Is sports-led regeneration work?
The past 20 years have offered anyone trying to answer the question a wide field of study, from Arsenal’s 2006 move from Highbury to the Emirates Stadium to the ongoing changes in the Olympic Park 10 years after the London Games.
Birmingham residents will certainly hope the answer is yes as they prepare for the Commonwealth Games which start in the city tomorrow.
The post-game regeneration is planned with £700 million athletes village after the event to be converted into 1,400 homes, parks and a sports stadium.
Brummies may hope that the claim of progress in master planning is also true if they see the monolithic tower block layout of the Olympic Park.
Taking lessons from the Olympic venue, it would be a smart move to ensure new housing remains affordable, especially given Birmingham’s growing popularity among colonizing Londoners with relatively large budgets.
As Ruth Bloomfield discoveredwhile house prices near the Olympic Park actually rose less than those in the rest of central London, they have still more than doubled in a decade – good news for those who bought early, not so much for those who did. didn’t.
And while about 40 percent of new homes in the park are affordable, that’s a slippery term, too often linked to market rates rather than more accurate barometers of affordability, such as incomes.
It’s a triumph to be able to train in a beautifully designed Olympic velodrome or swimming pool for the same price as your local leisure centre. I would like to see similar initiatives in the area of housing.