Recently in London Olympics Category

A double-page spread in the Times' Bricks & Mortar section today has the screaming headline "Inner-city regeneration has 'failed to materialise'".

Another feature in the four page section asks whether the 2012 Olympic project is enough to "save Stratford", whatever that means, and there's a review of Heron's planned 36-storey tower in the City.

I will be studying this feature over the weekend and formally responding to my friends at The Times, as is right and proper, but I am afraid to say that I have been expecting this for some time.

Regular readers of this blog will know how deeply troubled I am about the waste that we've witnessed in the regeneration sector over the last ten years and our attenuated need to do something about it and fast. Sooner or later, someone was going to notice. And I'm sorry to say I predict a spate of such articles in the next few weeks. There has been waste. And people are right to be angry.

BURA chips away at our mission to share best practice and we are making some real inroads at sharing what works out there and - more importantly - what doesn't. We must step up our efforts on this front.

Our very best offer is Regeneration Masterclass 2010. Never before has it been as important to have a forum to enable senior managers from the public private and community sectors to meet, learn and share knowledge.

There must be easier ways of making a living, you mutter to yourself as you battle with the pre-paid ticket machine at Paddington before clambering aboard a train to Newport (!) to spend two days in the strangely enervating resort hotel known as the "Celtic Manor" (or "Escalators R Us" to the cynical) for Resi 09.

What a very bizarre place it is. Even more bizarre with 1,000 or so of your closest friends from the resi industry sculling around within it, like peas in a biscuit tin. Doesn't bear thinking about really.

I leapt out of the taxi to bump straight into dear old Richard Page and David Green of Delph properties (made an assignation to meet them later in the bar) and whizzed into an Olympics Legacy Workshop with Mathieu Le Noir (or Matt Black to you) of CBRE being smug-and-knowledgeable and Elliott Lipton of First Base being urbane-and-progressive (made an assignation to meet Matt later in the bar).

So far so good.

Then into a workshop on the future of mortgage finance (I think it was) with the lovely Andrew Pratt of Grainger. Andrew is a very good friend and I have genuinely never heard anyone make fun of his name before but when someone uttered the immortal words "The-Bank-of-Pratt is clearly more generous than The-Bank-of-Mum-and-Dad" the comic timing was such, that the room fell about. Made an assignation to meet Andrew later in the bar (but as Grainger was - rather generously - buying me dinner, then perhaps this wasn't strictly necessary).

Rocked up to the Olympics Legacy Developers Forum on Thursday. Wouldn't have missed it for the world. Under the careful stewardship of Nick Ritblat, the group was formed as a sort of think tank for ideas about the Legacy.

The divine Julian Barwick was there, with a work experience lad in tow (he practices what he preaches) as was David Camp (on sparkling form) and dear old Robert John (who never lets me get away with a trick but hey! I love him for it!).

The housebuilders were a bit on the missing list as most had decamped to Wales for the Resi 09 show - I schlepped down there in the afternoon and will report on this in the next blog - but Barratt's Alistair Baird held the fort for the resi sector.

I was late, but that didn't stop me being gobby so they all ripped the proverbial. Nigel Hugill is normally very luminous on these occasions but sadly was away being luminous in Wales so we missed him.

But we had the nice man from Westfield (who, of course, had shown the way with the investment well before we won the Olympics bid) and Nick from Legal & General (I'm offering to run his campaign for a second runway at Stansted; I've got bored with the Heathrow debate now) as well as the formidable Martin Chase from DTZ.

And, of course, we were introduced to Andrew Altman for the first time. And it was a real real pleasure. I was quite (well, very, actually) impressed. He clearly knows his stuff. Better still, he doesn't pretend to know what he clearly doesn't know (such as the British planning system) and he is certainly listening.

I was on the blower with my boss at CB Richard Ellis, Adrian Bunnis, (referred to, in genuine reverence, by his team as "The Bunni" - I think in some oblique cross-reference to "The Jedi"; actually and, I say this in all sincerity, the humour of surveyors is one of the very best things about them), anyway, we were having one of our immensely pleasurable rows about urban regeneration and the Royal Docks when he burst into fits of laughter.

Well, says I, in best huffy tone, "If you're just going to laugh at me then I'm going," whereupon he explained that, looking out of his office window at the Maplin across the street (you know, the one in Cheapside) he's seen two of our best boys-in-blue apprehend a shoplifter and retrieve a veritable pile of clobber from every pocket of this bloke's voluminous coat (which had clearly been designed for the purpose).

Well! I got a blow-by-blow account of every article of kit that was retrieved before blokey was carted off in the meat wagon and Adrian clearly enjoyed every minute of it (and I guess I did too, if somewhat at one remove). Nice to see a professional at work, we agreed (although couldn't be that much of a professional since he got caught).

Makes a change from our usual argy-bargy about the quality of the output from the housebuilder industry anyway.

I like London in August. You tend to get space to think. And with the parliamentary recess well underway and most of our elected representatives away, we have a welcome opportunity to reflect on what has been a truly turbulent year.

In the last few months it has sometimes been very hard to truly make sense of what is happening. Failed financial services sector, collapse in the property market, Allowance-Gate, soaring unemployment, nationalised banks, an election on the horizon, the London Olympics around the corner......we certainly live in a funny old world.

Sometimes you need some distance and perspective. Recharging the batteries is essential - we're only human after all - harnessing every ounce of energy and focus to address these challenges is vital.

Returning to London, I was really disappointed to catch up on the ongoing dispute between National Express and the RMT causing so much disruption to the lives of poor commuters travelling to London from East Anglia.