Sport and the city: The olympic games and the reimagining of East London

Abstract

In view of political consensus on ever-greater urban expansion, Lindsay looks at the way large-scale developmental initiatives are linked to high-profile sporting megaevents as powerful transformative mechanisms of the modern age. One prominent example was the long-desired regeneration of deprived parts of post-industrial East London on the occasion of the London 2012 Olympic Games. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research conducted during East London’s seven-year Olympic delivery phase, Lindsay explores the empirical dynamics of sport-enabled ‘super-sized’ and ‘super-speed’ regeneration. He offers a critical examination of the experiential realities of those who by choice or circumstance were directly affected by the reclamation of space. Lindsay contributes to the theoretical and methodological debate about how to map the rhetoric and realities of urban regeneration, explaining how a nuanced ethnographic approach has helped to address adequately spatial and social change on this scale.