London’s local Olympic legacy

Abstract

Purpose London’s Candidature bid projected an irresistible legacy of lasting benefits for host communities and small businesses. Yet, local post-Games perspectives paint a contrasted picture – one of becoming displaced. This paper aims to draw on event legacy, specifically in relation to rising rents, threats to small business sustainability and impact on place development by empirically examining London’s local embryonic legacies forming across one ex-hosting Olympic community: Central Greenwich. Design/methodology/approach In total, 43 interviews with local businesses (specifically, small retailers and hospitality businesses), local authorities, London-centric and national project actors and policymakers underpin analysis, supported by official London 2012 archival, documentary and media reports, were conducted to add texture and triangulate primary and secondary data sources. Findings Juxtaposing ex ante projections vs emerging ex post realities, this paper reveals a local legacy of small business failure fuelled by rising commercial rents and a wider indifference for protecting diverse urban high streets. Embroiled in a struggle to survive, and barely recognised as a key stakeholder and contributor to legacy, small businesses have and continue to become succeeded by a new business demographic in town: monochromatic global and national chains. Typifying the pervasive shift toward clone town spaces, this article argues that corporate colonisation displaces independent businesses, serves to homogenise town centres, dilute place-based cultural offer and simultaneously stunts access to a positive local development legacy. This paper argues that such processes lead to the production of urban blandscapes that may hamper destination competitiveness. Originality/value Examining event legacy, specifically local legacies forming across ex-host Olympic communities, is a latent, under-researched but vital and critical aspect of scholarship. Most event legacy analysis focuses on longer-term issues for residents, yet little research focuses on both local placed-based development challenges and small business sustainability and survival post-Games. More specifically, little research examines the potential relationship between event-led gentrification, associated rising rents and aforementioned clone town problematic. Revealing and amplifying the idiosyncratic local challenges generated through an in-depth empirically driven triangulation of key local business, policy, governmental and non-governmental perspectives, is a central contribution of this article missing from extant literatures. This paper considers different ways those responsible for event legacy, place managers and developers can combat such aforementioned post-Games challenges.

Futbolda Giyilebilir Teknoloji ve Performans Takibi

“…Lee, 2006) gibi daha olumlu yönler de vardır. Spor açısından antrenörlük/ koçluk şekilleri ve sporun kültürel bir ürün olduğu fikrini içeren spor mirası da bu olumlu yönlere dahil edilmektedir (Duignan, 2018;Preuss, 2015). Olumsuz tarafı, göçmen işçiler de dahil olmak üzere farklı kültürel geçmişe sahip insanların akınının bir sonucu olarak topluluklar içinde artan gerilim meydana gelebilir.…”

Establishing a statement of principles for community engagement with civil engineering

“…For example, during preparation for the London Olympics despite initiatives such as a public competition to select suitable names for neighbourhoods surrounding the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, there were limited wider public participation exercises that failed to engage with the 'experience and feeling' of places, which would have helped to influence and enhance community dynamics (Gold and Gold, 2020). This led to a local legacy of small business failure fuelled by rising rents and homogenisation of the local area, diluting placebased cultural offerings (Duignan, 2019).…”

Sustainability in Mega-Events: Beyond Qatar 2022

“…Other pillars of sustainability, such as the economic [92][93][94][95] or social sustainability [96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103], attract less individual attention, even though they are equally important to consider as the environmental issues because they are all interrelated. However, several studies consider these topics under the study approach of multisectoral legacies [3,14,19,22,[104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114][115][116][117][118][119][120], with "legacy" as one of the most important concepts in the conception of SMEs. Other subjects considered are buildings [121][122][123][124], business [125], education [126], climate [127], and organization [128][129][130].…”