This week on our Karr on Culture podcast: Will the 2012 Olympic Games improve life in London's down-at-heel East End -- or will the International Olympic Committee pocket the profits after Britain pays the bills? (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/files/2010/05/karronculture-badge.gif)Two years from this week, the Games of the XXX Olympiad (http://www.olympic.org/en/content/Olympic-Games/All-Future-Olympic-Games/Summer/London-2012/) will commence in London (http://www.london2012.com/splash/index.php). Britain's capital city marked the countdown with a wave of hoopla (http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/london/hi/people_and_places/2012/newsid_8855000/8855161.stm), much of it centered in the East End borough of Newham (http://www.newham.gov.uk/), where the Olympic Park (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Park,_London) is under construction. Newham councilman Paul Brickell hopes that the Olympics will improve life in the neighborhood where he grew up -- a place that now has the UK's highest unemployment rate. Big sporting events have a mixed record when it comes to boosting the economic fortunes of host cities. Sports economist Stefan Szymanski (http://www.cass.city.ac.uk/faculty/s.szymanski/Stefan_Szymanski.html) of London's Cass Business School says the summer's World Cup (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/culture/audio-the-world-what/1542/) in South Africa was typical: Taxpayers subsidized billions in new construction, yet soccer's international organizing body (http://www.fifa.com/) pocketed the lion's share of income from the event. But big events can have a positive impact in the long run, according to urban studies scholar Ricky Burdett (http://www2.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/Experts/[email protected]) of the London School of Economics and Political Science. "You've got to look at it over a minimum of a 10-to-20 (year) time cycle, which is what it takes for cities to change and adapt," he says.