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Comment by lesstyzing | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I understand this. The Olympics certainly massively improved certain areas. Hackney Wick has went from a handful of warehouses and junkyards to having a brand new train station, lots of new apartment blocks, bars and restaurants. Stratford and the Olympic's area between it and Hackney Wick has also seen massive development. Expecting this development to come with stacks of council housing is unfortunately naive. London obviously has big issues when it comes to affordable housing but using that to discredit the huge amount of development that came about because of the Olympics is silly.

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Hackney Wick was already in the throws of gentrification, already had a perfectly fine working train station, already had a gallery scene and cheap housing popular with artists and a brewery, all before the Olympics.

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.

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

I first lived near Hackney Wick in 2014 and it was a bit of a dump then, so I can only imagine what it was like a few years before that! What's there now may be 'soulless' but it's a hell of a lot nicer.

The article notes that while massive development happened in Stratford, it was going to happen anyway even without the Olympics, and argues that the development would been much better and more human scale – better quality and more affordable housing, less oversized roads, etc.

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

How is it a good thing that employment places for working class people were replaced with housing and entertainment for yuppies?

Lots of (formerly) less affluent people owned houses in the area and now live close to much better facilities than they did before.

Nothing 'yuppie' about a nice park, Westfield shopping centre or a train station?

Gentrification and redevelopment has winners and losers. But I'm not sure the answer is to just let low income, rundown neighborhoods rot instead.

The working class people weren't "replaced", any that did leave just sold their houses to Yuppies. Many of them may have just became Middle Class. Or just now live in a much nicer area. Perish the thought.

A lot of the businesses were already struggling (as per the article) and given the 'death of the high street' and the pandemic, probably would have died anyway. It unfortunate, but natural, that if you improve an area with newer housing and amenities that different people will move in and lots of businesses will no longer be required while other types of businesses will be required.

>> probably would have died anyway.

So let this happen if it's going to, then deal with it accordingly. All they did was ensure it's demise by artificially picking winners and losers; there's nothing "natural" about it.

No one is claiming this Olympics (or any) doesn't involve massive amounts of development. It's sold as long-term, social & community focused, then turns out to be short-term, profit-oriented and single event, all funded by gobs of public money for generations to come. It may be naive, but it's certainly not silly. You would get a far better product to the types of development you highlight without the distraction and leakage of the Olympics.

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