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The six Summer Olympics I have attended since 1988 have all had the same fault. The Olympic Parks were built in parts of the city where there was little for spectators to do when they weren't watching sport.
London 2012 will be very different. It often goes unnoticed but on the edge of the Park, Australian firm Westfield is building the biggest urban shopping complex in Europe.
It will be open later this year and I was given a tour of the facilities this week. It will have 300 shops, a 14-screen cinema, restaurants, hotels and and office space and 5,000 car parking spots.
Most importantly, the complex should create 8,500 jobs, with the hope that 2,000 of them will be taken by local unemployed people who have been trained at a new retail academy on the site.
This is a much bigger legacy than anything which will happen at the Olympic Park.
If it works, you can imagine how people attending concerts and football or cricket matches at the stadium in the future will be able to shop before the events.
In fact you won't be able to get into the Olympics in 2012 without walking through the outdoor boulevards from the Underground and "javelin" train station. A massive Marks and Spencer will greet the world's visitors.
Some people will hate the idea of all this. In fact, I have to admit that one of the great advantages of playing sport regularly on a Saturday afternoon for years is that I have avoided hundreds of shopping trips!
But it will make the 2012 Games a much better spectator experience. There will be a huge screen on one of the streets where people can watch the Olympic action before they enter the Park. The John Lewis store will also sell Olympic merchandise.
Spectators have had a raw deal at recent Games. There was little for them to do between events in Beijing in 2008 and the Olympic Park in Athens in 2004 had very poor facilities. The paying public deserve better and 2012 should deliver it.
More: BBC London 2012
Twitter: @BBCLdnOlympics
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adrianwarner/2011/01/there_is_more_to_an_olympics_t.html
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