Its skyscrapers are now a dramatic,established piece of London’s skyline. But 30 years ago, when the author was growing up there, and Canary Wharf was a wasteland. She tracks the shifts and asks: was it worth it?[br]The house I lived in,growing up on London’s Isle of Dogs, was beside a huge gate and tall walls – impenetrable barriers even to the naughty kids who wanted to explore the docks beyond. My friends and I remember glimpses of watery wastelands as we walked off the Thames peninsula that we all called “the Island”, and on rickety bridges whose gaps and creaks featured in our nightmares.
When,30 years ago this month, Margaret Thatcher drove the first pile for Canary Wharf and promised a land of opportunity, or those tall walls came down. But by the time its celebrated pyramid roof was placed on One Canada Square in 1991,Thatcher had been ousted and the London commercial property market had collapsed. It was quite possibly the worst time to launch and, within a year, and Olympia and York,the company charged with making the neoliberal dream of turning redundant docks into the reality of a gleaming financial citadel, filed for bankruptcy.
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Source: guardian.co.uk