This is a recent study of Hildegard Westerkamp's "Kit's Beach Soundwalk" in which I used recordings I took from Canary Wharf, specifically the roof garden at Crossrail Place.
I took some of Westerkamp's musings on the relationship between the sounds of the 'natural' world and the city, adapting them to refer to my own surroundings. Her pastoral language suited the artificial flora of the roof garden, which in this case was not separate from the city, but integrated in the heart of it.
Westerkamp presents her recordings as a retreat from the sounds of the city, a personal panacea to urban stresses. Adapting her language to the environment of Canary Wharf highlights a late capitalist awareness of urban stress, and its tendency (at least in commercial centres and high-rent flats) to create sanctuaries, bubbles, within its cityscapes as a strategy to alleviate its own stresses. I think there is a difference between these bubble-retreats and more traditional public parks due to their smaller size, higher levels of artificiality (often they are indoors and have recorded sounds of nature), and the integration of commerce into them (the roof garden at Crossrail place is located above the shopping centre and has two bars/restaurants in it).
As visitors to Canary Wharf, work and consumption are kept hush. We are treated to a carefully curated soundscape, designed to muffle and massage the noisy excesses of the society it maintains.