Photo Gallery Olympics Regeneration a Mixed Blessing for Stratford
The Stratford Center is the gateway to High Street, the main thoroughfare of the immigrant neighborhood of Stratford. There's no Starbucks here. This is the old Stratford.
Pink signs point the way to the Olympic Park.
Westfield, home to an Apple Store, a Lego shop and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver's new restaurant, is Europe's largest shopping center.
East London has some of the shabbiest corners of the city.
The new Olympic Stadium sits between the London boroughs of Shoreditch and Stratford.
The Olympic park is the second major renovation project in East London after the construction of the new financial district Canary Wharf in the 1990s. But it's questionable who will benefit from the millions invested here.
Even though the city landscape has been prettied up with new sidewalks and trees, socio-economic indicators remain bleak. The income gap between Newham and the rest of London widened between 2006 and 2011, according to a London School of Economics study.
A view of the Olympic stadium. Even since the Olympic bid, unemployment in Newham has risen here more sharply than in the rest of the city. The Westfield shopping center did create 10,000 new jobs, but 200 firms had to move to make way for it, so thousands of jobs disappeared.
An aerial view of the Aquatics Centre in the London 2012 Olympic Park. The Olympic Games were supposed to revive the neglected area. But most people see no upturn.
London's Tower Bridge. Stratford is just 15 minutes from the city center by public transport.
Despite problems, the games have put Stratford on the map. Middle class families are moving in and house prices are rising. Long-established residents feel displaced by the newcomers.
