ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I trace various former occupants of London’s Lower Lea Valley, which was cleared in preparation for the 2012 Summer Games, to illuminate the contradictions of that particular eviction process. After outlining edgeland as a distinctive type of space, which over the last decades increasingly became a ‘testing ground’ for urban redevelopment by means of festivalisation, I will focus on the edgelands of the Lower Lea Valley, before it was transformed into the main stage for the Olympics. I then briefly discuss the legal framework of land acquisition in the UK and describe a few examples of occupants being evicted from the Olympic area in the Lower Lea Valley. The question this chapter addresses is whether a complete clearance in order to create landmark regeneration projects is an appropriate way to handle edgelands.
