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Critically assess the potential of the London 2012 Olympic Games to deliver

sustainable urban regeneration to east London

Introduction

The London 2012 Olympic Games are a ‘life time opportunity’ to regenerate the

East London (Vigor, Mean and Tims, 2004). From 27 July to 12 August of 2012, the

British capital will stage the next Olympiads. According to the London 2012 Games Bid,

it will be “(t)he first sustainable Olympic and Paralympic Games” (London 2012, 2009).

In order to achieve this, the Games should bring long-term benefits to the boroughs of

Stratford, where the Olympic Village is been building, and serve as catalyst for further

developments in the Lower Lea Valley (LLV), the Thames Gateway, the largest

regeneration project in Europe (DCLG, 2007).

Both locations, the East London and the LLV, are zones with significant

industrial and post-industrial landscape (Evans, 2007) on the one hand, and on the

other, they are among the most deprived areas of the country, suffering from serious

problems such as high rates of unemployment, educational underachievement,

sickness and mortality (Vigor, Mean and Tims, 2004),. Moreover, they present

significant environmental issues since it is prone to flooding, many areas require

extensive land remediation and most of the transportation network is inadequate

(Fainstein, 2009). This distressing scene, however, can be a place where solutions

can be developed (Amin, Massey and Thrift, 2000) thanks to the sustainable legacy

London 2012 could deliver.

A sustainable London Olympics should tackle the two main components of

sustainable development (Fig. 1). First, the organizers ought to provide new

infrastructures and deliver socio-economic benefits to the local community, and last but

not least, this development should respect the limits of the local environment.

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Fig. 1. Shared UK principles of sustainable development (DEFRA, 2008).

Although Seoul 1988 took the first environmental steps in the Olympic History

(Coaffe, 2007), it is from 1995 when environment was declared the third pillar of the

Olympic Movement alongside sport and culture (IOC, 1996) and, therefore since then

host cities have been expected to deliver cleaner and environmental friendly Games.

However, in the last Olympiads only Sydney 2000 is known to be close to the concept

of ‘green games’. Sydney carried out campaigns of biodiversity protection and natural

resource conservation (Vigor, Mean and Tims, 2004). However, there has been a

continuing debate about the effectiveness of Homebush Bay wether toxic waste there

had been properly treated (Cashman and Hughes, 1998). Both Athens 2004 and

Beijing 2008 were stories which started with environmental poetry but ended with

smoke bombs. According to Coaffe (2007), in Athens, nearly all environmental

recommendations were ignored. Finally, despite the fact that there is evidence of

pollution reduction of the City of Beijing (Wu and Zhang, 2008), it remains as one of

the World’s most contaminated metropolis (Cook, 2007).

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Learning from the past Olympic failures and following its bid’s sustainable

slogan, the organizers of London 2012 should deliver a successful environmental

sustainable inheritance. The first section of this work examines the opportunity of

London 2012 to become the first sustainable Olympic Games. Whilst the second

section deals with the flooding problem which faces the Thames Gateway in the

Thames Estuary and, thus, the need of sustainable solutions such as an integrated

flood risk management plan.

The environmental sustainable legacy of London 2012

The year 2012 has a global significance. First, this is the year that the Kyoto

Protocol is set to expire, thus a new route forward should emerge to mitigate climate

change and set up adaptation strategies, and second, 2012 might be the year for the

next Earth Summit (London 2012, 2009). In addition to these historic events, the spirit

of the summer Olympic Games hosted in London must ‘inspire change’ to the World

and move towards sustainability.

The IOC Environment Commission’s states that “The aim is not just to ensure

that holding the Games has no negative net impact on the environment, but also to try

to improve the environment and leave behind a positive green legacy”. On the one

hand, the environmental impacts of such event are difficult to analyses quantitatively,

being complex and often occurring over extended period of time (Collins et al., 2009).

On the other hand, there is several key environmental commitments that London 2012

should take in consideration in order to meet their sustainable goals. Levett (2004), for

instance, suggests that the top priority for any Games to be taken seriously for

sustainability should be to diminish their air travel intensity due to the fact that this kind

of way of transport is one of the most carbon-intense activities people can carry out.

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It is important to highlight that even in the sustainability plan called ‘Towards a

one planet 2012’ (London 2012, 2009), it is recognized that the environmental aims

are not the top priority of the event. As always, sport and security go first, and further,

contractual obligations to sponsors, rights holders and budgets must be respected. In

the case of air traveling, they argue that London 2012 can only influence international

spectators to reduce the carbon impact of their travels.

Once again the Games can encourage others to change, but first they must

show to the people how to live sustainably. According to the Sustainability Plan

(London 2012, 2009), the facilities and the Olympic Park itself will be the platform ‘to

inspire sustainable living’. In this context, there are some important environmental

achievements that it is necessary to mention (ODA, 2009a; 2009b):

the Olympic Delivery Authority is using rail and water routes to get materials

delivered to site and waste taken away in order to minimize carbon emissions

(Fig. 3a);

the new Energy Centre and network will provide efficient and low-carbon power

by using biomass boilers and a Combined Cooling Heat and Power;

the Greenway has used recycled materials that were salvaged from the

demolition stage;

a ‘soil hospital’ has been set up on the Olympic Park which shakes and cleans

the soil free from contaminants (Fig. 3b);

Olympic Park venues are being designed and built to be as energy and water

efficient and sustainable as possible;

the Olympic Delivery Authority and Thames Water are proposing to build a

facility to recycle and clean water; and

in order to enhance biodiversity conservation and natural resource

sustainability, 45 hectares of wildlife are being designed to create and a panel

of timber supplies has been set up.

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Fig. 3. Water routes (a), waste is being taken away by barges through the recently dredged waterways

and a new lock and water control structure; and the ‘soil hospital’ (b), which produces clean material which

can be used in the creation of the correct land levels, foundations and parklands (ODA, 2009a).

These are good sustainable initiatives which could be models of environmental

friendly practices for the following Olympic cities and the rest of metropolis, but they

can be seen as the seed for transforming Stratford and the Olympic boroughs. After the

Games, the new green infrastructure and natural areas will benefit the health and well-

being of local communities (Stone, 2006), the proposed recycled water facility will

continue to provide water to the venues and infrastructure on the Olympic Park (ODA,

2009b), the new Energy Centre will support the local communities and businesses

(ODA, 2008) and all the sporting venues will provide facilities for elite athletes and the

local community (ODA, 2008).

In short, it seems that after 2012 will not be more ‘white elephants’ like the

Millennium Dome ten years ago. The Games will deliver to East London a promising

sustainable legacy through green infrastructures, natural and accessible areas and

sustainable sport facilities. Adopting the twin principles of first avoiding/reducing and

then substituting for environmental impacts (Levett, 2004), these partial positive effects

could counteract with some negative ones such as greenhouse gas emissions. Even

though the global net impact will be barely impossible to determine, the atmosphere

Stratford and the Olympic boroughs could be a turning point to move towards the first

sustainable Olympic Games.

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A sustainable flood risk management for the Thames Gateway development

The Thames Gateway, the broader regeneration development in which London

2012 is embedded, stretches 40 miles along the estuary from Canary Wharf in London

to Southend in Essex, and Sittingbourne in Kent (DCLG, 2007). The overall objective of

the Thames Gateway are, on the one hand, the development of ‘sustainable

communities’ and a decentralization of business activity from the present core in

Westminster and the city of London (Fainstein, 2009), on the other. The Thames

Gateway will create areas of economic generation and allow the provision of

approximately 160,000 new affordable homes, 335,000 new residents and 225,000

jobs (DCLG, 2007).

Fig. 4. Satellite image of the Thames River Estuary (Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory,

NASA Johnson Space Center http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov)

One of the challenges this development must face is that 13 of the 14 zones of

change in the Thames Gateway are within the Thames tidal floodplain (Fig. 4) and are

vulnerable to both storm surges and peak river flows (Eldridge and Horn, 2009).

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Moreover, this problem could worsen in the future due to the fact that sea level is rising

relative to the land as a consequence of global warming and the downward land tilt

associated with the post-glacial recovery (Lavery and Donovan, 2005). Concretely, it

has been suggested that extreme sea levels in the 2080s could be 1.2 m higher than

current extremes (Hulme et al., 2002).

According to some Thames Gateway stakeholders (Mcfadden et al., 2009), the

role of the 2012 London Olympics and the high-profile UK position of climate change

could be catalytic forces and this highlights the role of being ‘windows of opportunity’ in

advancing towards an integrated flood risk management of the Thames Gateway. In

the same sense, Lavery and Donovan (2005) points out the importance to move from

the traditional flood defence approach to sustainable flood risk management.

In response to these concerns, the UK’s Environment Agency has been

developed a series of guidelines and planning documents (DEFRA, 2001; 2005;

DCLG, 2006) in order to understand flooding and decrease its impacts. However, the

main flood risk management framework will be set out by the ‘Thames Estuary 2100’

project. This plan, which is presently in progress, will define the strategy for flood risk

management for London and the Thames Estuary for the next 100 years (Lavery and

Donovan, 2005). This links in with the current development and should provide

valuable advice on the technical appraisals and the criteria to be used in planning

decisions (Eldridge and Horn, 2009).

In fact, the Thames Estuary 2100 is one of the main assets of the Thames

Gateway for becoming the first eco-region in UK. This plan is meant to take the first

steps to promote higher standards for cutting carbon emissions, water conservation,

reducing waste, and protecting people against flood risk (DCLG, 2007). In this regard,

according to DCLG (2008 p. 30), “the eco-region will lead the nation in planning and

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implementing flood risk management strategies for both tidal and fluvial flooding risks”.

They go on to state the following ambitions:

Recognize long-term flood risk management needs as identified by TE 2100

project are met.

All areas of the Gateway covered by flood risk assessments that have been

updated to take into account best available climate change information.

Continued improvements to flood risk management infrastructure and provision

of new infrastructure where needed, including land set aside to manage urban

runoff.

Aside from these three guidelines, it can be added three more sustainable

measures. In order to become a true eco-region, the Thames Gateway must (i) take

into account the planning guidelines established by the PPS25 (DCLG, 2006), a

document which states the guidelines about development and flood risk; (ii) promote

flood resilient construction, backed up by an effective warning system (Lavery and

Donovan, 2005); and (iii) adopt key recommendations to protect the transport network

infrastructure (Arkell and Darch, 2006). Finally, as Harman et al. (2002) points out,

“flood defence must work in harmony with the environment, not against it”. A good

example of this is the polder system in the Netherlands, where local communities can

feel greater ownership of their defences (Lavery and Donovan, 2005). Therefore, an

integrated flood risk management can be a model for sustainable development,

achieving the best possible balance between social, economic and environmental

considerations.

In this case, the first principle of sustainable development (Fig. 1), “Living within

environmental limits”, keeps a dangerous meaning. It is not about a natural resource

scarcity or endangered species. In the Thames Estuary, there are lives and billions of

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pounds at stake. London 2012 must serve as bridge between the Thames Gateway

and the strategic planning for flood risk such as the Thames Estuary 2100 or the

PPS25 in order to guarantee a sustainable future for both the inhabitants of the area

and their conspicuous milieu.

Conclusions

Many of the authors mentioned in this work understand London 2012 as

catalysts, windows of opportunity, force of inspiration… but the Games and their

sustainable legacy should be a reality. What is more, it must be a long-term positive

reality. In this context, London 2012 is seen as a ‘once in a life time’ opportunity for

transforming the urban dynamics of East London. On the one hand, a new sustainable

urban landscape will emerge with the Stratford Olympic Park as the environmental

friendly landmark. After the Games, East Londoners will enjoy of wildlife biodiversity,

new green urban spaces and sport facilities. In addition, green energy, clean soils and

recycled water will support local communities and business in the future. On the other

hand, implementing the principles of avoiding/minimizing and substituting for

environmental impacts, London 2012 will move forward to become the first sustainable

Olympic Games. These two commitments, in addition, could play a powerful role to

inspire environmental behaviors and urban sustainable policies around the World.

The Thames Gateway, the enormous regeneration project driven by the UK

government and connected to the Games, will lie within the floodplain of the Thames

Estuary. According to the most recent scenarios of climate change, the sea level in the

North Sea will likely rise by 1.2 m because of isostatic recovery and global warming,

threatening the new planned development in the area. The configuration of the Thames

Gateway as an eco-region and the guidelines of the Thames Estuary 2100 should

catalyses the implementation of a sustainable flood risk management through all the

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affected area, where local communities and the rest of stakeholders of the Thames

Gateway work together and, of course, within the environmental constraints of this

peculiar ecosystem.

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