It is a truism that the most widely read news stories in any publication involve bad news or what journalists like to call "people stories". Combine the two and you will please your editor.
In spite of this job remit, it would be churlish be negative about the Olympic Delivery Authority's updated plans for Stratford's Olympic Park post 2012, which seem to be a good thing all round for east London.
The ODA says it is creating a 250 parklands that will be the largest new urban park in the UK for over 100 years. I'm sure that is true but, whatever, it is very big and it is very green and a significant improvement on the brown fields that previously inhabited the area. You can see pictures of what the ODA and the OPLC are planning here
The plans include much to delight the people of east London too including: 'Hanging gardens' 30ft above ground on the footbridge from Stratford City with meadows, lawns, shrubs and rows of trees; a tree-lined 'park road' into the north of the Park modelled on The Mall and Birdcage Walk next to St James' and Hyde Park; a regional sports club set in parklands centred on the original Eton Manor Boys Club war memorial; 4,000 semi-mature trees, 300,000 wetlands plants and hundreds of thousands of plants and bulbs in varied parklands including wooded hills, meadows, ponds, lawns, gardens and wet woodlands; a six metre wide, one mile road cycle circuit built into the parklands around the Velodrome and crossing the River Lea; 6km of off-road mountain bike tracks and a network of cycle paths across the Park including National Route 1; a large oval lawn with an amphitheatre setting in the north of the Park suitable for games, picnics and other leisure activities; the London 2012 Garden stretching for half a mile on the Waterworks riverbank between the Aquatics Centre and Olympic Stadium; a riverside Royal Horticultural Society Great British Garden overlooking the Olympic Stadium; four football fields (2.1 hectares) worth of secure and accessible allotments; 3 km of restored and accessible previously neglected rivers, including the original Carpenters Lock restored in a riverside bowl in the centre of the park, connecting the northern and southern areas.
Looks like I'm going to have to be churlish! I note you say this park is going to be the 'largest new urban park in the UK for 100 years'. But of course this isn't what the LDA/ODA said. It was to be the 'largest new urban park in Europe for 150 years', which it most definitely wasn't. This phrase is still repeated in much that is written about the park. So why the change? Well actually because some people pointed out it wasn't true, just like lots of other Olympic claims, http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/node/774. There are more FoIs on the subject which I haven't bothered to write up yet. The ODA then started putting out the 100 years in the UK message. Actually they also say '100 years in London'. The arguments put forward by LODA to justify their original claim are abstruse and absurd! Of course, it may well be that this park will turn out to be a nice park. But it isn't what it was claimed to be.
Then there's the fact that they already had 92.8 hectares of open space available including two beautiful open spaces at Arena Field and the Eastway before anything was done. This will increase to 110 hectares, so not such a great gain in terms of area. And of course, the previous spaces had all sorts of benefits in terms of bio-diversity just because so many of them were not micro-managed. The Eastway site included the amazing Manor Gardens allotments, now reduced to a shadow of their former selves and to be further divided up in their possible relocation back to this Olympic park.
Who will benefit from this new park? Well of course the land around the park will be the highest value land left over from the Olympics and will most likely be sold to private developers and turned into gated estates.
A new park could have been created regardless of the Olympics. The designs for the Stratford City project included drawings of a potential park which could be created on the west of the river lea, just like this park, but leaving the Eastway and Arena Field in place. The argument advanced is that this would never have happened without the Olympics. So we have to spend over £11billion on this project to get this park. Planning failure is used to justify the Olympics.
The 2012 advocates portrayed the Lea Valley as a wasteland. Mr Higgins called it 'a scar', not a description the LVRPA included in its guide to the area or one that Clays Lane residents agreed with. The ODA rubbished the Eastway as scrubland. Residents at Clays Lane were even told in evidence to the CPO Inquirey they were 'isolated' by the green space at the Eastway and the LDA witness said anyway only 12 had said they were interested in living next to a green space. Actually the true statistic from the Fluid survey was over 300 who had specifically mentioned how much they valued this amenity. The witness was asked whether he was aware of whether he was misrepresenting the facts. He said 'yes', without blushing.
Shameless misrepresentation is an Olympic industry.