Brand London 2012 and ‘The Heart of East London’: Competing Urban Agendas at the 2012 Games

Abstract

In its bid to host the 2012 Games in London, the UK government committed to regenerate East London. This article opens by considering East London’s comparative deprivation and what its regeneration would mean. Then, rather than focusing on long-term material evidence of regeneration which, by its nature, is mostly not yet available, this article explores how London – and particularly East London – was and was not represented by London 2012 Games organizers. It argues that East London, East Londoners and East London’s comparative deprivations were predominantly occluded from view, displaced by focuses on West and central London, a corporate brand ‘London 2012’ and a series of island-like shopping opportunities. Where and when brand London 2012 did allow East London to come into public view, at the Olympic Park, it was as flowery meadows. These apparently harked back to an Edenic pre-industrial past, artlessly masking the site’s actual industrial past, not to mention East London’s current high rates of un- and underemployment. The article argues that these representational displacements and neutralizations of East London damagingly suppress the important incentives for its regeneration: to redress acute deprivation and inequality. The article concludes that East London’s realities must be brought back into focus to incentivize urgently needed regeneration.