The London Olympics and Urban Development

The Mega-Event City

Gavin Poynter, Valerie Viehoff, Yang Li, Gavin Poynter, Valerie Viehoff, Yang Li

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317637448
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

As London sought to use the Olympics to achieve an ambitious programme of urban renewal in the relatively socially deprived East London it attracted global attention and sparked debate. This book provides an in-depth study of the transformation of East London as a result of the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. Government and event organisers use legacies of urban renewal to justify hosting the world's leading sports mega-event, this book examines and evaluates those legacies.

The London Olympics and Urban Development: the mega-event city is composed of new research, conducted by academics and policy makers. It combines case study analysis with conceptual insight into the role of a sports mega-events in transforming the city. It critically assesses the narrative of legacy as a framework for legitimizing urban changes and examines the use of this framework as a means of evaluating the outcomes achieved.

This book is about that process of renewal, with a focus on the period following the 2012 Games and the diverse social, political and cultural implications of London's use of the narrative of legacy.

Part I

London

Moving east

1 Remaking the east

From Canary Wharf to the
Olympic Park

Eric Sorensen

Introduction

The development of Canary Wharf is but one event, a very significant one, in London’s changing economy and economic geography. It is the symbol of the 1980s and 1990s’ regeneration of the vast Docklands area, and this chapter explores the background, twists and turns of policy and the lessons these could offer.

Setting the policy

Before the 1980s’ London Docklands regeneration programme, a more benign and imaginative policy context was set by Peter Shore’s (Secretary of State for the Environment, 1976–1979) White Paper ‘Inner Cities’ of May 1977. Here, for the first time, was the phrase ‘inner cities’ used in a major government policy statement to capture that deleterious mix of socio-economic trends and patterns we are now so familiar with. Peter Shore, as MP for Bethnal Green and Stepney, had first-hand and detailed knowledge of these economic trends and their impact on communities. He played a major role in reversing orthodox planning policy which had previously focused on the dispersal of London’s population and business base and involved an over-rigid zoning of uses.

London was in crisis. The cumulative impact of two decades and more of decentralising London’s economy through blocking business investment, providing investment incentives in other regions and encouraging depopulation through the New and Expanding Towns programmes had deprived London, particularly Inner London, of investment and jobs, especially in the newer, higher skilled, higher value-added business sectors. Not for the first time, successive governments had tackled a perceived problem (London being too big and economically dominant) when this was being overshadowed by larger economic forces. London and the whole country were losing out to new investment locations in other parts of the world economy; relocating business capacity in familiar business sectors and inhibiting investment were hardly a recipe for national economic renewal.

The White Paper clearly distinguished between symptoms and causes, between decline of traditional business sectors, decline in jobs especially for the unskilled, increasing physical decay in the urban fabric and the core requirement to rebuild the urban economy, especially in Inner London and in the other major conurbations.

Closure of the docks

For East London, the effect of adverse government policies which had simply failed to address fundamental business sector changes and their impact on complex urban economies was compounded by the collapse of the world’s largest enclosed docks system. A vast docks area stretching 6 miles from Tower Bridge to Beckton and built up over some 200 years progressively closed in the short period (1968–1981) as the Port of London Authority (PLA) consolidated its business operations down river at Tilbury. Containerisation offered the PLA and the shipping industry massive efficiency gains. Coincidentally, the first container ships arrived at Tilbury in 1968, the same year as the first major docks closures – East India, St Katherine’s and the London Docks by Tower Bridge. The PLA then announced in 1970 their 5 years’ phased programme of closures and rationalisation (later amended). Despite its scale, the PLA had never been particularly profitable. It did not control all the Thames wharfage. There had been a long history of difficult industrial relations which was only partly ameliorated by the decasualisation of dock labour in 1966, and the costs of decasualisation fell to the PLA.

Dock closures, their impact on associated businesses and changes in the more general industrial landscape led to very large job losses. For the five East London boroughs (Tower Hamlets, Newham, Southwark, Lewisham, Greenwich), there were some 150,000 jobs lost between 1966 and 1976, 20 per cent of the area’s jobs, compared to 13 per cent in London and 2 per cent in the UK over the same period. Local population numbers, particularly in the areas immediately associated with the docks, fell dramatically especially in the later years of the period. Urban wasteland was not hard to find in Inner London in the 1970s, but Docklands was on a different, appalling scale and this stimulated specific interventions by successive governments. Political and strategic reactions to these dramatic economic and social changes were characterised, however, by sharp policy differences, arguments about priorities, wholly inadequate funding commitments and lack of regeneration progress. One key investment must be noted, however: the opening of the second Blackwall Tunnel in 1967.

The search for a regeneration programme

The PLA’s 1970 announcement about progressive closure of the docks and the evident lack of investment and urban decline had led one of Peter Shore’s predecessors at the Environment Department, Peter Walker, to set up a major Review in 1971 of development options for the 5,000 acres ofDocklands. The Greater London Council (GLC), established in 1965, also took a leading interest with the relevant London boroughs in the area’s future. Fundamental recurring themes about Docklands’ regeneration were now evident – what does regeneration mean, what business uses are to be fostered, what is to be the employment offer, how to fund and get the necessary infrastructure, whom does regeneration benefit? The development options Review was published in January 1973 and soon became caught up with the GLC election of that year. Though the Review was not dogmatic and offered a range of strategic options, including modest development aspirations and much enhanced open spaces, concern was expressed about the lack of consultation and that the options were not consistent with the business and community heritage of the Docklands area. The GLC led the development of an alternative strategy, and one of the last acts of the Conservative government before Labour won the general election in February 1974 was to agree a more localist approach: the GLC would set up the Docklands Joint Committee (DJC) – the GLC and the five East London boroughs.

Anthony Crosland, now the Labour Government’s Environment Secretary, supported the DJC but offered little additional public expenditure support. The DJC produced an investment and development plan (1976) to include a new tube line, the River Line, from Central London to Thamesmead at the Greenwich/Bexley boundary (where the GLC were building a very large housing estate), new east-west strategic roads, new housing but mainly council housing and development of new industrial estates and warehousing. Some significant docks were filled in to provide development sites, with these adding to the vast supply of vacant land.

This plan fitted with traditional East London uses and aspirations, recognised the importance of improving transport infrastructure, but failed to grasp the enormity of the changes faced by the area. There was in effect a political stalemate – little willingness to fundamentally review the area’s future and business base as part of changing London and insufficient funding and other support to help make a reality of the DJC’s or indeed any other major investment plan. Private sector investors had dipped their toes in the St Katherine’s and London docks areas with a trade centre, marina, hotel and some mixed-tenure housing. This reflected the advantages of location, right next to the eastern side of the City of London, but not a willingness to achieve more through a substantial rolling out of public/private investment partnerships. Dismissive attitudes to Docklands regeneration were widespread, indicated by, for example, a Sunday Times headline of February 1975: ‘Docklands is dying in squabbles and squalor’.

The support arrangements for inner city areas in Peter Shore’s 1977 White Paper included Partnership Committees, chaired by ministers to indicate their significance, that were tasked to manage programmes and target support in the most hard-pressed areas. The DJC morphed into a Partnership Committee, but the government still faced a very difficult public expenditure challenge, so the new radical approach to the inner city areas came with little new money and considerable reliance on private investment. Some docks were filled in to provide development sites; some 800 homes were built in the Docklands area in the 5 years between 1976 and 1980, and 1.3 million sq ft of warehousing and other business premises were constructed. Some public transport improvements were also achieved, for example, improvements to the East London Line. Very little progress, however, was made on land assembly and tackling dereliction, no strategic transport investments were started, arguments continued about the balance between council and private housing development, which business investments should be backed and where they should be located.

There is some anecdotal evidence that if Labour had won the 1979 General Election the Docklands area would have been designated a new town to provide a substantial investment vehicle which the government could control. Such a proposal was advocated in relevant professional journals in the 1970s. The political standoff about the strategic future of the area was, by the late 1970s, self-evident.

Radical intervention: the development corporation

The incoming Conservative government, therefore, had little difficulty in exploiting the previous decade’s, and even longer period of argument, prevarication and continuing decline in making the case for radical intervention. Key new Conservative ministers Geoffrey Howe (Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Michael Heseltine (Environment Secretary) were determined to ensure that the vast decaying areas of Docklands were incorporated into the London economy and that the private sector would be encouraged to play a leading investment role. New towns legislation was adapted to enable the setting up of urban development corporations with powers of land assembly, infrastructure investment and planning within specific designated areas. The draft Order setting up the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) took 42 days of parliamentary debate in 1981 before being approved; such was the opposition to this intervention. The history of regeneration over the previous decade could be shown to have been a failure, however, and that there was an overriding need for these new radical measures. This argument was clearly accepted by the Parliamentary Committee.

To the LDDC, there were separately added powers for the government to designate enterprise zone (EZ) areas with incentives lasting 10 years to encourage business investment – these included business rates holiday, 100 per cent capital allowances and looser development control regulation. The 1982 EZ in Docklands, 300 acres, covered the northern half of the Isle of Dogs where private business investment became concentrated and where Canary Wharf landed.

The LDDC had the inestimable advantage of becoming the dominant landowner within the designated area. Redundant PLA land holdings were vested in the LDDC through the Order setting it up, avoiding compulsory purchase and other lengthy acquisition procedures. Land vesting was also applied to municipal and publicly owned land such as that held by statutory undertakings. The process was tempered by arguments about what were operational and nonoperational (i.e. redundant) sites, but the LDDC soon became the owner of 2,000 acres of Docklands. Most had low value with little market interest and very poor supporting infrastructure.

The LDDC, supported by the EZ incentives, nevertheless faced major challenges. It cannot be overemphasised how distant the Docklands and East London localities were perceived to be by the investors and developers despite the windfall of development sites flowing from dock closures. The docks and adjoining warehouses had been private and hidden behind large brick walls with very limited access. Access to the East End and public transport was poor with many dock workers living close by. It was a different world from the rest of London, its communities romanticised in newsreels and sometimes hitting the news because of strikes. The strategic differences on how the areas should be regenerated, therefore, reflected different views about the economic and social geography of London. Were the Docklands areas and community’s working class, seeking certain kinds of employment, supported by a pervasive public sector? Or, should the opportunity be taken to recognise the loss of much traditional employment and the glue which held these communities together and foster new private sector–led business sectors and open up the local housing markets to owner occupation?

Opening up docklands: transport investment

The Transport Department and London Transport ‘celebrated’ the setting up of the LDDC in 1981 by making clear that no further work would be done on planning the new Tube line to East London. Though there was a clear government commitment to Docklands regeneration, Whitehall was and remains a series of departmental baronies where each makes its own decisions about what a government commitment means. There had been related discussions about investment in a mini-tram system, cheaper and more flexible but slower and with much lower capacity. This had first been proposed in the early 1970s’ development options Review, and there was now much discussion about the form of mini-tram, street running or with its own dedicated rail pathway. The LDDC advocated an elevated, light rail, computer-controlled railway, encouraged by their success in other countries. Parts of the nineteenth century’s elevated rail viaducts still survived, and these could be brought back into use. The government agreed, announced the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) investment in October 1982 with a fixed £77 million cost and planned opening in 1987. Meanwhile a pragmatic connection to the all-important Tube network was provided by the Docklands Clipper, a bespoke bus shuttle service between Mile End and the Isle of Dogs.

The imaginative DLR solution was mirrored by the decision to promote what became London City Airport in the Royal Docks. Here there was space for a short takeoff and landing airport, having both utility and demonstrating how Docklands was changing. Most airports were either state- or municipally owned, but in this case the airport would be a private investment. Following a public inquiry in 1984, the airport opened in 1987. In the late 1990s towards the end of the LDDC, the Royal Docks’ space and opportunity offer led to the development of a large exhibition centre, London ExCEL, the first one on that scale in London in nearly half a century.

As with the airport, the Docklands’ offer of space to develop attracted the newspaper industry, about to exploit new printing technology and occupying very cramped business space in Central London. Within a few years, newspaper production became Docklands’ leading business sector with News International in Wapping, the Telegraph Group in the Isle of Dogs, Financial Times at East India and the Daily Mail in Rotherhithe/Surrey Docks. Roads were built to serve the EZ and the many other development areas, but strategic road investment would have to wait. The GLC had abandoned its own road investment plans for the area, and the LDDC would struggle to make the case for that scale of disruptive but badly needed investment.

Compared to the disinvestment of the previous years, the ambition, aspiration and actual investments of the LDDC were transformative, and the private sector responded. In the early days, Michael Heseltine personally intervened with the major housebuilders to develop in East London where the owner occupation output was in single figures per year. The private housebuilding programme was very successful and soon output averaged over 1,000 dwellings per year. Many small business units were developed within the EZ. Roads had been built, DLR construction was well under way as was the airport. Historic warehouses next to Tower Bridge were being converted to new uses; new neighbourhoods were being created in Wapping and Rotherhithe. Taken together the regeneration package was imaginative but within the familiar scale of London, until the development of Canary Wharf.

Regeneration themes

What, then, was the essence of this new approach to regeneration? Government commitment was on an unimaginable scale compared to any of the efforts of the previous decade and more. But it was commitment to a vehicle the government controlled in terms of the general direction of its investment with specific approval required of major investment proposals. There was a strong emphasis to attract private sector investment on the back of public sector infrastructure. This inevitably meant deliberately joining the area to the rest of London and recognising that many older business sectors with deep roots in the area had little to offer for investment and jobs. Though there was a willingness to work with the municipalities, indeed cooperation was essential to produce good results, the government and their instrument – the LDDC – drove the regeneration programme.

Second, the relatively rapid transfer of land ownership gave the LDDC very considerable power in managing its own strategic planning, infrastructure investment and onward encouragement of investors and developers. Third, rather than regarding this massive Docklands estate as simply representing opportunities for public housing, traditional logistics and warehousing, and trying to maintain docks-related businesses, the intrinsic assets of the area were to be exploited so as to appeal to investors of all kinds and to bring benefit to the wider London economy. The DLR was designed to be a novel, modern part of London’s transport infrastructure, very visible and used to market the new Docklands. Similarly, the new airport, and other new large-space users, exploited the space available, added to transport choices and looked to the future.

Fourth, the docks themselves were not to be discarded, made invisible by being filled in. Waterside had been associated with industrial uses, often noxious or banned from the more salubrious parts of town, with rivers and canals polluted and uncared for. Instead, waterside vistas were to be valued both for their unique amenity offer and with the docks offering an important historical and conservation background to the area. The area became part of the international family of dockland regeneration areas, benefitting from appreciation of history and the high value placed on waterside locations. The same appro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I London: moving east
• Part II Evaluating London’s Olympic legacy
• Part III Creating spaces, reconstructing places
• Part IV Social and economic transformation in East London
• Part V Cultural legacies of London 2012
• Index