Port cities and urban waterfronts: how localized planning ignores water as a connector

Abstract

Brief Abstract (250 words)People have redesigned coastlines -creating ports, shaping waterfronts, and building cities -to connect water and land. Specialists from many disciplines have explored the function and design of the water-land transition over many centuries. Among them, planning as a discipline engages both with the functionality of working ports and the design of the waterfront for the urban public. Exploring the development of working ports and the revitalization of abandoned inner-city waterfronts since the 1960s, this paper reviews planning and planning history literature in regard to the specific appreciation of water. It first examines the planning of ports and its focus on improving the speed, safety and logistics, assigning water an industrial role. Second, it reflects on the design of postindustrial waterfront spaces, which ascribes a more aesthetic and symbolic as well as leisure-related role to water. Third, it points to the recent reconnection of cruise shipping with inner-city waterfront redevelopment and the coastline in general. In conclusion, the paper underscores local perceptions of water in planning literature and the need to recognize how interconnected water systems connect otherwise separated areas along the same coastline. It argues for integrated planning of port, waterfront, and city in conjunction with a comprehensive study of the environmental and ecological role of water in each of those places, both as a resource they share and, with climate change, a risk to which they must collectively respond.

New horizons for dredging research: The ecology and politics of harbor deepening in the southeastern United States

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Social and Environmental Justice in Waterfront Redevelopment: The Anacostia River, Washington, D.C.

“…Despite the extensive research that has been carried out on waterfront redevelopments to date, little research has examined issues of justice in the design and implementation of redevelopment projects (Hein 2016). The lack of research on justice is all the more surprising given that waterfronts are often places of high-end housing and facilities, illustrative of “elite-dominated decision making mechanisms, social polarization, and spatial fragmentation” (Tasan-Kok and Sungu-Eryilmaz 2011, p. 257).…”

Defending the past by challenging the future: spatial and institutional path dependencies in the Naples port-city region

“…In the past, ports have also assumed the role of public areas thanks to their connection to urban and social life, commercial activities, and mostly due to morphological integration with the city (Pavia & Di Venosa, 2012). Nevertheless, this relationship has dramatically changed since industrialization, with ports growing towards the hinterland and away from their historical cities (Hein, 2016a;Hoyle, 1989;Kokot et al, 2008;Pinder, 1981;Schubert, 2011). This went hand in hand with fragmentation among the actors (Hein, 2014).…”