Estate Living Magazine Estate Living Issue 29 May | Página 14

The
Docklands
affect
Canary Wharf is a 40-hectare estate with 140 000sqm of
office, retail and leisure space, and a working population
of around 120 000 people. There are 37 office buildings
and five malls with in excess of 300 shops, cafés, bars
and restaurants. Canary Wharf markets itself as one of the
safest places to live and work in Europe, with the whole
area monitored by a dedicated security team working from a
centralised control room.
While mixed-use precinct
is the buzz-word of the day,
the concept is not new, and
some of the best examples
date back three decades.
towards Canary Wharf with numerous performing arts venues,
galleries and a prolific public art culture, with, of course, the
associated vibrant restaurant, bar and club scene, so there’s
Canary Wharf’s real strength lies in the concentration of big no need to leave the area even at night.
businesses – particularly financial businesses – which have While Canary Wharf is designed as an integrated space that
been lured away from the traditional financial core of “The
City”. And many of those relocated workers (not all of whom
are bankers) have taken advantage of the mixed-use nature of
the estate, by buying or renting here, thereby reducing their
daily commute to a casual riverside stroll, stopping en-route for
a cappuccino to sip while watching the sunrise yoga suppers
'offers it all', it’s not an isolated ghetto of privilege. The arrival
of Crossrail trains in 2018 will doublerail capacity, and cut
commute times significantly. It will now take just under 40
minutes to get to Heathrow airport, and ten minutes to London
City Airport.
contort themselves into strange shapes on the water. And it’s On the active side, there are water sports options like kayaking,
not just business. London’s cultural centre of gravity has tilted supping, boardsailing, sailing and, for the petrol heads, power-
14 | www.estate-living.com