What the olympics will mean for London

It’s about transforming London. The city has some of the most fantastic museums, galleries, restaurants and open spaces in the world. People from across the globe enrich the city with their energy, enthusiasms and knowledge. But the benefits to London have been uneven. Although some parts of the city are among the most affluent in the world, others are desperately in need of investment and regeneration.

The Lower Lea Valley, stretching either side of the River Lea from the Hackney Marshes in the north to the Thames in the south, contains one of the largest areas of derelict and polluted land in the capital. It is a predominantly industrial area, with many low-grade uses, and it has suffered from progressive industrial decline and neglect.

It is for many a place to pass through; there is little integration of the communities on either side of the river. But this area is also one of great potential and opportunity.

In August 2003, the London Development Agency appointed a team to address the challenges and prepare visionary masterplans for the Lower Lea Valley.

Their proposals set a new standard for Urban Design, and will help meet my aspiration for London to become a sustainable city. It will also set the standard for development throughout the Thames Gateway. Zaha Hadid’s design for the Olympic Aquatics Centre, unveiled in January, gives a taste of what we can offer and makes London’s bid to host the games even more compelling. The winning design for the Aquatic Centre is being showcased on the London stand at MIPIM this year.

The masterplanners were asked to map out the area to facilitate the 2012 Olympics and, crucially, to work out how the games could leave the best possible legacy for Londoners.

I was determined to make sure that these games would have no white elephants. The approach taken by the bid team was “excellence without extravagance”; this means that all the venues will have a fully thought-through plan for serving the community after the games, either in London or redeployed to sites in other parts of the UK. The plans also provide for 9000 additional homes, half of which will be affordable, and will be accompanied by new schools and community spaces.

The very fact that we are bidding for the Games has already helped to secure £3bn in transport for east London over the next five years

The area’s network of rivers and canals will be cleaned up so that they are desirable to live near and to play alongside. And some of the channels and riverbanks will be widened to create shallows with reed beds, providing havens for wildlife.

There will also be more offices and retail areas. The very fact that we are bidding for the games has already helped to secure investment. The government’s spending review, announced last summer, has enabled us to to invest £3bn in transport for east London and the Olympics over the next five years. Among other things, this has meant the green light for the East London Line extension. And the recently approved planning applications for Olympic Park include an estimate that 7000 new jobs will be created in the construction industry and about 12,000 new jobs will be left in the legacy development.

This legacy will include 127 ha of urban parkland along the River Lea, linking Hackney Marshes with the Thames. It will be the biggest new urban park to be built in Europe for a generation.

Just as the Olympic Games are a celebration of the global community, so London’s Olympics will be a celebration of our diverse communities. By taking this approach, we are working to use the Olympic Games to transform the Lea Valley into a sought-after place for people to work, invest, visit and live, benefiting local people and visitors alike.

So, let’s hope we win them, then …