Pop up Games

Despite promises, the London Olympics is set to leave us with a legacy of unwanted buildings. We should cut costs and have flatpack movable stadia, says Ross Clark

The complex used for the 1908 Olympics became known as White City. For 2012, the challenge is not to create a White Elephant City. While gymnastics can impress and beach volleyball entertain, the Olympic sport that has spectators truly gasping is property development. It has become almost a cliché that each Olympic city be left with a host of monumental venues that were built to sell the host city to the world but that lie empty for years while citizens struggle to pay the bill.

Even before the credit crunch, London 2012 was conceived as the Olympic Games that would put an end to the gargantuan waste. In contrast to Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium — now used mainly as a tourist attraction — London’s was to be a model of economy and adaptability, built from a Meccano-like lattice which with the aid of a few spanners could be reduced from 80,000 to 25,000 seats once the Olympic flame had gone out.