ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews 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 over the last decades increasingly became a testing ground for urban redevelopment by means of festivalisation. The Lower Lea Valley, where much of the 2012 London Games took place, is an area of edgeland in East London located in the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Newham and Waltham Forest. While, in the mid-1980s, environmental protection had become part of the Park's agenda and the Greater London Council before its abolition had determined efforts to preserve the wastelands that had evolved in the lower section of the Lea Valley. The chapter discusses three case studies of affected user groups: the Marshgate Lane Business Group (MLBG), the Clays Lane Estate tenants, and the gardeners of the Manor Garden Society.