The London 2012 bid transformed the regeneration process of the Lower Lea Valley (LLV) – and the participatory qualities of the related public consultation. With the announcement of the high-profile Olympic bid in May 2003, regeneration had to start taking account of a demanding list of IOC requirements as well as some extremely tight bidding and planning deadlines. To me, it seemed it would become more difficult to materialise ‘democratic renewal’ and ‘community-led regeneration’ which in any case often remain rhetorical (Imrie & Raco 2003). Yet key players such as the London Development Agency (LDA) and London 2012 (the bidding corporation), are congratulating themselves for having run a successful community consultation during the year after the bid announcement. The number of events, pamphlets distributed and newspaper inserts, combined with references to the consultation work conducted by the LLV Matrix Group (LLVMG) in previous years, are often seen as the markers of that claim.
Whilst numerous interesting efforts to public involvement were certainly made, some serious doubts about the consultation process remain. Among many other, broader and perhaps more ideological issues, the tight timescale, the top-down use of masterplans, and an uncertainty about the actual consultation focus can be seen as examples of the weaknesses of the exercise. The latter will be central here. In particular I want to trace some of the ways in which the Olympics as a bid and, especially, an event, functioned in shaping and diffusing public discussion about the LLV regeneration programme. Various concerns and issues were lost in the translation to an Olympics focus. This will also raise some pertinent questions about the nature of further community involvement in the development of the LLV.
There were three phases in the consultation exercise. The first, a pre-statutory consultation, took place between August and December 2003, and primarily involved the public provision of information and requests for feedback on both Olympic and non-Olympic masterplans. It was said that outcomes of this round would help shape the fine-tuning of the masterplans and consequently of the Lower Lea Valley Olympic and Legacy Applications (submitted in January 2004 by the LDA to the Joint Planning Authorities Team - JPAT) and their additional information (submitted in May 2004). JPAT ran two subsequent statutory consultation stages in February and July 2004.
During all of these stages a London 2012 Olympics could never be more than a possibility. This made consultation difficult. After all, what sort of consultation would be appropriate for a regeneration proposal invigorated by an event that might never happen? The co-existence of two masterplans and an additional ‘Olympic legacy’ plan in the first phase indicate the complexity and ambiguity of the public consultation process. This simultaneity not only led to uncertainty about whether the public were consulted about the Olympics or the LLV regeneration, but it also problematically, although not necessarily intentionally, limited the scope of the community input.
The consultation programme was contracted out to Fluid, which was also part of the masterplanning consortium. A quick look at how it formulated the consultation aims and objectives illustrates the potential for regeneration issues to be diffused, mixed up or hidden by the Olympic option.
For instance, in the official ‘Statement of Participation’, Fluid identified its main focus as the Lower Lea Valley development. However this priority becomes far less precise when Fluid then states that its methodology is meant to address “how local people feel about regeneration of the Lower Lea Valley and the impact of the Olympic Games: in preparation; for the duration of the Games themselves; and from the legacy of the Games.” (LDA 2004b, p3) The attention to the various phases of the Olympic-based regeneration within this citation evoke a rather different emphasis in the consultation process, which is then shifted even more firmly to the Games by the statement that the consultation exercise aimed to create “an arena for informed discussion about the London 2012 Olympic Bid” (ibid). Within only a few sentences the precise purpose of Fluid’s work has been reformulated or obscured by the Olympics.
The simultaneity of the non-Olympic/Olympic plans and, secondly, the LLV regeneration consultation and London 2012 discussion, regularly allowed the Olympics as an event and bidding process to take centre stage during community engagement. Fluid organised a range of preliminary community activities (e.g. vox pop videos, questionnaires, diaries, mapping exercises) in early autumn 2003. These were followed by distribution of the pamphlet ‘ London’s bid for the 2012 Olympic Games. Have Your Say’, a range of public masterplan exhibitions and 15 so-called ‘talkshops’, which were supplemented by a further five thematic workshops (‘Making Plan Sessions’) in December 2003. My particular interest here is the ‘talkshop’, because they provided direct public access to representatives of key players (e.g. LDA, EDAW, London 2012) in both the Olympic bid and the LLV regeneration programme at large.
The talkshops were included in the consultation process in order to facilitate discussion and feedback on the non-Olympic and Olympic masterplans. Each of the talkshops started with a masterplan presentation (often with audiovisual support) by, for instance, an EDAW representative. People were then invited to respond, give comments or criticisms and ask questions to a panel of people involved in the development of the masterplans or the LLV regeneration. Although at times poorly attended, the talkshops had some lively discussions (see also Vigor & Mean 2003).
The discussion events often functioned as an occasion for addressing issues purely focused on the bid or the Olympics itself. At one event, for instance, Keith Mills (London 2012) explained in some detail the bidding process and IOC-voting procedure. Such explanations obviously do not contribute to assessing the local needs or public input in the regeneration plans although, given the complex and intrinsically undemocratic nature of the Games-awarding process, the importance of this kind of information or degree of ‘openness’ can to some extent be justified. Yet this type of transfer of attention from planning and regeneration to the actual Olympic event was also evident in other questions or discussions, for example about the funding of the Games, the possibility of local residents attending the Olympic competitions or the opportunities to become involved in promoting the London bid.
Besides this concern with the Olympic event itself, the talkshops demonstrate that the Games framed and filtered the consultation in many other, though less explicit or direct, ways. In this respect it is possible to identify three distinct themes: the link between IOC requirements and the Olympic masterplan; narrowing the exploration of certain regeneration topics to a London 2012 Olympics scenario; and, thirdly, using the Olympics to leave questions from the public unanswered.
A clear example of the first can be found in discussions on the East Marshes, currently a popular recreation ground, but designated a temporary coach park in the Olympic masterplan. This use of a part of the Hackney Marshes provoked, and it still does, fierce resistance, as was evident during several talkshops. Such discussions can help to reveal potentially valuable information about local environment and ecology, leisure practices and priorities, and even matters of place-based identity. The particular problem with the East Marshes debate is, however, that it represented a back-track on earlier promises to leave the Marshes untouched. Apart from the mistrust such broken planning promises imply and, in this case, import into consultation meetings, it also indicated clearly that Olympic necessities and IOC requirements would overrule locally expressed ones.
As for the issue of some of the consultation being looked at predominantly in relation to an Olympic Games, this can best be seen in the transport and sporting themes arising in the talkshops. Attendees discussed ways of increasing local participation in sporting activities by asking how the Olympics would impact on local facilities. Others, conversely, expressed worries about the disappearance of existing resources if the construction of an Olympic Park went ahead. In a less straightforward manner, a similar point can be made about the debates on transport which occurred during the talkshops. Fluid had explored transport-related subjects in its consultation exercises prior to the talkshops and without direct connection to a possible 2012 Olympics. Frustration with weak public transport links thereby having been identified, improving local transport was now part of the general LLV regeneration programme. In the talkshops, however, it emerged primarily within the specificity of the Olympic event, with regard to transport as an essential element of the bid or concerns about car-parking and tube capacity during the Games.
Finally, the Olympics shaped the dynamics and outcomes of the talkshops in terms of the expert panel reactions to questions or input from the floor. For instance, in one talkshop an attendee suggested ways in which culture could facilitate or increase further community involvement in the consultation process. The panel responded by stressing that culture would be a key element of the London bid, a reply that redirected the issue, rendering it into a very different, much more event-focused matter. Moreover, it sidestepped the call for further local engagement implied in the question. This sort of shift also happened with housing topics. In the Hackney talkshop, an inquiry as to the possibility of borough inhabitants moving to planned housing developments received an Olympic-focused reply. It was hoped the Olympics would enable people to think beyond the borough boundaries and the merely local, and to take a perspective on the LLV at large. Worryingly this reply also displaced the core concern of the question - housing.
What are the consequences when such issues are raised in/through an Olympic framework – and at a time when its taking place was not yet guaranteed? In other words, what gets lost in the process of ‘Olympic translation’?
In terms of the talkshops, the simple answer is that it left important questions and community input unacknowledged. Furthermore, in various ways it invited a focus on the actual future event (the ‘if’ tended to disappear from the London 2012 bid in public discussions), rather than on what was desirable for the LLV with or without an Olympics. The influential presence of unusual kinds of stakeholders also became evident, whether in the shape of London 2012 representatives dismissing protests about unpopular planning proposals or of having a public consultation run under an IOC bidding deadline.
The issue of deadlines points towards another downside of Olympic translation, namely that it restricts deliberation or participation. Whilst this might be expected in consultation techniques such as talkshops, it seemed typical of the consultation in general. Fluid claimed that it had enabled “participation in the masterplanning process” (LDA2004b, p5), yet there are problems with the way in which it identified, described and engaged with different types of stakeholders and framed their consultation function. For instance, Fluid differentiated between key stakeholders making direct decisions, and local stakeholders. This distinction became associated with the first having “strategic levels of interest”, “strategic demands” and “impact”, whilst the latter merely have “desires” and “aspirations” (LDA 2004b, p5). It further separated “expert groups” and “local people” (LDA2004b, p7). Whilst key stakeholders were promised “regular meetings and briefings”, the contributions of local stakeholders “would be documented and considered” (LDA 2004b, p5). Of course, this sort of implicit limit to democratic potential is not exclusive to the LLV consultation, yet the strict and specialist demands of an Olympics (or Olympics bid) put participatory community input under even more pressure.
It might be worth considering these issues in terms of the current consultation strategies of the LLV, especially since there is no possibility for extended deadlines in the Olympic construction programme. Olympic translation was not specific to the talkshops or Fluid’s work: it ran throughout, and is entangled with, much East London planning and regeneration. Whilst, of course, this global event cannot be swiped from the consultation board now it is so firmly upon us, it might be useful if further consultation with local stakeholders and communities tries to avoid utilising as much as possible the 2012 Olympics (especially as an event) as a way of shaping debates or enticing people to attend public meetings. With many local people and organisations worried about sustainability, employment and gentrification, the LDA and Olympic organisers could make a point of ensuring that the topic of the Games will not continue to dominate or diffuse genuine local concerns, knowledges and needs. This might help open the door a little bit further to public involvement of a perhaps more participatory character.
is a sociologist with an interest in cities, citizenship and culture.
© 2004·06
I always seem to suffer some loss of faith on entering cities. They are great conspiracies; the parties are all maskers, who have taken mutual oaths of silence not to betray each other’s secret and to keep the other’s madness in countenance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Welcome to this issue
Contents of this issue
Editor’s letter
Academic
Debate
Entertainment
Essays
Journalism
Feedback
Getting SUST in the Thames Gateway…
If London is so great, why not build more of it?
Hardly Heroic: Olympics Housing Plans
A Reasoned Documented Critique of the Thames Gateway Bridge Consultation Report
Lost In Translation
‘Sustainability’ suspends debate
New Urban Landscapes
How sustainable is the East End?
Engaging with the London Olympic and Paralympic Games
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