‘A massive betrayal’: how London’s Olympic legacy was sold out

So it doesn't seem at all silly to criticise the Olympics for degrading an already-existing development plan.

Now you have some soulless gross blocks of flats built on a flood plain that'll all be crumbling before the decade is out.

Think you're naive to what the area was before, to be honest. Without the Olympics it would have done just fine.

Personally I'm not sure fibre is even all that important anymore. My previous flat had abysmal slow ADSL, and no fibre available, but blisteringly fast 5G that you could get for £30/month with no contract.

I was hoping they would get it for that alone… but I want nothing to do with ever hosting it locally.

Most countries have plenty of athletic facilities. Adding / expanding local facilities seems wasteful.

Unfortunately the reality is that gentrification and regeneration go hand in hand. If you make an area modern, clean and pleasant then it will become desirable. Desirable areas cost more because they are desirable. Businesses invest in improving areas because that will make them more valuable.

The problems in Stratford - "locals" getting driven out by new developments - are not really due to the Olympics. They're playing out in every corner of London (and many other western cities), and the causes are the familiar bogeymen of rising housing costs - low interest rates, population growth and demographics, and the increasing concentration of high paying jobs in a limited number of cities.

The Los Angeles area has so many pro sports teams with stadiums or arenas and so many colleges with stadiums or arenas that most of what they needed was already covered. They only had to build two new permanent venues and make some temporary adjustments to some of the existing ones.

The new ones were a velodrome and a swim stadium, both paid for by corporate sponsors. The velodrome was built at a Cal State university paid for by 7-11, and the swim stadium was built at USC and paid for by McDonalds.

Both of those venues were useful after the Olympics. The velodrome was the only Olympic standard velodrome in the US and remained in use until 2004 when it was replaced with a bigger facility nearby that included an Olympic velodrome plus facilities for some other sports. The swim stadium hosted many major swim events until 2013 when it was closed and renovated and resumes hosting major events.

Los Angeles was also able to make its Olympic Village and athlete housing cheaply. They used undergraduate housing at USC and UCLA. Combined they have enough on-campus housing for something like 35000 undergraduates, most of which is empty over the summer.

Los Angeles has so much normally going on when it comes to large events and tourism that an Olympics is not really a big deal there when it comes to infrastructure.

There aren't many democracies left willing to pay for either of these mega events (or in case of F1, the starting fees for the teams), but there will always be a decent supply of dictatorships or oil sheiks wishing to white-wash their image and a supply of delegates/decisionmakers who can be bribed appropriately.

Eh. People have been talking about this for fifty years. I wouldn't hold my breath.

To a logical person this makes the most sense to host a sporting event like that.

But what you're not understanding is it's not a sporting event, it's a grift. And hosting it in one place doesn't benefit the Olympic committee at all. Why would you host something in one space and be responsible for it when you can have cities beg and throw money at you to host in their city then leave and make them deal with cleaning it up after.