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As big firms exit what came to be a symbol of the office age, we can finally start thinking about building truly civilised citiesWhen did you last go to an office? This week, as hybrid working moves towards being a legal right, Britain was revealed to be second only to Canada in the global work-from-home league. Since lockdown, its office working has fallen by more than a quarter, an average of one and a half days a week. Covid has revealed the truth, that white-collar staff are not 9-5 factory workers in disguise. Digital has freed “work” from the prison of geography. An office is the whole wide world.Cut to the memorial citadel of Britain’s office age, east London’s Canary Wharf. I can remember when it was on its way to being the Shoreditch of the East End, its warehouses colonised by film-makers and artists. It would today be dancing all night. Instead, it was transformed by Margaret Thatcher’s infatuation with the developer Paul Reichmann’s plan to build a European Wall Street. She made the wharf the biggest state-funded project in UK history. She and her environment secretary, Michael Heseltine, hurled money at it. They declared Canary Wharf’s entire building programme a tradable tax dodge, costing taxpayers billions. They freed it of property taxes. They built it two new railways – the DLR and Jubilee line – a spaghetti junction of motorways and the most expensive road scheme in Britain per mile, the Limehouse Link.Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...