2012 London Olympic Park Through Time

"The 2012 Summer Olympic park is located in the Lower Lea River Valley in the east of London. The games were sold to the British public from the beginning as an opportunity to transform one of London’s most economically disadvantaged regions."
The quote is on ActiveHistory.ca, now one of my regular stops for keeping up with the Canadian history scene. British history isn't normal fare at the site but the writer, Jim Clifford, a Post-Doctoral Fellow at York University, wrote a blog post drawing on his dissertation on the environmental and social history of the River Lea and West Ham.

Many of us have ancestors who lived or worked in the vicinity and would have known the area.

See also The Urban Periphery and the Rural Fringe : West Ham’s Hybrid Landscape. Black and white photos do nothing to brighten the dreary appearance.