olympics v local allotments

PRESS RELEASE by Julie Sumner

'GREEN' OLYMPICS TO BULLDOZE 100 YEAR OLD ALLOTMENTS FOR 4 WEEK FOOTPATH.

'Food Heroes' Hassan and Reg, featured on Rick Stein's BBC series, will be preparing food fresh from the plot alongside Islington's Moro restaurant owners Sam and Sam Clark, throughout the allotment Open Day on 2nd July, 12 noon til 5pm Manor Gardening Society Allotments, Waterden Rd, E15
(directions on the map attached).

The event is to draw attention to the campaign against plans to bulldoze these 100 year old allotments to make way for a footpath to the Olympics.

In direct contradiction to their recently launched strategies, the London Food Strategy and the Biodiversity Strategy, the Mayor and the LDA's Olympic Final Masterplan reveals the intention to destroy a working example of local food production, sustainable environment and integrated, diverse, community all rolled into one.

As Sam Clark of Moro restaurant says,
‘It’s like a small island of nature and wildlife, a paradise next to the industrial sites and busy bus stations of Hackney Wick. The water protects us from the urban wasteland and every visit brings a feeling of peace and the chance to unwind from hectic London life. The allotments are fifteen minutes from our house in Bethnal Green but once you’re there it feels as though you are in the heart of the country.’

Cleve West, gardening writer for Independent and Garden's Illustrated is outraged by the act of vandalism this represents, 'If the Olympic ideal means anything, it should apply to much more than four weeks of running, jumping and swimming. Friendship, tolerance, vision and healthy, sustainable living are fanfared by those at Manor Garden allotments. In my book, theirs is a torch worth carrying to the ends of the Earth.'

He and Tak Hoshimo, Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of East London agree that, ‘The Olympic Park design represents old-fashioned nineteenth century thinking which favours hard surfacing and iconic civil engineering rather than an integrated, softer approach as embodied by say, the Eden Project.’ and that, 'most good landscape architects consider local distinctiveness a priority. The 'blank canvas' mentality ignores the attachment a piece of ground has with its surroundings.'

As the writer and local Hackney resident, Iain Sinclair, stated on The Today Programme the morning after visiting Manor Gardening Society's last Open Day on 21st May 06, 'we don't want it (the Olympic Park Design) over-imagined. We don't want it imagining for us. We want to imagine it for ourselves. I'm worried that the soul of the place, as represented by sites like Manor Garden Allotments, will be lost.'

Professor Peter Roberts of The Academy for Sustainable Community, adviser to the Government, made clear in a recent lecture that lack of local ownership of a development project and top-down authority-led planning, leaves people feeling alienated and dispossessed. The resulting wasted landscape inevitably leads to a need for further regeneration in twenty years time and spiralling costs.

The Millenium Dome comes to mind!

For further information please contact Julie Sumner, email aireyworld@aol.com or phone 07956 890 825