London: The Biography

Docklands itself experienced a similar fate. Wild fluctuations in the urban economy left it balancing between triumph and disaster on a number of occasions; its apartment blocks were fashionable one year, and unfashionable the next; there were complaints about rudimentary transport facilities as well as the absence of shops, but nevertheless there was continual development. Michael Hebbert, in London, has remarked that there were “few preconceptions as to what should occur,” and that this “hands-off approach produced a curiously piecemeal environment.” Yet in that respect it followed the pattern of most London growth, which is no doubt the reason for its success. Docklands “had no overall philosophy for the massing and scale of buildings, or for the layout of public spaces,” but that is why it has become a natural and recognisable extension of London. The entire area was accused of “aesthetic incoherence” and a “market-driven disregard of social policy” but these are precisely the conditions and circumstances in which the city has expanded and flourished; it understands no other principles of life.

That is the context in which the great tower of Canary Wharf, which dominates the London skyline, has won in Hebbert’s words “immediate acceptance and affection.” This great shaft, so in tune with the alignment of the city, now rivals the Monument and Big Ben as the symbol of London. It represents, too, the single most important shift in urban topography for many centuries; the commercial and social pressures had always edged westwards, but the development of Docklands has opened up what has been called London’s “eastward corridor” which in historical and structural terms offers passage and access to Europe at a time when London’s economy is becoming more closely associated with the continent. There is a suspicion that the City of London-as well as the banks and brokers newly moved to Docklands- will come to dominate the financial markets of the European Community. Here, in this steady progress eastwards, we may be able to sense London’s instinctive and almost primordial reaching towards money and trade.

It is appropriate to mention here the “Big Bang” which transformed the City in the autumn of 1986; that explosion turned the Stock Exchange into the International Stock Exchange, enabled the merger of banking and brokerage houses, finished the system of fixed commissions and introduced “electronic dealing.” It was not the beginning of the City’s triumphalism; the phenomenon of young urban professionals named “yuppies” had been first noticed in 1984: a group who, in the phrases of the period, wished to “get rich quick” before “burn-out.” But the events of 1986 heralded a sea-change in the position of the City of London. Its foreign exchange market is now the most advanced and elaborate in the world, handling approximately one-third of the world’s dealings; with 600,000 employed in banking and allied services it has become the largest exchange in the world. Once more London was fulfilling its historical destiny, and recovering the pre-eminence which it had achieved in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is an historical achievement in more than one sense since, as Hebbert has explained, “The compactness of a 2000-year old urban core is fortuitously well suited to the operation of a globalised financial service centre.” Whether it is entirely “fortuitous” is another matter, however, since the actual nature of that square mile seems uniquely possessed by the spirit of commerce. There have been booms and busts, but it has maintained its ascendancy.

A new type of commercial activity, however, demanded new forms of building. That is how the City changes, while keeping its identity intact. The demand was for large open spaces which could accommodate the miles of cables attached to electronic activity and which could harbour thousands of employees working under consistent pressure. There was, after all, a human cost to this fresh access of trade. In the late 1980s some four million square metres of office space were added to the stock of the City, not least with the development of the Broadgate complex. Light-sensitive blinds and prismatic blue-green glass shielded the devotees of finance as they continued, night and day, with their dealings and transactions. All the gods and griffins of the City protected them.