The Olympic legacy research - Winning Gold for Green: The influence of the 2012 Olympic Games and international sporting events on sustainable regeneration, property development and brownfield development.
International sporting events have been used to catalyse major regeneration of brownfield sites and infrastructure projects and none more so than the 2012 Olympic Games. The Olympic Games generate the momentum, through a set deadline, to redefine urban landscapes and drive innovation. It is clear that sustainability is now at the heart of regeneration for sporting events and they have the potential to act as a test bed for new processes and technologies.
The 2012 Olympic Legacy
The desire for regeneration to drive place creation, conservation and new communities must be balanced against future demand. The reality is that no amount of sustainable building will guarantee the Olympic park and venues a long term legacy if the host city is too small to generate the necessary demand to absorb the property stock.
As outlined in our sustainability report – Winning Gold for Green - Jones Lang LaSalle believes that real benefits of sustainable construction can be harnessed by international sporting events in the following key ways:
- Innovation - Scale allows the 2012 Olympic Games to test the commercial viability of innovative technology and systems. Future measures, therefore, should focus on the level of “pull through” an international sporting event will have on the broader industry.
- Demonstration - Sustainable regeneration activity in East London has and will serve as a potent demonstrator of possibilities at other UK and international regeneration schemes, and we have already witnessed UK commercial developers and occupiers adapting Olympic standards.
- Leadership - Although the momentum of the Olympics as an event cannot and will not be replicated elsewhere in the UK - the power of good leadership has been critical in driving innovation on site. For example, long term strategic leadership of energy efficiency best practice has been perfectly illustrated through the case of the CHHP, where the development of long term public/private partnerships, allows energy efficient commercial practices to stack up and generate returns.
Driving down costs and converting previously unreachable sustainability standards into the commercial mainstream will undoubtedly be the biggest single benefit to the commercial real estate industry and the factor we will be measuring going forward.
For more information on the 2012 Olympic Legacy, sporting led sustainable regeneration, property development or brownfield development, please contact: Katie Kopec, Head of Development & Asset Strategy or Nick Gibbins, Development & Regeneration - Sustainability. For sector specific queries, please click on the following links: Hotels, Residential property, Retail property and Jones Lang LaSalle Research.