Quote:
Originally Posted by N90
That’s such a weird place to build a business district between channels and lanes of water like that. But at the same time it’s very unique and incredibly cool too. Just so damn weird tho.
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Yep, it was all VERY speculative in the 1980s, back when UK was the 'sick man of Europe' and kicked out of the ERM our economy was so bad. 1/8 of the city fell into abandonment after container docks opened upstream, so Maggie Thatcher's idea was to turn them into commercial space, infamously reliant on 'market forces'. Whilst many of the Victorian warehouses were converted into luxury lofts, Canary Wharf was given to Olympia & York, a Canadian developer that subsequently went bust over the plan, when those market forces didn't quite materialise.
However fast forward another decade, and London started to boom, in population, in business after the deregulation of the finance industry, and as a magnet for immigrants thanks to our lingua franca - the rest is history. With so many protected viewing corridors elsewhere Canary Wharf suddenly looked attractive as one of the few places one could build high.
Nowadays the docks are still used, with more plans to open them up for leisure:
https://canarywharf.com
www.ianvisits.co.uk,
https://loveopenwater.co.uk
The Thames is the cleanest urban river in the world - but is estuarine so is a horrible murky brown for much of its length in the city. The docks however aren't tidal so the water's much clearer, and more attractive for the river larkers.
There's even a seal called Sammy who visits every week (Billingsgate Fish market still operates below the towers, and the porters feed him each time)