The impact of Olympic-led urban regeneration on ethnic minority residents in London : a right to the city perspective

Abstract

The rhetoric of the Legacy 2012 regeneration is to ‘transform the heart of East London’ emphasising creation of employment for local people and modern facilities, which were anticipated to attract mega-sporting events in the future. Since industrialisation, East London has been known to contain the poorest ethnic minority population in London, the majority of whom live in diverse ethnic enclaves. In the aftermath of deindustrialisation, the residents are experiencing unemployment, poor housing, and lower levels of educational attainment while often becoming dependent on benefit payments. In addition to the Legacy Master Planning Framework (ODA1 , 2007), LLDC2 ’s publications such as ‘A Walk around the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park’, ‘Community Engagement Policy’, ‘Equality and Inclusion Policy’ were intended to create opportunities for the locals with a view to closing the deprivation gap between the Olympic host boroughs and the rest of London. Drawing on some of the Olympic-led urban development projects in the past, the challenge is to understand the actual benefits derived from these projects, against a background of there usually being an enormous gap between rhetoric and reality in market-driven urban regeneration projects. In this context, the research aims to explore the extent to which the legacy-led regeneration efforts have supported the inclusion of ethnic minority residents in the Legacy Corporation and its surrounding area from a ‘right to the city’ perspective. The theoretical framework adopted Purcell’s (2002) ‘right to participation’ (e.g. residents’ central role in decision making processes) and ‘right to appropriation’ (e.g. access and use of urban spaces), underpinned by Lefebvre’s (1991) philosophical notion of the ‘right to the city’. The research methodology was based on qualitative methods (i.e. semi-structured interviews, photo-elicitation interviews, and the researcher’s direct and unobtrusive observations) to gather empirical evidence from two wards – Hackney Wick and Bromley-by-Bow – with a view to exploring ethnic minority communities’ ‘de facto’ rights and ‘conjoint claims’ amidst the legacy-led regeneration process. The findings provide the basis for the argument that the games-led regeneration is contributing to an unjust trade-off between ‘deprived’ pre-existing residents and ‘upper class’ gentrifiers, ignoring the real and organic need of the poor ethnic minority communities. Moreover, at the time of fieldwork (2015), the top-down and expert-led participatory mechanisms (including residents’ direct participation, representative participation through councillors, etc.) had not ensured ethnic minority residents’ deliberate participation during planning and implementation of the regeneration projects. The empirical evidence suggests that the Olympic promise of socio-spatial transformations in terms of materialising ethnic minority residents ‘de facto’ rights and ‘conjoint claims’ (e.g. jobs, housing etc.) were sidelined to support a top-down neoliberal agenda. The research findings reveal how the targeted ethnic minority residents, although living in a pluralist society, remain socio-spatially excluded amidst the top-down legacy led regeneration process. The application of a rights-based theoretical framework increased the understanding of problems and barriers (e.g. in relation to participating and appropriating the legacy-led transformed spaces) hat hindered residents’ participation and appropriation in a top-down sport-led regeneration process. The research also contributes empirical knowledge in relation to actual benefits (e.g. jobs, housing) derived from mega-event legacies, which is important as more cities are now drawn to host mega-events with a view to achieving subsequent legacies.