield centre - it would never have been built there if the area had not benefitted from the infrastructure investment.
 
The problem is that private capital had no incentive to invest in Stratford originally. Large-scale regeneration of this type usually has to be instigated by the government, and then acts as a catalyst for private business to start investing. Witness the Westfield centre - it would never have been built there if the area had not benefitted from the infrastructure investment.

Do you accept that this public money could have achieved more if spent outside London?
 
Huge difference to one's ego perhaps ?
Wealth and happiness don't always run side by side.

But abject poverty and misery invariably do.
 
The reality is that £735milllion of taxpayers money was used to put 204 businesses employing around 7000 local people, out of business, for the sake of 10 days of sport...

They were forced out and cannot return.

Social cleansing...

...is a loaded term, with overtones that leave a nasty taste in the mouth.

The redevelopment of Stratford was not fundamentally about changing they type of people that live there - it remains a working-class area. It was about improving the environment and kick-starting the economy, against he backdrop of hosting the Olympics. Claiming that this is just about the event itself is to undersell the long-term gains that have been achieved.

I detect a certain negative bias in the report you've quoted. Two case studies out of a quoted 204 affected businesses, and both appear to be hard cases. It's inevitable with a development on this scale that there will be winners and losers; same applies to any infrastructure project (witness Crossrail, HS2, etc), but progress sometimes demands that you take a step back and view the bigger picture. That's difficult to do if all you can see is your own business being closed down, but that can't be allowed to put the brakes on everything - tough as that may be for those involved.

Reading between the lines of the quoted cases, you get the impression that nothing short of being allowed to stay put would have really made these people happy. I get the impression that their "busnesses" were probably not really viable in the first place - one of them has admitted that his equipment was not even up to scratch from a safety point of view, so he was probably only one inspection away from being closed down anyway, and possibly prosecuted. Instead, he has been thrown a lifeline by having his site purchased at more than he'd have been able to achieve if he'd try to sell it on the open market - and still he grumbles.

Surely of all types of business, a garage is better placed than most to relocate, what with their customers being mobile and all that. If this business had a good reputation and a loyal customer base, moving to new premises 12 miles away (25-minute drive?) would not have sounded the death knell; I drive further than that to get my car serviced at Hughes in Beaconsfield. And there's no mention of the opportunity provided by the new location, such as being able to attract new customers from the local area - just moans about the down-sides.

Looking at the sums, if a fund of £735m was disbursed amongst 204 parties, that represents an average payout of around £3.5m each. If these businesses mentioned only received less than £100,000 each, there must be many that received substantially more. I suspect we're only being fed a very narrow (and negative) view of the overall outcome here.
 
Given the climate in which the Olympic village was conceived, the imperitive around its being built and the fact that the new owners will be responsible for its reconfiguration before it can be sold on, the two deals confirmed today probably represent the best deal the government was going to get for the foreseeable future - they've recouped 82.5% of a £1bn outlay as a lump sum, with an ongoing income stream to the public purse..

The best deal for the Government would have been never to have built it in the first place.

On the one hand people complain about the cost of the Olympics, knowing full well that the greater part of the budget has been spent on long-term regeneration projects and the redevelopment of a hateful part of London. And now, when a fair percentage of that cost is recovered before the games have even begun, they still find grounds for complaint.

Cobblers. The project was far more about vanity than regeneration. The way to spend £10 BILLION of mostly public money on re-generation is to look at the long-term needs of that area and plan and spend accordingly. The way not to go about it is to spend the money on a 3 week sporting event and then struggle to find meaningful ways to utilise the infrastructure that you are left with after the circus and its sponsors have all left town.
 
Do you accept that this public money could have achieved more if spent outside London?

Depends what you mean by "more". If you mean that it could have been used to improve a larger physical area, or several diffrerent areas, then you're probably right. But that's an odd argument to present - on that basis, no development would be done in deprived parts of London, just because it would cost proportinately more.

One of the good things about public projects is that they place more weight on the overall outcome than on the hard costs. That's obviously not to say that money should be thrown at them indiscriminately, but sometimes the government needs to step in when private developers do not see a viable opportunity.
 
The best deal for the Government would have been never to have built it in the first place.

Having sought and won the Olympic bid, that simply wasn't an option. Let's deal with the real world.

Cobblers. The project was far more about vanity than regeneration. The way to spend £10 BILLION of mostly public money on re-generation is to look at the long-term needs of that area and plan and spend accordingly. The way not to go about it is to spend the money on a 3 week sporting event and then struggle to find meaningful ways to utilise the infrastructure that you are left with after the circus and its sponsors have all left town.
Again, the larger part of the £10bn is not being spent on the sporting event itself, but on the general area, including creating open spaces where once there was a toxic wasteland. I'm not saying this couldn't have been done for less, or that many private companies have done very well out the project, but it's not all about thowing money up the wall.

The long-term needs of the area were at the centre of the redevelopment.
 
Having sought and won the Olympic bid, that simply wasn't an option. Let's deal with the real world.

Is that the same real world where the Olympics end up costing 4 times the £2.7 billion figure that we were originally told ? The best option would have been to steer clear of the whole thing.


Again, the larger part of the £10bn is not being spent on the sporting event itself, but on the general area, including creating open spaces where once there was a toxic wasteland. I'm not saying this couldn't have been done for less, or that many private companies have done very well out the project, but it's not all about thowing money up the wall.

The long-term needs of the area were at the centre of the redevelopment.

The long-term needs of the area were always second to the needs of the Games. That's why we are seeing the unseemly struggle to find real use for the leftovers. The village is flogged off at a huge loss to a privately-owned foreign business whilst rich football clubs vie to take over a stadium that no one really knows what to do with. We only need to look at Barcelona, Sydney or Athens to see expensive, under-used (and often derelict) facilities that will be our true "Olympic Legacy".
 
Depends what you mean by "more". If you mean that it could have been used to improve a larger physical area, or several diffrerent areas, then you're probably right. But that's an odd argument to present - on that basis, no development would be done in deprived parts of London, just because it would cost proportinately more.

One of the good things about public projects is that they place more weight on the overall outcome than on the hard costs. That's obviously not to say that money should be thrown at them indiscriminately, but sometimes the government needs to step in when private developers do not see a viable opportunity.

A very grudging acceptance that more could have been achieved elsewhere; my additional point was on fairness, largess in the prosperous South East, cut backs and job losses for nearly everywhere else
 
The long-term needs of the area were always second to the needs of the Games. That's why we are seeing the unseemly struggle to find real use for the leftovers. The village is flogged off at a huge loss to a privately-owned foreign business whilst rich football clubs vie to take over a stadium that no one really knows what to do with. We only need to look at Barcelona, Sydney or Athens to see expensive, under-used (and often derelict) facilities that will be our true "Olympic Legacy".

Again, you're focusing narrowly on the Olympic buildings, and ignoring the massive investment in transport links, roads, open spaces and retail businesses. After the Olympics have gone, the people of Stratford will be left with a greener, more pleasant environment, and they are already benefitting from vastly improved public transport, providing improved mobility, better job opportunities etc.

You need to remove your blinkers - the press are more than capable of fixating on the tussle for ownership of the stadium and so forth, but there's so much more to the overall investment in the area that doesn't make for such an controversial story.
 
A very grudging acceptance that more could have been achieved elsewhere; my additional point was on fairness, largess in the prosperous South East, cut backs and job losses for nearly everywhere else

Believe me, Stratford was not a prosperous area. It's a myth that everywhere within the M25 is paved with gold.

My acceptance of your point wasn't grudging - I just think it's based on a false premise. It reduces the argument to how much the money can buy, and that will always be greater outside of inner city areas. The starting point should be: "where is development needed", not "where can we get most bang for our buck", otherwise the inner city areas, and particularly those in London, will always lose out.
 
Again, you're focusing narrowly on the Olympic buildings, and ignoring the massive investment in transport links, roads, open spaces and retail businesses. After the Olympics have gone, the people of Stratford will be left with a greener, more pleasant environment, and they are already benefitting from vastly improved public transport, providing improved mobility, better job opportunities etc.

You need to remove your blinkers - the press are more than capable of fixating on the tussle for ownership of the stadium and so forth, but there's so much more to the overall investment in the area that doesn't make for such an controversial story.

The media in general, and the BBC in particular, have been cheerleading for the whole Olympic project since the start.

However, the Beeb recently ran a detailed report from Barcelona, Sydney and Athens looking at the legacy of the Games. Sydney was the best case scenario but even there the venues were hugely under-used whereas in Athens they were predictably crumbling. Not one city had a meaningful legacy in terms of sport, culture, infrastructure, jobs, transport or any other measure that you care to name.

Even if we ignore the vast sums spent, there is about as much evidence that the Games will create long-term jobs and growth as there is to support the idea that they will promote participation in sport. Both are fanciful ideas used to justify an expensive vanity project.


My blinkers have been off since the day the winning bid was announced in 2005. So maybe it's time to remove yours.
 

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