The blood boils. Transport for London has written to announce the road closures for the Olympics, explaining the necessity of rushing officials to and from the Games in special lanes, although many of us who live in the capital-and have paid for the beano-can’t even get tickets. I’ll spare you the views of my taxi driver as he tried to negotiate Horse Guards Parade, closed for a beach-volleyball rehearsal. But there’s this to be said for the Games: the investment that they’ve brought is, Savills tell me, already transforming Stratford.
Tube access, super-fast trains to St Pancras and a huge Westfield shopping centre will make this a desirable place to live. The ever-shifting landscape of the capital is tilting east. The Greenwich peninsula is being colonised by young bankers, who can walk from there to Canary Wharf.
Belgravia will remain Belgravia: there’s too much money there for it, or the rest of the West End, to be toppled from its residential pinnacle. But the answer to the ever-troubling question of where our children are going to live when they start work, assuming the broadband revolution doesn’t make it possible for them to move to the Outer Hebrides, could be the purlieus of the Olympic Park.
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