Olympics

What will success or failure in 2012 mean for London? Hear what the experts have to say

Three years ago a Sky TV presenter spat these words at me: ‘Michael, you are just a cynical old hack.’ Replaying the interview, you can hear my reaction, essentially a surprised splutter. I’d said something like, ‘London doesn’t need the Olympics, it will cost billions, destroy interesting areas of the city, the whole bid is essentially a PR campaign for the Government, and besides, it will go disastrously wrong. We can barely organise a village fête, what chance is there of delivering the Games?’ And I was right, wasn’t I? Er, no – quite wrong, actually, and for five reasons…

1. The cost doesn’t matter
Budgets can be startling. Projected costs of the main stadium have risen from the original £280 million to £525m, figures so mad they barely make sense. We could just sit back and enjoy the financial freefall – it’s going to be fun – but why should it matter if the Games come in on budget or not? Other big public projects bust their budgets: the Jubilee Line extension opened two years late and for £1.4 billion more than expected; the Millennium Dome was costed at £399m and came in at more than £800m; the builders’ quote for the Channel Tunnel was £4.9bn, the final bill nearly £12bn. Yet all these projects survive and it is hard to imagine life without them – well, two of them. And remember, the 2000 Sydney Olympics cost £2.3bn, more than double the original budget, but that Games remains for many, even non-Australians, one of the best ever staged. Feature continues

2. There will be intangible benefits
Because they are intangible it is not possible to list all these benefits, but it’s apparent, even to an Olympic cynic, that the Games will potentially have a positive effect on many of the malaises that currently affect our city. Take London’s legions of miserable youths. Sadly, they can’t all join bands or form urban theatre collectives, but the example set by athletes – training, discipline and generally learning to get up in the morning, have a shower, put on clean clothes and turn up somewhere on time – should bring down the endemic levels of moping around on our streets. And the Olympics are, after all, a celebration of youth and its attributes. That might cheer them up a bit.

3. Positive effect on the national character
Failure is hot-wired into the British consciousness: we define ourselves by our propensity to fuck up. Consequently, there is a desire to paint the Olympics as a failure already, despite the evidence (much of the site’s foundations have been laid two months ahead of schedule).
So when contractors discovered radioactive soil on the site this summer, we looked set for glow-in-the-dark farce. But what happened? We responded with plans to put one million tons of contaminated earth through giant washing machines. More of that spirit, and we might start winning things.

4. It will create a new city
Before staging the 1992 Olympics the port of Barcelona was a derelict, seething pit. Frankly, I liked it that way, but give most people the choice between the Catalan capital of the 1980s and the city it has since become – the city Londoners visit in their thousands to admire – and they would pick the latter. Likewise for east London. The restitution and renewal of the area is good for London in itself, but it also emphasises the fact that this is no longer a city split between north and south but between east and west. London is realigning, creatively and financially: the future of our city is in the east. The Olympics, alongside projects such as the extension of the East London line, will make this process irreversible. We need never visit Kensington and Chelsea again.

5. At least one great building
If it takes the Olympic Games to get a major Zaha Hadid-designed project put up in London, then so be it. The Anglo-Iraqi architect’s Aquatic Centre, complete with sweeping deconstructionist roof, will give the capital a genuine destination building, but unlike Athens – a city littered with unused stadia left over from 2004 – the 2012 planners are committed to leaving behind an infrastructure that will benefit Londoners long after the Games. And giant washing machines.

Do you think the 2012 Olympics will be good for London? Tell us