Building the Olympic Dream

London will be hosting the Summer Olympic Games in 2012 and as expected, the planning and the work began quite awhile ago. Where most cities really spread out the event locations, it seems that London is focusing all of the events in one area, East London. A series of documentaries began last week to cover different aspects of the planning. Supposedly East London was a prime location for revitalization before it was taken over for the Olympics. Last week’s documentary followed the process of buying out or relocating businesses and people living on the land that will be the site of Olympic park. As you can see from the attached picture and what used to be our house and yard when we lived in St. Louis, we were involved in an eminent domain situation ourselves so I think we felt a bit more empathetic to the people in the documentary. It does seem ridiculous to think that people who have lived somewhere all their lives have to move for two weeks of sporting events. The planners say that their planning is really more about the area after the Olympics have left and making it a vital location, but only time will tell. I am very excited about being able to get a lot more coverage into the making of the 2012 games.