After so many other Olympic sites ended up left to rot, London 2012 was supposed to be different. But who has really benefited from this orgy of development?
To Paul Amuzie, it seemed like a life-changing opportunity. He was 16 and living in temporary accommodation with his mother and three siblings, having moved from home to home since his parents divorced. The east London borough where he lived, Newham, was home to some of the most deprived and overcrowded wards in the country. Now, it was being proposed as the location of the Olympic village in London’s bid to host the 2012 games.
As a politically active student at St Bonaventure’s school, just east of the designated site, Amuzie had become involved in local campaigns to reduce street violence after a spate of local stabbings, earning his place as an ambassador on the council’s young mayor’s team. When the Olympic bid was announced in 2003, he directed all his energies towards boosting local support for the games, on the basis that it would bring jobs, safer streets and the chance, one day, for someone like him to rent or even buy their own home. “This wasn’t just going to be a sports event, with developers making lots of money,” Amuzie told me. “It was about our future.”
