Second Generation of Growth?

Sitting in TfL’s Development and Economic Growth conference on Wednesday (4 March) I was struck by how much development has evolved over the last decade with the ambition and complexity of schemes increasing in equal measures. None of the schemes discussed could have been brought forward by a single hand and in fact many of them had multiple partners, public and private, all bringing something different to the outcome.

I thought that one of the most interesting questions asked was around how we continue to learn from the successful delivery of the Olympics in 2012 - a challenging project in itself, but made more complex by the focus on legacy; delivering world class venues to kick start the transformation and regeneration of a huge swathe of London.

Obviously having a fixed end date and a pretty good idea of what needs to be delivered helps to focus the mind (and there was one comment that from the moment we won the games it was effectively a crisis!) but I think that establishing and maintaining that absolute clarity of purpose, which in this case included a commitment to enabling the future, is a large part of delivering these complex projects.

One small part of the Olympics investment was the upgrading of Stratford Station. It is slightly ironic, but also a testament to the incredible economic growth of the area, that after a relatively short time, we are discussing a further upgrade to manage not only the phenomenal number of passengers but also facilitate further growth and development. Key for us is to continue to build on that Olympic commitment to the future, creating connections to allow new developments to come forward, and bringing together cultural, academic and digital organisations.

We are all very familiar with the idea of development and regeneration being transport based (and there were some interesting snippets mentioned such as 95% of new commercial developments being within 500m of a station) but perhaps Stratford Station could be the first of many ‘second generation’ developments, where the success of the first upgrade leads inexorably, and quite quickly, to the next?!