Exploring the Olympic Park

On the week beginning the 23rd of January, Year 9 went on a Geography field trip to the ten-year-old Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford, to answer the question, ‘To what extent has the Olympic Park led to the regeneration of the area of Stratford?’.

We first visited Carpenter’s Estate - a council housing area just outside the Olympic Park. At first sight, it looked quite unattractive; litter on the floor due to overflowing bins, streets abandoned (apart from the corner shopkeeper!) with no other shops in the area apart from the massive Westfield, which loomed in the distance. In the beginning, this was going to lead me to believe that the Olympic Park had done nothing to the area - it hadn’t provided adequate housing and had left people working outside the region. I was a bit worried. That was until I saw the Park.

It was outstanding: innovative and modern, with a grand stadium, velodrome and aquatics centre! Isn’t it great that the public can use the highest-level sporting facilities? Despite many people having to be rehoused due to increasing house prices, it looked like a well-invested area.

Fish Island came next. Once one of the leading industrial fish packaging areas in the UK, but now part of one of the poorest boroughs in London due to a mass moving of work to China. You could see how badly the area had been affected; graffiti on every wall, loud, fast cars (just to add to the atmosphere) and the feeling of poverty.

It was good to see the construction site of the new UCL East London Campus. The rooms looked like hotel hotels - it was stunning. This will be good for the local area given that UCL will bring higher education, popularity and people to the borough. To facilitate the increase in people flocking to the site, the government would have to act on regenerating the deprived areas of the borough, so there would be adequate housing and cleaner streets. Of course, this is pure speculation, I don’t know what will happen, but something good will happen, I'm sure of it!