Boris Johnson calls for 'startling ideas' to ensure London Olympics leaves lasting legacy » Communities » 24dash.com

The Mayor of London today laid down the gauntlet for "startling" ideas to help ensure the capital's Olympic Park leaves a positive legacy once the 2012 Games are over.

Boris Johnson, who is in Beijing to receive the Olympic flag that will mark the handover to London as the next host city, said: "I am calling on investors and organisations around the world to come forward and surprise us with startling ideas that can preserve the memory of the Games while creating a new focus for London's eastward growth.

"We are looking for ideas of how London's Olympic Park can become not just a great place to live, work and visit, but a place that retains a flavour of the extraordinary, a place with the 'wow' factor, a place of magic."

Mr Johnson said he was determined that the 2012 Games should leave a lasting legacy.

"We are cleaning up the land, burying overhead power lines, upgrading roads and railways and installing new energy infrastructure," he said.

"We are delivering for 2012, but planning for the long-term."

As well as launching London Calling - a prospectus setting out the post-Games plans for the Olympic Park - the Mayor described his enjoyment of the Beijing Olympics and suggested that children living in London should be offered free or discounted tickets to 2012.

Mr Johnson, who is chairman of the Olympic Park Regeneration Steering Group, said: "I think I speak for millions of people in the UK when I say we've been dazzled, we've been impressed, we've been blown away by the Beijing Games but we've not been intimidated.

"I think that with our native wit, our gift for pageantry and our fantastic ingenuity it is possible in London we will produce, even though we have a lower population base and we don't have the resources to throw at it, a fantastic opening ceremony and a fantastic Olympic Games."

Of the 2012 offer to children, Mr Johnson said: "I want to make sure children in London whose families are paying an extra £20 a year in council tax will be able to see the Games."

Tessa Jowell, minister for the Olympics and London, said: "By 2012 London will be a city transformed by investment from government, the private sector but also from other countries, attracted to the ambition and potential of London.

"That's why we are setting a target for foreign investment to be driven by London's status as a host city. This is a unique opportunity - we will not waste it."

Supporting the call for creative ideas, Newham mayor Sir Robin Wales said the future of London lay in the five host boroughs of Greenwich, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Waltham Forest and Newham.

Harvey McGrath, chairman of the London Development Agency, added: "We want to ensure that the legacy development of the Olympic Park captures any truly exceptional, ground breaking ideas from around the world."

Anyone wishing to submit an idea should go to www.2012londoncalling.co.uk to submit their ideas.