The City IKEA Built

Hold onto your instruction manuals: Ikea is building an entire neighborhood in East London. The mixed-use community will be developed on 26 acres of land in Stratford, just south of Olympic Park. Strand East, as the neighborhood is being called, will be home to a Courtyard by Marriott hotel, roughly 1,200 homes, and nearly half a million square feet of commercial space (but no Ikea store, reports the Financial Times) - all wedged between two waterways. It will be developed by LandProp, a real estate subsidiary of the Inter Ikea Group that's built similar projects in Poland and other parts of Europe.

The distinguishing element of Strand East may be its devotion to walkability. The neighborhood will include many car-free zones, and cars that do enter the area will be stowed in an underground parking lot, out of sight. Harald Muller, a spokesman for the project, told real estate information source CoStar UK that Ikea wants to apply the same emphasis on sustainability to Strand East that it does to its retail products: