here in the east end of London was an urban wasteland.

Then in 2005, a transformation began.

The games of the thirtieth Olympiad in 2012 are awarded to the city of London.

The focus of London's successful bid for the 2012 Olympic games was legacy

through the sustainability and adaptability of stadium and venue architecture.

So, what lessons can be learnt  from this and past Olympics,  and what can we expect from Tokyo 2020?

Hi Peter, how are you?

Good, thank you. Welcome to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Looks pretty impressive, doesn't it?

It does. Let me show you around.

Cool.

In 2012, this 560-acre park hosted the Olympic and Paralympic games.

They were deemed a great success, but many argue that their legacy has been even more impressive.

So here we are in the heart of the park.

Over there is the London Aquatics Centre, our amazing pool,

the ArcelorMittal Orbit and the London Stadium just behind us.

But from here, we also get to see the Copper Box Arena up in the north,

and we've got the VeloPark, and right in the north of the park,

the Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre.

All of these legacy venues, well used for both playing sport

but also big international sporting competitions after the games.

Before this area of east London, known as Stratford, became home to the games,

it was London's industrial heartland for more than a century.

However, as the London docks and factories shuttered in the 1960s, it left the neighbourhood at a loss.

So, if we went back to 2005, when we won the bid the area was completely different.

There was some factories, there was some homes,

but there was also a lot of areas that you just didn't want to go to.

There were rail heads, there were huge pylons, electricity pylons that straddled the site.

Famously tons and tons of earth had to be cleaned here on site because of the diesel and the acid

that had been processed in the various factories. So all of that was cleansed and then reset.

While the ground was being prepared for the development of the Olympic site,

discussions about its legacy and what would happen to the park after the games were happening in tandem.

How important was legacy as part of the successful London 2012 Olympic bid?

Well, I think there was an overarching focus on legacy

to ensure that apart from a glorious week or two in 2012

these venues would deliver for local communities,

for the region, for the nation for twenty to thirty years.

Shaun Dawson is the chief executive of Lee Valley Regional Park Authority,

a government appointed body set up to regenerate 10,000 acres of regional park

while also providing sport venues and open spaces, 

some of which traverses  Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Before the bid, we had planned for a velo park, 

for a white-water centre, so we had those plans already.

And of course, what the games did was deliver bigger and better venues

than we could have delivered without the games and what the games benefitted from that

was having a readymade legacy client in place, to shape the legacy for those venues.

Today, Lee Valley operates three venues that were used at the Olympics,

two of which are found in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park,

the Hockey and Tennis Centre and the Velodrome.

The rest of the sporting complex, including the Aquatics Centre,

the Copper Box Arena and the London Stadium are all run

by an organization whose purpose really began on the day that the games finished.

What is the London Legacy Development Corporation?

It's quite a mouthful, isn't it?

You should have come up with a shorter name.

Yeah.

We were formed in 2012, and the idea is that the legacy corporation really takes the spirit

of the Paralympic and Olympic games in 2012 and uses the opportunity of those games

to benefit local people. That means bringing the venues back

into use for local people and bringing new inward investment

into the area including jobs and opportunities generally.

The motivation to ensure that the legacy of the London Olympics will be sustained

for future generations was derived from the mistakes of past Olympics.

Issues such as the ecological impact and displacement of locals plagued previous editions,

while abandoned venues reclaimed by nature were common sights.

I think it was desperately sad to look at venues in other Olympic cities that aren't delivering a legacy.

They had their week of glory during the games but haven't delivered in the long-term

and that public investment hasn't delivered for those communities,

and it is an important lesson to learn that you can get it wrong.

If you don't design these venues correctly, with the number of audiences that we're here

to reach out to in mind, well then this would have been a white elephant as well.

To ensure that the London Olympics would not make the same mistake,

plans were in place from the start so that the Olympic Park could adapt from a space

designed to host thousands of spectators a day to a park for the local community,

and venues that could fulfil a variety of needs.

So the depths can be changed, the booms can come in and out

so we get shorter lengths and all of that is there right from the start,

it just wasn't needed for  the games.

During the London Olympics, the Aquatic Centre was fitted

with spectator wings on the side of the building,

increasing its capacity from nearly 3,000 to more than 17,000.

Once the games were over, the wings were removed

so the venue could become a more intimate space for general public use,

though it can still scale up by another 1,000 seats to host elite competitions.

So this is one of those areas of the park that if you were here ten years ago,

it would have looked completely different. Behind you would have been a bridge,

taking you over the stadium. But don't step back now.

There's a climbing wall, which everyone enjoys coming up.

Over here, there's the children's playground, a brand new children's playground

but at games time this was tarmacked. This was MacDonald's, toilets, souvenir shops.

So, all you can see, this greenery you can see wasn't here?

None of the greenery here. All of this was planted,

and when we reopened the park, or opened the park, in 2014,

it was a new garden for people to come and enjoy.

So, where we're standing now, this was a huge bridge at the games,

so you probably didn't even know there was a canal underneath it,

but we peeled back some of  the layers of the bridge, 

and created this rather spectacular reflective effect.

The lock behind you has just been restored in the last few years

so that is now a functioning lock for the canal.

Sorry, there was a bridge over the top of this?

Yes, yeah.

The focus on the future meant that for every £1 spent building the Olympic Park,

a quarter was invested solely for the Games, while the remaining 75p

was earmarked for the legacy of the games. In the years since,

a total of 30 million people have visited Queen Elizabeth Park.

While many of the venues here are used regularly, recent reports suggest

a successful Olympic legacy in London is threatened by a serious shortfall in revenue.

A report published in 2021 suggested that the general financial outlook of the park

is a 'ticking timebomb.'  In 2020, trading revenue across the park fell by 30%

due to the restrictions caused by the pandemic. However, the cancellation of showpiece events

because of the lockdown also helped save the city's taxpayers £7.4 million

largely due to the high costs of running events at the London Stadium.

I came here to the London Stadium, as it's now known, back in 2012

and watched some incredible sporting moments that I'll never forget.

But that venue is almost unrecognizable to the one you see today,

and the transformation into somewhere which hosts football matches has not been an easy one.

There was a determination to get the stadium into use,

but some disagreement in the run up to the Games actually about what that end use should be.

We all knew that to make the stadium sustainable and have longevity,

it needed a real anchor tenant to make that work

and the most obvious anchor tenant was always going to be a football club.

But that meant serious investment in transforming 

the venue into something  that could work for football,

as well as other facilities and other events and so on.

Now when you look around the world, there are very, very few Olympic stadiums

that have survived as well as we hope this one will.

There's a recent report that highlighted some financial pressures

that the London Legacy Development Corporation have had.

How difficult is it to ensure these places are open to the community but also make money?

I think the stadium is an example of a venue that delivers so much more than the venue itself,

in terms of local economy, in terms of what it delivers for sport,

for London in its wider sense and if it does have financial challenges

and all venues do, it's just different types of challenges really.

At the end of the day, well, I think it's how that Olympic stadium is the centerpiece

of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and I think we all benefit from that.

People tend to, for various reasons, whether political or otherwise, focus on the negative news, 

but actually when you look  at this place in the round

and see the positivity that's here, the extra jobs that have been created,

the new buildings that are coming online just behind us here,

you can see the benefits more clearly.

I don't know whether you've been asked by the Tokyo delegates about what you've been doing here

and how you've grown the legacy and ensure that it lasts.

Are there any lessons that you've learnt that you would pass on?

If you're thinking of putting a bid together, you must be thinking about the legacy right then

and the impression you're going to make for local people, that's really important.

There's not much point actually, if the Games are about to be held

and you're turning up and asking for advice then because you're then starting from scratch

and you're running to catch up, so very important to think about it early.

The basic ingredients, I think, are there for them.

I think it comes down to who's going to own and manage these venues.

If some venues do carry a subsidy, how's it going to be funded?

Is it the Tokyo taxpayer? Is it the national taxpayer?

It is those levels of detail, with the right skills to ensure,

almost a day after the games or whenever you can, those venues open and they're public venues.

They've spent a lot of time upgrading existing venues like we did here,

some new venues of course as well. There's been a lot of exchange

and two-way traffic to try and make sure they get it right,

and in the case of Tokyo, I think they will.

To host an Olympics is a once in a lifetime opportunity but ensuring that the legacy of a games

is a strong and lasting one is difficult. While lessons have clearly been learnt,

it's still a challenge that host cities wrestle with and will continue to do so.

Hi guys, thanks for watching our video. Please subscribe to the channel

but before you do that we'd love to know your thoughts on any other

sporting venues that have hosted big events that you think have done it really well

or conversely have done it really badly. Comment below the video to let us know

and we'll see you next time.