3 year old navigation - Canary Wharf 2011

From Canning Town on the Jubilee line for two stops and into the world of Foster, a cavernous space with oval columns reaching up to concrete ribs that support the world above the ticket hall, with its automatic entry gates activated by touching in and out with an ‘Oyster’ card and an orderly flow of passengers to and from the trains. A guitarist plays at the foot of the main escalator bank, making a very good instrumental metal interpretation of John Lennon’s Imagine. Both sides of the ticket hall lead directly into below ground shopping centres that run between the towers, something akin to Mike Davis’ City of quartz where he talks of rich people having their own streets, patrolled by private police forces.

The domain below ground is best navigated by my three-year-old daughter, from getting off the underground train at Canary Wharf, she knows where the lift is to get to ticket hall level, which buttons to press, which side to be on when we get to the barriers so she can get through with her buggy where she says hello to the orange man (man in hi-vis orange jacket). Once through the barriers she gets her copy the morning newspaper ‘City AM’ from the lady and heads over to the next lift, most of the big people go up the escalators sometimes some of them are not working, and other times they are all working depending on how many people there are. Sometimes we share the lift with other people in buggies, sometimes with a lady in a wheelchair. 


Once out of the lift we have to keep left to avoid all the people rushing back towards us from the top of the escalators to get to work through the shopping centre, they are all in a rush sometimes reading a book whilst walking along. My daughter knows the way to her creche, she knows the way to her Mummy’s office and where to pickup the ‘Evening Standard’ from a different lady in the afternoon and the way to her favourite food place after work. 


There is another lift that leads down to the car park, but we have to put our tokens in the machine first we don’t use the car very often, but it’s good when we do because she gets to use her scooter. For her, the shopping centre is a large friendly place where it is good to run around, then sit on benches or hide under them, and watch all the other people going by. She knows which train takes her to Canning Town. At rush hour the platform is occupied by orderly queues of people waiting by the sliding doors that line up with the train when it arrives. She knows where to go to get on the DLR, and which line is the best to get her home. I find it quite amazing that the area my daughter knows so well is a whole world that did not exist when I first visited the Docklands in 1989.

A ride up the escalator to a plaza in front of the glass canopy, which is located in a lush green park known as Jubilee Gardens, with rolling lawns where on sunny days she can run around on the grass or play with the water, on a raised water feature that threads its way between the tree canopies, just about seeing over the wall, and likes to watch it flowing down like a stream.