It has achieved at least two things usually thought difficult: the creation of a thriving new urban district, and the making of a large new park to which people actually come. There will be high art and commercial entertainment, but neither dominates. You can shop in the mall if you want to, but you don’t have to spend money in the park to enjoy yourself. This is the kind of place that planners have dreamed about for decades, but rarely achieved, with a multiplicity of uses – culture, work, homes, education, shopping, sport – where no single facility dominates. The ‘rambunctious’ curved roof of Zaha Hadid’s Aquatics Centre. For the next five years the demountable hexagon of the Abba Arena, home to a virtual concert residency by the famous Swedes, will stand at the southern end of the park. You might also see, outside the boundaries of the Olympic site itself, neighbouring areas such as Hackney Wick thronged with life, and canal towpaths busy as never before. Other sights include the zone called East Bank, where buildings for the Victoria and Albert Museum, University College London, the London College of Fashion, Sadler’s Wells and the BBC are taking shape, and Here East, a prospering innovation and technology business campus that was once the media centre for the 2012 games. And which, contrary to expectation, has not killed the older and more everyday shopping centre in the middle of Stratford. If you arrived at the park from the public transport hub at Stratford you will probably have passed through the Westfield shopping mall, a work of corporate gigantism to be sure, but one crowded with people from near and far who seem happy to be there.
If you wander into some of the residential districts at the edges, you might find quiet mews-like enclaves, and pleasant streets with accessible and well used open spaces, including playgrounds available to any family that might want to use them. You will see the graceful curved roof of the velodrome and the more rambunctious curved superstructure of the Aquatics Centre, perhaps the BMX track, the hockey and tennis centre, and the Copper Box multi-sport arena, all modifications of the original Olympic facilities. The Lee Valley VeloPark, originally the Olympic velodrome.