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London riots: lessons for urban policy

The Sheet — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 11:55:46 +0000

At architecture journal bdonline, Wouter Vanstiphout's piece about the planning and related political implications of the riots begins in urban France:

In November 2005 French President Jacques Chirac welcomed back normality, after weeks of riots in the French banlieues. Instead of 1,000 to 1,500 vehicles being burnt every night, it went back to 163, and then kept to the normal 50 to 150. Every night of the year dozens of cars are being set on fire in the French banlieues and this had been going on for years on end.
What is normality to a French banlieue? It can mean that in the morning the elderly, women and children – and sometimes architects and historians looking for modernist housing projects from the sixties – can freely roam between the slabs and blocks, shop, play and look around.
After that the unemployed young men appear from their bedrooms and take up their positions near the entrances of the apartment blocks and on street corners. The elderly, women and children scuttle back home and the tourists leave altogether. The young men whistle and sign to each other, taunt and threaten the belated visitors and the semi-militarised police that buzz by in vans.
In many French banlieues, day turns into night around noon. Once, in one of these places, we approached a group of heavily armed policemen to ask for directions on the central square of a French housing estate.
They looked around nervously and said we shouldn't stand still for too long, because one of the gangs could start throwing rocks. They then said that we should really really be back in the historic city centre within the hour; it was 3pm. They themselves would be out of there at dusk, at the latest. This was between riots, this was normality.

I know of nowhere in London that matches that description, but can we rule such scenarios out of the capital's future? The comparison is inexact: "banlieue" means the urban outskirts, not the inner city areas where our riots began and mostly occurred. However, some fear that the effect of the government's housing and other benefit reforms will be to foster banlieue-type concentrations of social marginalisation in London's poorer suburbs, making the capital's current situation even worse.

Vanstiphout continues:

In many ways, the [French] riots were "just" spectacular worsenings of a chronic condition, extrapolations on a permanent crisis lived by millions, but neglected by tens of millions. Something became visible for a moment, and then disappeared again, as a bad dream. Behind the scenes however a mechanism is in place that contains the badness, that keeps it from spilling over again, while making it inevitable that it will...the banlieues and their inhabitants have been effectively abandoned...
One person did well out of it, though: Nicolas Sarkozy, who as a minister of the interior fanned the flames by going on television, standing shoulder to shoulder with the riot police and calling the rioters scum (racaille) who would be wiped away; then rode the wave of popular fear all the way to the presidency, from where he invited a battalion of international architects to give back France its glory, by designing futures of the French capital, "Le Grand Paris"....
Right now it has become very difficult to think of an urban politics, let alone an urban planning or design approach that would be able to take on the underlying problems of riots like the ones in the UK in a serious way.
I do not think that the reason is that politics and planning have realised their limitations to shape society. I think that the reason is that urban politics and hence planning and urban design are too often treating the city with ulterior motives, instead of actually working for the city itself. The city has become a tool to achieve goals, political, cultural, economic or even environmental [my emphasis].
Treating the city in this way means that we are constantly passing judgment on what the city should be, and who should be there, and what they should be doing, instead of trying to understand what the city actually is, who really lives there and what they are doing. This produces a dangerous process of idealisation, denying whole areas, whole groups, their place in the urban community, because they do not fit the picture.

Something there for politicians of all persuasions to reflect on. And there's more:

It is much too soon to say anything about the relationship between the gentrification of Brixton or the coming of the Olympics to London, and the current explosion of violent alienation. But if we imagine another kind of urban politics, one that does not take into account a marketable image of the city, but the reality of the entire community, it would probably have entirely different priorities.
The first would be to work against the ever sharpening inequality of London, making it one of the unfairest cities in Europe, in poverty levels, education, crime and other indicators.
But then the reality of urban riots is that they have always turned out to be the opposite of a learning experience for a city. Riots have nearly always resulted in politicians simplifying the problem even more, and citizens looking away even further.
After a riot, your average city will become more afraid, more authoritarian, more segregated, more exclusive and less tolerant. That is the real tragedy of the post-war western urban riot, first it shocks and terrifies us, then for a moment it makes us see flashes of the kind of city we should be working towards, which then fades away into the darkness. Back to normal.

A "normal" that is unacceptable.

Wouter Vanstiphout is a partner at Crimson Architectural Historians in Rotterdam and professor of Design & Politics at the Technical University Delft. He is currently researching the relationship between urban riots and urban planning. I'm very grateful to @amarkodio for bringing Vanstiphout's article to my attention.

Dave Hill

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London 2012: Olympic flame will be lit in one year’s time, but still much to do

The Sheet — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:07:55 +0000

IOC hail progress as Tom Daley dives into Aquatics Centre pool, completed on time and budget

With 366 days to go, 2012 being a leap year, until the Olympic flame is lit in east London, organisers, the government and the International Olympic Committee are queuing up to hail progress to date.

Wednesday's events to mark the milestone, which will see the £269m Zaha Hadid designed Aquatics Centre formally handed over to organisers by the Olympic Delivery Authority and Tom Daley diving into the pool, will have an air of celebration.

"Marking one year to go, by diving in the Aquatics Centre is an incredible honour. Only a few years ago, this was a distant dream," said Daley, who finished fifth at the world championships in Shanghai on Sunday. "I can't wait for next year and the honour of representing Team GB." But although world class athletes are beginning to test the venues, there remains much to do.

Venues

The Aquatics Centre is the sixth and final permanent venue to be handed over to organisers by the ODA, which has spent £7.25bn of public money building them. Chairman John Armitt said the successful completion of the venues had helped boost the image of British contractors around the world.

"It's very satisfying to be handing it over on time and keeping within the budget. It's a great tribute to everybody that has played a part in this," he told the Guardian. "It is something that as a country and an industry we should be proud of and we should try to maximise opportunities in other parts of the world while memories are still fresh about what the industry can do."

Some venues, especially the velodrome that has already been nominated for the Stirling Prize, have garnered more plaudits than others. The clean lines and simplicity of the stadium have also been praised but there has been criticism of the ugly temporary "water wings" that have been attached to the aquatics centre to boost the capacity to 17,500 for the Games. When it was designed, the high cost was justified by the signature design, which will be obscured by the temporary stands. "When you're inside it, it's fabulous," says Armitt, diplomatically.

Despite outward appearances, the London organising committee still has a huge task. Each venue must be "fitted out", a task that includes the laying of the track in the main stadium, and several major temporary venues must be built from scratch. They include a 15,000 capacity hockey stadium, a 23,000 capacity arena for the equestrian events at Greenwich Park and a 15,000 seat bowl on Horseguard's Parade for the beach volleyball.

Tickets

London organising committee chief executive Paul Deighton has confirmed the last batch of 1.2m tickets that will go on sale from December will first be made available exclusively to those who took part in the initial ballot in April and have yet to get a ticket. Around 6m tickets have already been sold, considered unprecedented with a year to go, with only around 1.5m for football matches around the country and those final 1.2m across all sports – to be made available when the final seating configurations are decided – remaining. Next year, Locog also plans to sell "non-event tickets" which will allow entry to the park but not the venues.

Later this year, millions of free tickets for the live sites, with big screens and concerts in Hyde Park, Victoria Park and Potter's Fields will also be made available on a first come, first served basis. The mantra from Locog chairman Lord Coe and other organisers has been that while they understand the "disappointment" created by the huge demand, which saw 22m applications in the initial rush for tickets, they stand by the controversial process.

Transport

Ever since London was awarded the Games in 2005, transport has been considered a potential achilles heel. The ODA passed responsibility for operational matters to Transport for London last year, but retains an overall co-ordination role. The first stirrings of a backlash have already been felt about the so-called "Olympic lanes" that will whisk 18,000 athletes and officials around the capital during the Games.

They make up roughly a third of the 109-mile Olympic Route Network and have already sparked loud protests from London's black cab drivers. Meanwhile, much will rest on the ability of organisers to persuade businesses and individuals to modify their behaviour during the Games.

"The message must be business as unusual," said Armitt. They take some comfort from the variety of routes into Stratford, including the Jubilee Line and the new Javelin train from St Pancras, but will be desperate to avoid a millennium eve style meltdown.

On the nine busiest days of the Games there will be more than 1m Olympics-related journeys, with a report earlier this year warning of "extreme" conditions on a system already "creaking at the seams".

Security

Olympics minister Hugh Robertson said that security plans needed rethinking when the coalition came to power. Before she quit, Lady Neville-Jones led a government review that resulted in the government predicting security at Games time could be delivered for £475m, though the overall £600m envelope will be retained.

Ministers and organisers have sought to play down the significance of the resignation of Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, but he said in his own statement that a key reason for it was to allow time to get someone new in place for the Olympics. Locog will spend £282m on security within the venues, chiefly through contractor G4S, but there will also need to call on several thousand non-uniformed military personnel.

'Look and feel'

For all the operational challenges Coe's organising committee will face, in many ways the bigger challenge is building public enthusiasm for the Games to reach a crescendo around 27 July next year when the flame is lit. Coe has talked of Britain being a "slow burn" nation. He hopes the torch relay, which will begin at Land's End on 19 May and visit 74 locations in 70 days via 8,000 runners, will be the point at which cynicism is cast aside and enthusiasm ignites.

Part of the task will be to keep those without tickets engaged, through the big screens planned for cities throughout the country and cultural events that will culminate in Festival 2012. London mayor Boris Johnson has a budget to "dress" key areas of the city, including placing Olympic rings on the capital's landmarks. The BBC, which has promised to broadcast every event from every venue live, will also have a big role to play.

Legacy

Given the relatively smooth progress of organisers to date, much of the controversy has centred on the legacy claims that helped secure the Games in the first place. The Olympic Park Legacy Company has taken on responsibility for the park after the Games and must prove it can make a commercial success of it while meeting the needs of local residents.

The fate of the stadium, the object of a furious row between Spurs and West Ham, is mired in high court litigation and it will face searching scrutiny over the affordability of thousands of homes that will be left behind, partly the athletes village.

One of the biggest challenges for the OPLC will be finding a tenant for the cavernous media centre, although there are renewed hopes that a major broadcaster may take an interest.

But even more of a challenge is the "soft legacy", with figures showing that the number of people playing sport is resolutely refusing to budge and ongoing debate about whether the predicted opportunity to get more young people engaged in sport, build links between clubs and schools and raise the profile and quality of coaching, is really being seized. They were famously planting the trees in Athens the day before the opening ceremony, but the landscaping on the Olympic Park is starting to take shape.

More than 4,000 new trees are planned, with 1,500 already planted. Over 300,000 wetland plants have been planted and there are bold claims for the Park that will be left behind. Eventually, there will be up to 11,000 new homes on the site, in the heart of an area that the Olympic Park Legacy Company hopes will be resurgent. Westfield, the giant shopping mall at the entrance to the Park and on which politicians are relying for many of their legacy claims about jobs and regeneration, opens for business in September.

Owen Gibson

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Boris Johnson’s London Cycle Hire scheme flogs our birthright to Barclays

The Sheet — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:46:52 +0000

The mayor's deal has smothered London's public spaces with what may be the largest piece of corporate branding in existence

London's long-awaited cycle-hire scheme is launched this week. While there's no doubt it's a valuable addition to the capital's public transport options, it strikes yet another blow to the idea of London as a dignified city. First of all, there's the name. Paris has the Velib, Montreal has the Bixi; what does London get? Barclays Cycle Hire. Clearly the good people at Barclays marketing thought long and hard about that one.

Maybe it's not worth getting too wound up about the name – selling the rights to popular institutions is unlikely to make anyone who watches, say, the Barclays Premier League or the Npower Championship even blink. What is new, however, is the prospect of more than a hundred kilometres of the capital's road surface being branded with corporate livery. The city's new dedicated cycle lanes – two of which recently opened, with another ten to come before the Olympics – are called "Barclays Cycle Superhighways" and painted Barclays blue.

London can now claim the dubious honour of hosting what is surely the largest piece of corporate branding in existence. It's not just the scale, the mind-blowing square footage, that is shocking about this – it's the principle. We're not talking about some supersized billboard here: we're talking about the mayor selling off the very road beneath our wheels – one of the few parts of a city that counts indisputably as public space. Whether they realise it or not, whether or not they even care, from now on thousands of cyclists are doomed to commute on a giant Barclays ad.

The sponsorship deal, worth £25m, has been presented as a coup for Boris Johnson. It has enabled him to recover some of the £140m Transport for London spent on the cycle-hire scheme and has even been presented as "payback" for the mayor's support of the banks during the credit crunch. Surely, however, £25m is a small price to pay for such an invasive piece of branding? If a city of the global stature of London can't afford to provide rental bikes without turning its urban fabric into a massive endorsement, we're in trouble.

There is something, too, in the gibes suggesting this is not just Barclays blue but Tory blue. Neither New Labour nor former mayor Ken Livingstone did anything to prevent the growing privatisation of the city, but it is hard to imagine Livingstone selling off a chunk of the public realm in such brazen fashion. Johnson seemingly lacks any sensitivity to the ethical or aesthetic side-effects of his deal-making – this is, after all, the man who condemned the Stratford Olympics site to a hideous 115m-high sculpture – precisely the kind of vainglorious ego trip the Olympics can do without – based on a 45-second chat with Britain's richest man in the cloakroom at Davos. We must be careful not to assume a loss of innocence; private ownership and interests have held sway in this city for centuries, and often cooperation between private and public bodies is the best way to meet the city's needs. However, the public realm that the Victorians handed over to municipal authorities to manage in the public good – including streets and pavements, squares, and infrastructure such as transport and sewage networks – has been under steady assault since the privatisation of the Thatcher years.

A decade ago, Naomi Klein argued in her book No Logo that we had reached a point where it seemed nothing could happen anymore without a corporate sponsor. The inevitable upshot of their growing social power was that brands wanted an expanded visual presence. T-shirt logos and media advertisements were no longer enough: branding had to be a fully immersive experience. As the superhighways prove, there is no amount of space a brand will not happily fill, with public bodies all too willing to hand it over. TfL is becoming ever more imaginative about the bits of Tube stations it will sell off to advertisers – including, now, the space between escalators and the gates of the exit barriers. Every year the Regent Street Christmas lights, once a public gesture organised by the Regent Street Association, turn a major thoroughfare into a 3D advert for some fashion label or blockbuster movie.

Increasingly entire pieces of London have become brands in their own right, a process that began in the 1980s with the privately owned Canary Wharf development. Since then, so-called "business improvement districts" have been popping up all over the capital under the banner of regeneration: Broadgate in the City, Paddington Basin, Kings Cross Central, the new Spitalfields Market, the More London development near Tower Bridge. It's a national phenomenon, too, exemplified by "malls without walls" such as Liverpool ONE or Brindleyplace in Birmingham. They might look like other parts of the city, but they are very different. Stroll through Broadgate and you'll notice the logo of developer British Land studding the pavements. These are privately owned developments, policed by private security guards who can throw you out for the slightest misdemeanour or – if you happen to be sleeping rough, say – simply for disrupting the projection of affluence. In the case of More London – a series of sterile glass blocks set amid some rather uptight landscaping on the South Bank – the very name is a deliberate deception. The developers are trying to claim this is just an ordinary piece of the city. Don't believe it.

Anyone who wants to find out more about the insidious privatisation of British cities should read Anna Minton's latest book, Ground Control. The point is that we are in danger or running out of unbranded space. Though it may seem innocuous, the branding of cycle lanes sets an all-too-exploitable precedent. As citizens we have a communal birthright, which includes the public realm. Our representatives are supposed to protect that – not sell it off to corporations who are neither responsible nor accountable for the spaces of which they claim symbolic ownership. Politicians seem only too ready to turn our cities into horizontal billboards. If we're not vigilant, the urban landscape is going to become a brandscape.

Justin McGuirk

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A backbench prince | Peter Preston

The Sheet — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 18:00:18 +0000

If only Charles had gone into politics. He'd have been a natural wet, and perfect lobby fodder

Suppose that, three decades and more ago, Prince Charles had actually wanted to do what his demons told him. Suppose, up front, renouncing all private letters and salon whispers, he'd become a proper, elected politician: say, the Hon Member for Highgrove or Cornwall West. What would have happened then?

No great ideological problems, perhaps. Charles at the end of the 70s was a natural knight of the shire, which meant – at the dawn of the Thatcher era – being a "wet". He'd have sipped Earl Grey in the tearoom with Jim Prior and Francis Pym, waving to Willie Whitelaw across buttered scones. He'd have given little-reported speeches about social fractures in Britain. He'd have been on Newsnight after the Brixton riots, calling for more cash, more healing, more love and understanding. Archbishop Runcie would have hugged him close. But, look: see the scowl on the Lady's face.

Out, out, damned wets! Charlie MP could probably have slunk through the Falklands. After all, it was our empire, our navy and his brother up there in a chopper. But they play damned good polo in Argentina. He was bound to feel unease. And once Mrs T was in her pomp, rejoicing, roasting old Runcieballs for guilt-dipped sermons, then Charlie would have been doomed to the backbenches. No dreams of becoming a minister of state at agriculture or parliamentary secretary for privileged education. He was to sit at the back, the most docile of lobby fodder, frowning while miners struck (that fractured society bit again), pursing his lips through the Lawson boom (though naturally pocketing its fruits), celebrating in his muted way when some Hezza fellow laid the bloody woman low.

A career reborn? Alas, public and private lives didn't mingle. That simpering blonde wife and two adorable boys he'd featured in his election pamphlets. That passionate old flame with the compliant hubbie who, unlike the flame, always went out. Those horrible stories in the News of the World.

It was so, so distressing, the end of everything surely: and yet, once David Mellor sucked toes and Edwina Currie started bathing with John Major, the circus of shame moved on and he was left, still standing, free to make speeches about saving the landscape for landowners, eating organic pies and pâtés from a neat little food company he'd worked on between wives, and attacking nasty, if renowned, architects building nasty, if renowned, buildings. Somehow the dear wet days of on-one-hand-and-on-the-other were dead and gone for Charlie MP. Now he knew what he didn't like.

But was anybody listening? Not as Ken Livingstone's skyscrapers marched across London. Not as ever younger prime ministers took over in Downing Street. Maybe a word in the right ear would be better than sounding off? Maybe a few letters in green ink could give him the influence he craved? Perhaps coffee with passing emirs – as chairman of the Parliamentary Qatar Friendship Society – might stop that obscene mess near Chelsea Bridge?

Behind the scenes was better than front of house, he thought. Lying low could bring many things he loathed low, too. But then, one bleak morning, he opened the Telegraph and saw his own face frowning out at him. Charlie Windsor in Moated Duck House Cash Claim Horror, the headline howled. Supposed Charities Pushed MP's Personal Passions! Tory Knight's Fingers in Porky Pie!

And so, of course, his career was over. He was back at Highgrove. Maybe if I'd been a prince or something, people would have heard what I had to say, he thought. But politics? Getting elected? Just too much jolly sweat and disappointment. Where on earth could he go now to give speeches nobody wanted to people who didn't listen? Ah yes! Thank God for the House of Lords.

Peter Preston

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Boris Johnson’s policy on tall buildings in London seems unclear

The Sheet — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:32:24 +0000

Sri Carmichael and Mira Bar-Hillel:

The clash between the Labour government, which opposes high rise, and the Mayor, who has become a convert to new building projects, has ended in a planning stalemate as the recession bites. At least 21 London property schemes could be scrapped or dramatically shrunk.

There follows a telling round-up of the capital's stunted tower projects, each a tale of crunched credit or obstruction of Boris by Blears. What interests me - because I can't yet detect one - is the guiding principle behind the Mayor's policy on towers. He's said yes to them more often than his critics would like, yet he's just said no to Rafael Vinoly's intended 300 metre-tall glass chimney on the site of Battersea power station. Building Design and Construction reports:

After opposition from local residents and Johnson, REO, which is 67% owned by the Treasury, has decided to replace the dome with individual canopies covering the buildings and abandon plans for the tower, which would have been one of the tallest structures in London.

The Mayor's office emphasises that Boris isn't against tall buildings where they are "appropriate". But what does "appropriate" mean?

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Are Boris Johnson’s priorities right when protecting London viewing corridors?

The Sheet — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:20:00 +0000

Amanda Baillieu:

Just as green belt land is often ordinary farmland with no special claim to preservation, we need to ask why we are protecting particular views that — with some notable exceptions — are no more special than others. Of course no one can not enjoy seeing St Paul's from the top of Primrose Hill or Richmond Park, but why is this more special than the view from the terrace of the National Theatre?

Now read on.

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Boris Johnson criticises Foster and partners when giving them award

The Sheet — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 07:15:00 +0000

At Building, Michael Willoughby:

Mayor Boris Johnson attacked his workplace, the 2002 Greater London Authority (GLA) building, as one of the worst in London shortly before handing its developer a planning award.

Love it. Now read on.

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Boris Johnson has broken pledge on tall buildings says Simon Jenkins

The Sheet — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:25:00 +0000

Simon Jenkins in the Standard:

Boris Johnson swore that he would rescind Livingstone's towers. He told all comers that he would "stop the madness". Yet no sooner was he in "the testicle" than he craved a phallus. The developer lobbyists got to him and undermined his self-confidence.

The Mayor, of course, doesn't see it quite that way. Whatever, Jenkins might reflect that several boroughs have lobbied for towers too and that he, like Boris, spoke during the election campaign in favour of boroughs being free from bossy mayors. You can't have it both ways.

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Boris Johnson criticised by Evening Standard over tall buildings

The Sheet — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:58:02 +0000

An Evening Standard leader:

Boris Johnson's policy of restricting approval for tall buildings in London to limited areas was once a fundamental element of his approach to planning. But his approval for tall buildings in Wandsworth and Ealing, areas without existing clusters of blocks, suggests an approach more like the ad-hoc policy of his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, who took a notoriously lax attitude to skyscrapers. Now Mr Johnson has a chance to show whether his planning policy for our skyline has rigour or consistency.
A new proposal for The Spires, three enormous tower blocks right by City Hall, is being submitted for approval. It would be hard to justify. The tallest of the three would reportedly offer views of the English Channel; together they would interfere with the Mayor's own views. In a downturn, there is little economic rationale for projects like this; aesthetically, there is even less. Mr Johnson should say no.

Wow, Veronica really has left the building hasn't she? No wonder Boris is putting on a Russian festival, of which he says:

Russian Londoners are a thriving community who have made a significant contribution to the capital both economically and culturally. I encourage everyone to come and enjoy this fantastic festival offering.

Are you listening, Alexander?

More on The Spires and other Irvine Sellar proposals for central London here.

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Jonathan Glancey: East End needs an Olympian engineering revival

The Sheet — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:42:10 +0000

A better Olympic legacy for east London would be a return to its great manufacturing tradition

At York station yesterday, the Prince of Wales unveiled the nameplate of Tornado, the first mainline railway locomotive to be built in Britain for many years. Tornado just happens to be a steam engine, a slightly modernised recreation of a London and North Eastern Railway express passenger "Pacific" of 60 years ago.

Created over 18 years and at a cost of £3m by the A1 Locomotive Trust in Darlington, Tornado has captured the hearts of railway enthusiasts worldwide. Network Rail was astonished by the sheer scale and enthusiasm of the camera-toting crowds who turned up - all ages, classes, colours, genders and creeds - to witness the muscular apple green locomotive's first arrival at King's Cross. News of Tornado's exploits has been reported around the world, including China, where most heavy industry seems to be rooted today.

When Prince Charles officially named Tornado, it was against the backdrop of the sweeping curve of York's 1870s train shed, an adventure in cast-iron Victorian gothic designed by Thomas Prosser and William Peachey, and a properly Olympian setting for an Olympian locomotive. Within sight of those on the platform was York Minster, a commanding example of English craft, architecture and resolve. Overhead, a flight of RAF Tornado jets roared past. For a few precious minutes, York harboured a stirring gathering of British design and engineering excellence, a legacy to savour.

Turn now to the scene enacted a fortnight ago at Stratford, east London, where the mayor of London, the secretary of state for communities and the Olympics minister unveiled "legacy plans" for the 2012 Olympics. Now that prized private funding has vanished, the legacy will be paid for by the public purse. It had better be good. As good as York Minster, York station, a fly past of the RAF's finest and Tornado, the green engine stealing hearts away.

There will be lots and lots of homes, zero-carbon, of course, based on German and Swedish, rather than English, precedent and connected by footpaths and cycleways around a determinedly uninspired park. There will be a National Skills Academy for sports and leisure industries, rock concerts, an "Olympic university" and other things. What things? Well, you know, small, environmentally friendly things. Anyway, it will all be "world class", or about as enticing as a bowl of cold porridge.

I wonder if it has occurred to these London Olympians, so different in stature and ambition from York's, that the seeds of a truly worthwhile legacy are in the very soil of Stratford and along the banks of the river Lea that flows lugubriously through it. The site chosen for the 2012 Austerity Olympics was, until 1991, home to the Stratford railway works, founded in 1847. It held the record for high-speed manufacturing; in 1891, one of James Holden's 0-6-0 freight locomotives was built here in nine hours and 47 minutes. It went straight into service and ran more than 1.2 million miles over the following 44 years.

Stratford and the Lea Valley were, in fact, the cradle of a second industrial revolution, with Britain at its forefront. Up the river Lea, companies like Avro and Hawker Siddeley got Britain into the air. Here, in 1904, Ambrose Fleming invented the diode valve, a key to the development of radio, television, computers and the internet. The first radio valves were made here, and the first television tubes emerged 20 years later. Aero-engines and custom-designed London buses were made in Walthamstow. Lee-Enfield rifles were made here, too.

If we were serious about creating a legacy from the Olympics, we would do everything we could to establish the latest forms of manufacturing here. We might, of course, even choose to build the next generation of high-speed trains here. Such industry would mean young people learning valuable and enjoyable skills, a future workforce with responsible and uplifting jobs, and a solid economic base on which to build a post-financial services dependent economy.

Sadly, British politicians tend to have little care for manufacturing, railways and British jobs. Yesterday the Prince of Wales evoked the spirit of a manufacturing and design legacy we could have - in ultra-modern form - but which we will reject as a matter of course in favour of unimaginative, posturing "urban regeneration", which will see the East End of London little better off than before - collectively stacking the shelves of Hadean supermarkets rather than building the modern equivalent of the Olympian Tornado.

• Jonathan Glancey is the Guardian's architecture critic jonathan.glancey@guardian.co.uk

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