In 2014, in its first summer of opening, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (QEOP) had a problem with audience diversity.  Although residents in the park catchment were ethnically and racially mixed, its usership was disproportionately white.  My doctoral research¹ found that the predominantly white Anglo-European park designers and client team had created a landscape which did not respond equitably to the cultural needs of surrounding residents, and these design decisions were impacting park use. QEOP provides an ideal opportunity to explore the impact of stylistic decisions on audience diversity. It is a park of two ‘halves’, North and South, each with a distinctive design style and landscape character. Both are managed by the same authority, have the same levels of funding, staffing, and urban context. In 2014 the audience demography in North and South Park was very different. Revisiting the park in the summer of 2024, I wondered: would I find any change?

The London Games landscape 2004-2024

The 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games allowed London to achieve a long-desired urban transformation in the Lower Lee Valley, unblocking physical and symbolic barriers that hampered economic investment extending west to east. Before the Games, the landscape was fragmented, peri-urban, dominated by electricity pylons, and crisscrossed by canals, powerlines, and transport corridors. Manufacturing and scrap yards mixed with allotment gardens, a nature reserve, the UK’s largest housing co-operative and the Eastway cyclo-cross circuit. By securing the Games, London’s government could clear this landscape and transform it. At the heart of London’s Olympic vision, a new ‘community’ parkland was proposed, part of a post-Games promise to improve conditions and life expectancy for everyone in the surrounding Boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, and Waltham Forest, through its pivotal location at their shared boundary in the Lee Valley Regional Park.

Now, more than ten years after QEOP opened to the public, the park is framed by 12,000 homes, major cultural and educational institutions and iconic sporting venues. Pylons have been replaced by event architecture and housing towers, bridges crisscross above the waterways and rail corridors, connecting to surrounding communities.

The population in the adjacent Boroughs has grown dramatically, from around 789,000 in the 2011 census to nearly 1,200,000 in 2021. While much has changed, the area remains ethnically very diverse. Over 250 distinct ethnicities were claimed by residents in 2021. Within this diversity, however, very large numbers of people claim a few ethnic identities longstanding in their neighbourhoods. For example, while Tower Hamlets is now the most densely populated place in England, the most frequently claimed census ethnicity remains “Asian /British Asian Bangladeshi” rising from 34% in 2011 to 35% in 2021.

Parks, Culture & Audience

Urban parks are cultural spaces for community health and well-being, often publicly funded. Research with diverse communities in the US, Europe and beyond since the 1970s shows that ethnicity influences what people want from park spaces, what they do there, how frequently they visit, and how welcome they feel. The under-representation of people claiming many minoritised ethnicities in UK parks has been documented over decades. Publicly funded projects in the UK are legally required to ensure equitable benefits. When the UK’s galleries, theatres or concert halls seek public funding, data is required on the representativeness and diversity of their audiences, and the programme/style of cultural offer. Decision makers ‘taste’ and diversity (or not) of background have been called into question.  Understanding greenspace as a cultural product demands designers, managers and other placemakers reflect on their cultural conditioning, their ‘taste’, however, I found at QEOP there was no understanding that landscape tastes could vary in a way that would impact use.

According to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, social power structures are maintained partly through processes of ‘distinction’ between cultural tastes², and through the valorisation of the preferences of the powerful, including in education, where ‘legitimate tastes’ in literature or art for example, are taught, and knowledge of them rewarded³. Bourdieu uses the term ‘habitus’ to describe how one’s mind, ideals and even body are socially structured through prevailing values of our social context.

When surrounded by the social context of our formation, with people who are like us, typical for most landscape designers and placemakers in the UK, it is easy to ‘naturalise’ our views, and imagine them as universal truths, although they are arbitrary. Bourdieu describes this as being like a “fish in water”. Outside our social setting, different ‘legitimate tastes’ hold sway, and out of the ‘water’, we become aware of our habitus. We can change to fit in, but this process is not without challenges.

My research finds dominant tastes and values within placemaking contexts have exclusionary impacts on people from cultural backgrounds minoritised or marginalised within the processes of decision-making, who can have a different set of ‘legitimate’ tastes entirely.

Cultural variation in landscape preference in surveys and focus groups

Using images to discuss community preferences was part of co-design employed in my design practice over many years, and different reactions to similar images sparked my interest in culturally informed landscape taste. A large body of landscape preference research using photographs shows people’s different cultural or sub-cultural influences impact how they value landscapes differing for example by level of care, apparent wildness or order, the amount and distribution of vegetation, presence of paths, buildings or other factors.

I undertook a picture-based survey with QEOP catchment residents in 2012, seeking to find any park preferences linked to demography that designers might have been able to discover while developing designs for the park, illustrated in Figure 3. (blurred here for copyright reasons).

The survey asked ‘If all these parks were within 10 minutes walk of your house, which would you want to visit most?’ There were nine images of publicly accessible UK greenspaces to choose from, no restriction on a number of images chosen, and no ranking required.  The aim was to minimise participant confusion and maximise returns. The images were not labelled or named. They allowed the assessment of preferences across a range of content and style factors (below) identified from a review of the research literature

– pastoral vs picturesque (anthropocentric vs ecocentric; beautiful vs sublime)

– ecological vs horticultural planting

– formal /geometric vs naturalistic/romantic layout

– ‘shaped’ plants vs naturalistic plant forms

– buildings vs no buildings

– enclosed vs expansive views

– colours/ flowers vs greens/browns

– paths/seating vs no clear paths or seats

I undertook street surveys and distributed questionnaires to community-based groups across the catchment, offering a fundraising incentive (£1) for each questionnaire returned. Two hundred and thirty-two valid questionnaire surveys were completed, providing representative data based on catchment demography. Most respondents had grown up in the UK, gaining experience in UK greenspaces, vegetation, customs and climate over many years. 45% of respondents across all ethnicities had attended university, a proxy used to provide an indication of likely income/social status.

The average respondent selected 3 images. Table 1 summarises the overall preferences of the sample. ‘Anthropocentric’ horticulturally styled landscapes were the most popular, St James’s Park (Figure 3, Image 4) and the ‘Geometric Garden’ (Figure 3, Image 6) were both chosen by more than 50% of respondents and ranked 1 and 2.

Statistical analysis uncovered patterns of association between image preferences, and a range of demographic factors – age, gender, education and ethnicity. Ethnicity was found to have the greatest influence of all demographic factors on park image preferences, significantly affecting the selection of seven out of nine images. The analysis by ethnicity included only participants who had claimed an ethnic identity that might influence ‘habitus’ and was among the most frequent in the catchment.  These ethnicities were arguably culturally cohesive, for example sharing heritage nationality, language, history, and/or religion. Survey data from respondents claiming census ethnicities such as ‘Other White’ or ‘Black African’ were not included, as there would be many cultures represented in such categories.

Preference for spaces with ‘natural’ plant forms and wilder or picturesque characteristics (3, 5, 7, 8) was statistically associated with people claiming White British ethnicity. More managed ‘gardenesque’ or ‘anthropocentric’ greenspaces were more often preferred by people claiming the alternate British ethnicities living locally, illustrated in the spider diagram Figure 4.

Age had a small influence. Gender and university education were associated more strongly than age with choice or rejection of particular images. This supports other research findings, however, the impact of university education was not consistent when graduates’ ethnicity was considered.

University attendance was generally associated with more frequent image selection of the ‘wilder’ romantic landscapes too, but the association between a preference for wilder landscapes was found to be statistically significant only in White British participants, for whom there was a far stronger effect on park preference than had been seen in the whole White British sample.

To explore what might be influencing these findings, park preferences were discussed in six focus groups of between 4 and 10 QEOP catchment residents⁴. All the groups were single-gender, generally with a mix of younger people, parents and grandparents. All included graduates and those without a university education. Most groups were composed of people who claimed the same ethnic identity because I was hoping to explore any varying culturally situated ‘habitus’ in relation to public greenspaces. Bourdieu theorises there is an ongoing process of social formation throughout our lives sustaining our ‘habitus’. Alongside praise and reward for exhibiting legitimate tastes, there are critiques for exhibiting incorrect values or unacceptable behaviours. Bourdieu calls verbal acts of correction ‘symbolic violence’. Processes of social support and censure were evident in the focus group discussions, reflecting different functional, ideological and social preferences for recreation space in urban contexts. There was consistency in representations in terms of what was valorised, and what was challenged, by participants of the same ethnicity in geographically distant groups.  Different discourses of family life, nature and city appear to underpin different ‘legitimate’ tastes.

In discussing the images used in the survey, rich and varied meanings were found. For example, the ‘geometric’ landscape image was described as representing a green, calm, horticulturally rich, garden space in Leyton and Victoria Park, but imagined as a maze offering activity space in Hackney. The ‘meadow’ image was associated with perceived isolation and personal danger among female participants in many groups but elicited different reactions too. One group expressed no interest due to a lack of programme or potential activity. Walking about looking at it seemed pointless. It was not considered visually attractive and the idea it might provide some kind of ‘restoration’ caused laughter, although there was agreement that other greenspaces could. Two groups thought it looked likely to be dirty, home to a variety of pests and otherwise problematic animals. Another associated this landscape with urban dereliction, not something to admire. Aspirational urban landscapes displayed more investment in horticulture.

The discussions appeared to affirm that preferences for landscapes and nature are neither universal nor completely idiosyncratic, differing ‘legitimate tastes’ and approved behaviours appeared linked in some ways to cultural identity. Participants themselves claimed that some ideals chimed with their ethnic identity and operated to their knowledge outside the focus group.

Community Involvement in Design and Management

In 2013 I spoke with members of the design team, the park design clients in the delivery organisation (ODA) and analysed publicly available interviews with them. In 2024, I interviewed Ruth Lin Wong Holmes, Head of Landscape and Public Realm for QEOP, appointed in 2017 by the current management organisation LLDC. I was interested in comparing priorities, practices of engagement and impacts of these.

Professor Juliet Davis of the Welsh School of Architecture explored consultation and engagement with communities around the Olympic development in her 2012 PhD thesis. She found an ‘infantilising’ approach to public participation, with few opportunities for people to provide useful input. Design consultants received filtered feedback, which was often used to support preconceived ideas.

Planning processes also allowed for public scrutiny and comment on the design. Planning permission was obtained prior to 2006 but the 2013 interviews revealed this had not effectively delivered public input either. As one interviewee claimed, the built park was the second one designed, not the landscape approved at planning. A year after approvals, Foreign Office Architects left the project due to design differences with the delivery authority, ODA. In the same year, a new ODA client, UK landscape architect John Hopkins was appointed. The park had been characterised as a sort of Royal Park, like St James’s Park (Figure 3, image 4). Hopkins, supported by the wider delivery authority, directed North Park toward a wilder ecological aesthetic, a style most similar to preferences expressed by White British university graduates in the image survey. In published interviews Hopkins cites praise for the North Park, while denigrating other design approaches, recalling Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence. A focus on ecology and wildlife, rather than horticulture and people, is ‘more humane’. Extensive, naturalistic landforms, informal paths and planting have a simplicity and restraint that is morally superior to the ‘overwrought’ grandeur of ‘Generalissimos’. It is a morally politically correct landscape, a place humane democratic people ‘should’ like. The legitimate taste.

Cultural expression and ‘taste’ were not a concern for the placemakers interviewed in 2013. They spoke most about resolving technical aspects of park delivery. Where design narrative or aesthetics were teased out, pragmatism and realism were used to valorise choices, framing decisions not as arbitrary but as irrefutable sense. Aesthetic ideals for landscape were presumed universal. Inclusive design was important, but at that time this primarily meant ensuring the highest standards of access for people with disabilities, a priority still visible in the park’s use today.

In 2024, a far wider definition of inclusive public space operates, perhaps reflective not only of the different stages in this urban project but of a changed and changing social context – the Covid-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, some high-profile murders of women in London parks have all played a part. There is also evident influence of individual beliefs and priorities. There are still challenges to address, but these are about people and organisations, about making cohesive neighbourhoods. Different viewpoints are legitimate, reflective of positionality. Solutions are framed as things to be discussed, and negotiated, only informed by technical considerations.

The current management organisation LLDC is proactive in seeking to understand what surrounding communities think and feel about the park and creating programmes of activities with them. There is mention of stakeholder influence, awareness of academic critique of the Olympic Legacy as well as its successes, and there is evident reflection on ongoing ‘audience’ research. Community representation is part of decision-making, as is feedback, there is a ‘park panel’, a ‘youth panel’, ‘co-clienting’ for new landscape elements, occupancy surveys, and user surveys, all checked against catchment demography, aiming for representative voices to be heard.

The park in 2024 – landscape and people

QEOP is still a park of two ‘halves’ something regretted by the delivery agency in 2013 but now understood as a strength. In 2014 the North Park designed by LDA with George Hargreaves had a strongly ecological, arguably picturesque aesthetic (Figure 1).  Large grassy and reed-fringed fields for sitting in, elevated points to admire views, opportunities for contact with ‘nature’, and a relative lack of programmed activity or surrounding development. The landscape remains broadly similar in 2024, though around the Tumbling Bay play space, there is a more horticultural urban quality (Figure 5), due to the proximity of new housing, planting maturity, and management decisions to provide more maintained ‘cues for care’. Tumbling Bay provides timber and rope climbing structures, stone boulders, sand, woodchips and bound gravel surfaces emphasising ‘natural’ materials. Winding paths accentuate ‘exploration’ through dense planting, obscuring views between connecting play elements, and from the park lawns adjacent. It has limited internal seating except near the timber panelled café. A public gate in the park boundary railing at the middle of the play area provides access to the residential area beyond.

South Park in contrast was imagined as a ‘Pleasure Garden’, designed by James Corner Field Operations with Piet Oudolf (Figure 6, 6a). Highly programmed, its outdoor rooms are paved in colourful materials. Sculptural features, waterjets, garden terraces, and ornamental lights are connected by a formal treelined promenade. There is plenty to do, lots of concession stands and seating, opportunities to socialise, and people-watch. Children’s play is visually connected to and accessed easily from the main walkway, its bright red floor forming hills, and bubbled climbing sculptures. Spaces are framed by seats, providing great vantage points for supervising parents and carers. Between each ‘room’ small green lawns with flowering perennial borders in a romantic style offer spaces to relax. In 2014 South Park had excellent visibility across all spaces. Ten years on, tree and plant growth have changed the light levels and visibility, but visual permeability remains greater than in the North. The Arcelor Mittal red steel sculpture and sporting venues visible above the trees when the park opened, are now joined by huge institutional buildings. The city frames this space.

In 2014, 40 % of people in the park’s catchment population claimed the ‘high level’ census ethnicity category White, while 60% claimed ‘high level’ census ethnicity categories Black, Asian, Mixed or Other. Using visual indicators, I undertook some simple counts to see if the audiences appeared close to representative of the catchment demography.  Across the Easter holidays, and the summer months, on the best weather days, at different times of day and week, I visited the park and undertook simple 10-minute tally counts to record park users. The ecocentric North Park was visited by just over 1000 people in the total 90 minutes recorded there.  Counts show a relatively consistent pattern. For every 5 people counted, 4 seemed most likely to claim a White census ethnicity to every 1 user who seemed likely to claim any of the other ‘high level’ census ethnicities, a ratio of 4:1.

In the much busier South Park, there were just over 2000 visitors counted across the 90-minute segments. Unlike North Park here there appeared roughly equal numbers of users likely to claim a White census ethnicity, or any of the other ‘high level’ census ethnicities, a ratio of 1:1. As the evening approached the audience mix in South Park became 2:3, at least superficially reflective of the surrounding residential population. These findings were confirmed by the Park Authority in a 1250-participant user survey published in 2019 where people were able to self-identify their ethnicity. In their survey, 66% of users of the park as a whole claimed a White ethnicity⁵.

In the summer of 2024, I undertook similar user counts again, this time making 12 counts at different times of day across good weather days in school vacations. There were organised events in both parts of the park at times – a running race, a youth-oriented sports day, a West Ham football match, and a large Church picnic – each representing different communities and interests. There were also small informal gatherings and celebrations, and diverse self-organised activities. Across 135 minutes in North Park, I counted just over 1300 people. Around 60% appeared most likely to claim a White ethnicity, while 40% of users seemed less likely to do so.  Across 135 minutes in South Park, I recorded nearly 1700 passers-by using the space, and as in 2014 found roughly equal numbers of users who appeared most likely to claim a White census ethnicity, or likely to claim another of the ‘high level’ census ethnicities. As the evening approached the audience mix in South Park again appeared reflective of the surrounding residential population.

Landscape Aesthetics & Audience Diversity in London’s Olympic Legacy Park.

Cultural ‘tastes’ appear to influence the diversity of park audiences, similarly to other cultural practices. Recognition of differences, ongoing dialogue with the surrounding communities, co-design and participative practice, inclusive park programming, and improved connections to surrounding neighbourhoods have helped to bring an increasingly diverse audience to this park, however, patterns of use identified in 2014, while modified, appear to persist.

As this urban project evolves, North Park becomes increasingly framed by planned neighbourhoods, and institutional buildings in the South become more established, it will be interesting to see if the differences in audience demography will be sustained.

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References

¹  Snaith, Bridget. The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park: Whose Values, Whose Benefits. Olympic World Library. [Online] July 2015. [Cited: January 03, 2025.] https://library.olympics.com/Default/doc/SYRACUSE/353834/the-queen-elizabeth-olympic-park-whose-values-whose-benefits-case-study-exploring-the-role-of-cultur?_lg=en-GB.

² Bourdieu, P. Distinction A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge, 1999 [1979]. ISBN 9780415567886.

³ Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J.C. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London: Sage, 1990 [1977]. ISBN 978-0803983205.

⁴ Weeds, wildflowers, and White privilege: Why recognizing nature’s cultural content is key to ethnically inclusive urban greenspaces. Snaith, B. and Odedun, A. 1, s.l. : Taylor & Francis, 2024, Journal of Race Ethnicity and the City, Vol. 5. ISSN: 2688-4674.

⁵ Vector Research. Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park Visitors Survey 2016-17. London: London Legacy Development Corporation, 2019.