News Year 7 Geographers Visit the Olympic Park 10.06.2019

On Friday, the whole of Year 7 visited the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford. Year 7 student Isabel gave us the lowdown on the visit:

“The purpose of this trip was to decide if the regeneration was sustainable, meaning that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. During the visit, we surveyed four different sites and judged how environmentally friendly it was against the environmental quality survey which covered four main topics: buildings, traffic, open spaces and quality. We described our personal opinions of the site, annotated photos of the area and counted the amount of pedestrians we could see in 60 seconds. We learnt about the Egan Wheel, which is a tool to judge how sustainable an area or community is, and used it to evaluate our day in Stratford and assess how sustainable it is.

It was an immensely successful trip in my opinion and was full of interesting information. The four places we looked at were a series of recently built apartment blocks in the East Village, the Stratford centre and Westfield shopping centre, Stratford Waterfront and the Olympic Stadium and a place called Hackney Wick. These areas had very contrasting atmospheres and purposes, and the divide between the government led regeneration and private regeneration was significantly large. I believe the regeneration has opened up hundreds of jobs and homes for people as well as giving an opportunity for the community to thrive, especially since the borough of Newham is one of the poorest areas in London, that the development of the area has had a positive impact and in general it is sustainable.”