London’s Brexit Apocalypse Is Nowhere in Sight

Thirty years ago, London’s Isle of Dogs was a barren expanse of abandoned wharves and crumbling warehouses, never recovered from the wartime attentions of the Luftwaffe. Even the names of nearby boat basins were reminders of Britain’s lost empire and postwar decline: the West and East India docks.

George Iacobescu arrived in 1988, sent to oversee what at the time seemed like a bold, verging-on-insane idea: the creation of a financial district that would supplant the winding lanes and low-slung stone of the City, London’s traditional banking hub. Maintaining the City’s historical character and its views of St. Paul’s Cathedral made building skyscrapers there all but impossible then. Canary Wharf, as the development would be called, would offer bright, modern office towers and cutting-edge telecommunications, allowing London to compete with New York as a center of global finance.