MY JOB REQUIRED travel to London every quarter or so.  In our previous trips, we pretty much stuck to central London and I had never ventured any farther east than the Tower of London, so Canary Wharf and its environs was all new to me.  Built in the docklands on the Isle of Dogs, Canary Wharf had been the home of the East and West India Companies and had centered around all things marine.  Areas surrounding docks tend to be fairly colorful, catering to the needs of temporarily land-bound seamen, whose predilections tended towards wine, women and well, that’s about it.  Hence, once the shipping center of London moved elsewhere, the docklands slid rapidly into decline and by the time the developers showed up in the late 1990s, things were pretty bleak on the docks, although there were thriving communities farther south and in the adjacent East End – an area with quite a reputation, and not much of a tourist destination.

Present-day Canary Wharf is a shiny conglomeration of office buildings built on the base of what looked on a map like a pituitary gland hanging down into the River Thames. One could easily see its history as a shipping center since there was still a fair amount of water around – canals and sections of the Thames, tamed into tidy passages spanned by footbridges linking Canary Wharf to the rest of the world. A number of riverside cranes had been left behind as reminders of the area’s maritime past.

At the center of the mass of buildings stands Canada Tower, at the time the tallest building in London.  Many of its neighbors are also quite tall, so taken all together, the buildings represent a significant bump on the skyline.  What I found fascinating was that no two buildings were alike.  Some were glass towers, reflecting the other buildings and the surrounding docklands.  Others were somewhat lower and broader and built of stone or brick.  Despite their difference in appearance, all of these buildings were built at the same time, so the heterogeneity was planned. Seen from afar, it looks like a cluster of office buildings, or a small city – kind of like downtown Newark looks from Manhattan.

Most of the firms which occupy these buildings are financial or consulting firms, with a few mega law firms thrown in.  I remember reading somewhere about there being a concern that the City, that square mile of London where all the financial firms had previously been concentrated, would empty out – losing all its denizens to the gleaming emerald city to the east.  This thankfully didn’t happen and the City remains as robust as ever, while Canary Wharf teams with workers during the day and with families in the evenings and on weekends.

Underlying this massive complex is an equally massive assortment of stores, shops and restaurants – all built to cater to the daytime workers.  Most stores are upscale, and meet the every need of urban professionals.  There’s a multi-level Waitrose – an upscale UK supermarket and at least 5 Pret a Manger shops. Above ground are a dozen or so restaurants and bars which cater to the  characteristically heavy drinking after-work crowd.  Served by the Jubilee line of the tube and the Docklands Light Railway, transportation is pretty reliable Monday through Friday.  On weekends, the “planned engineering works” can wreak havoc with accessibility, and one learns to rely on feet or taxis.  Finally, several major chain hotels – Four Seasons, Marriot, Hilton and Hyatt are located within the fabric of Canary Wharf, so sadly there’s really very little incentive for the business traveler to leave the complex.

In fact, on my first couple of trips there, I was indeed a prisoner of Canary Wharf, shuttling between hotel and office, and dining with colleagues in the evening at local restaurants.  So despite the fact that everybody walked on the left (I often felt like an American salmon swimming upstream until I got the hang of it), and had accents (50% of which were south Asian) I could have been in any urban business neighborhood in the US.  Occasionally, I’d get a glimpse of the surrounding area, and if the location was right, could see the dome of St. Paul’s, the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye off in the distance. But the closest I got to these landmarks was from the back of a taxi on my way to and from Heathrow.

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