When was london given the 2017 olympics

Managed by Triathlon, a partnership between housing associations East Thames and Southern Housing Group and developer First Base, they are comprised of social rent properties that went to people from Newham and other east London boroughs, discount market rent and shared ownership properties. The Philbeys were one of the first residents to move into Ursa Mansions, just before Christmas. Although you are still living in London, it feels like you are not.

There are green areas where I take the kids to run around. She loves the mix of social and private housing. A lot of families with children. Quite a lot of young people but there are some old people, too.

Security guards patrol the area. They reassure Philbey. You do feel safer. Siobhan Best and her partner Jed see things a bit differently. Yet there were niggles. With Jed working, Best got lonely. The local baby groups in Leyton and Stratford that I was attending closed down due to [a lack of] funding. It was really weird how a new town had been plonked in such a run down area with such poverty, something seemed very odd about the whole place.

Clays Lane was the largest residential co-operative of its kind in Europe, housing tenants. Julian Cheyne lived there from until it was compulsorily purchased and demolished for the Games in He and his neighbours had become accustomed to threats. There were always people coming up with plans on a regular basis. I think they would have decided there was very little point. The Olympics changed that.

Cheyne already had passing interest in housing but the events at Clays Lane radicalised him in a sense. They are just liars. It was easy to ridicule Clays Lane. The area had a traveller site, and sat atop a hill made of reclaimed landfill. Photographs depicted unfashionable residents, chemical factories, recycling plants and a fridge mountain.

But Cheyne sees it differently. Cheyne says residents were misled over money they were entitled to, and charged too much upon leaving. On what grounds? We managed to persuade the tenancy advisers to put out a leaflet, which said these are your rights — but they never circulated it. Cheyne and some of his former neighbours had to go into emergency accommodation while waiting to be rehoused. Some residents were moved outside east London: Peabody had properties in Westminster, so some were housed there, where rent was a lot more expensive.

Cheyne was rehoused in east London but says his rent is more than double what it was in Clays Lane. They dug small trenches, and crouched in the mud through one of the coldest winters for years, in order to find excavations ranging from a Bronze Age skeleton to an 18th century boat.

The ODA was legally required to get planning permission and to record the archaeology of the site. The site was heavily contaminated with chemical waste, from its industrial heyday, so Gardner wore a protective suit. Although the Olympics reshaped the landscape, the hills now enjoyed by residents and visitors are still sculpted landfill — shaped and moulded and sealed off, to protect a clean layer of topsoil for plants.

Gardner wonders about how his role gives legitimacy to events such as the Olympics. The university first planned to build south of the park, which controversially meant knocking down the Carpenters Estate. The estate is still standing, for now.

But neither is it the forlorn and barren white elephant many suggested it might become. But the place does, in its way, function.

People live there, but many, many more people visit — and enjoy it. One Leyton resident says the park space was a godsend when he was on paternity leave. The West Ham megastore just outside the stadium is on two levels and most of the bottom level has been screened off and turned into a cafe for use by athletes and coaches.

Any day from 9am to 9pm during the world para athletics it was chock-full with athletes having cappuccinos in West Ham-branded coffee cups. We also did a deal with them to use the space as an outlet for British Athletics merchandise. The debranding has been pretty effective, too. The main change when I competed at the Anniversary Games last year compared with London was the movement of the warm-up track.

It used to be a fair walk away but now it is right beside the stadium. The nice thing is that the main stadium concourse is round the side of it so fans can watch you warm-up. The set-up in London, weather depending, gives us the best opportunity to run really quick times. You want to see the world champion do it in a time you can respect.

There should be some cameras as you walk out to get your reaction. You go from that to 60, people. There are still no bad seats in the stadium.