The London 2012 Olympics: The cultural politics of urban regeneration

Abstract

Located within the broader urban shifts and transitions under the auspices of neo-liberal political and economic rationalities, this article holds together the mutual constitution of people/place through the London 2012 Olympic Games. Through addressing the regeneration of select pockets of the Olympic boroughs and the discursive constitution of belonging through the opening ceremony, I raise questions about who belongs, who is welcome or (dis-)connected and who constitutes the ‘active’ and ‘responsible’ (and thereby abject and ‘other’) neo-liberal citizenry within ‘productive’ places. With ‘useful’, ‘productive’ and acquiescent minorities reconstructed as citizens and moral subjects of responsible communities, conclusions centre on the tensions over civil liberties and the anticipation of risk within a multi-ethnic London and the on-going processes through which urban populations, urban spaces and citizens become bifurcated in ‘scary cities’.

Themes and content of the London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony: A comparison between pre-Games perspectives of British residents and actual ceremonial elements

“…The discourse of multiculturalism is found in several studies (e.g. Fortier 2005;Back et al, 2012;Silk, 2014;Manley & Silk, 2014).…”

Making sense of handwritten signs in public spaces

“…Stratford, as a result, is a very different place even from the first decade of the twenty-first century. But critics claim that those who have directly benefited from the new developments come from outside the Borough, especially those who can afford the new housing development and those who set up businesses in the area (Macrury and Poynter 2008;Silk 2014). The traders of the Stratford Shopping Centre clearly cannot afford to set up stalls in the glittering Westfield mall on the other side of the road, not that Westfield would allow any fruit and vegetable stalls, second-hand furniture stores, independent barber shops, shoe repairers, etc anyway.…”

Mega-events and Placemaking: Place Image Construction between Reality and Imagination

“…https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ by shifting their policies from urban managerialism to urban entrepreneurialism. In a comparable vein, Silk (2014) argues that the hosting of sport mega-events "is inextricably bound with a series of processes related to the reconstitution of 'spectacular urban space'" (p. 50), whereby various neoliberal logics link the production of symbols to the production of space. What has arguably changed over time is the scope and scale of special events that expanded their footprint beyond one-off events.…”