The London 2012 Olympics: the cultural politics of urban regeneration

Located within the broader urban shifts and transitions under the auspices of neo-liberal political and economic rationalities, this article holds together the mutual constitution of people/place through the London 2012 Olympic Games. Through addressing the regeneration of select pockets of the Olympic boroughs and the discursive constitution of belonging through the opening ceremony, I raise questions about who belongs, who is welcome or (dis-)connected and who constitutes the ‘active’ and ‘responsible’ (and thereby abject and ‘other’) neo-liberal citizenry within ‘productive’ places. With ‘useful’, ‘productive’ and acquiescent minorities reconstructed as citizens and moral subjects of responsible communities, conclusions centre on the tensions over civil liberties and the anticipation of risk within a multi-ethnic London and the on-going processes through which urban populations, urban spaces and citizens become bifurcated in ‘scary cities’.