As the article also mentions, London spent a lot of it's olympic preparations thinking about what will happen to all the building and materials after the games.

As the article also mentions, London spent a lot of it's olympic preparations thinking about what will happen to all the building and materials after the games. I was in design school at the time and we all submitted proposals for reusable architecture, etc. There was so much idealism, we all assumed things will be turned into sculptures or street furniture and the olympic park will itself will become an open site where people will hang out, etc. I wasn't in London for the games, but planned to go back to see the park after. When I got there a month after the Olympics, it was all abandoned, closed, fenced around and all you could see is giant empty parking lots. If they did any recycling I didn't see any of it.