Canary Wharf walking tour

How did students learn?

In the class session prior to the site visit, we considered the Docklands as case study in urban regeneration. This session asked students to role play community members, private investors, and local and senior government officials with a stake in reviving the Docklands just at the turn of the 1980s, before the London Docklands Development Corporation displaced the preexisting Docklands Joint Committee and established a new agenda for reviving the area.

Canary Wharf figured at the center of that agenda as an extension of the London Square Mile, and we took to the Isle of Dogs to see firsthand how the area grew over the years and whether it deserves to be considered a case study in sustainable development, especially given pronounced local opposition to the shift from the industrial economy for which the area was known to the service economy that has prevailed since the 80s (students were assigned to watch BBC news footage contemporaneous with the proposal for the site). During the tour, we focused on different elements of Canary Wharf, and Docklands at large, as they were transformed – from transportation, to housing, to commerce, to industrial archaeology and income distribution.

Key benefits for students included:

• The ability to experience Canary Wharf on a typical late Monday afternoon – what people are around, and how many, what businesses are open, what buildings are used for, how the location feels in terms of scale, accessibility, energy, aesthetics, etc.
• Bringing history to life
• Personal relevance of financial sector points of interest (most students belong to DMSB)