Planning for the North-European Waterfront Cities

Abstract

Redevelopment of urban waterfronts is one of the leading themes in contemporary planning practice. This issue is a subject of interest to many scholars and practitioners, associated with development of waterfront cities. In literature on this topic one can find a lot of information regarding leading examples of this process, discussion of issues and problems associated with this phenomenon as well as analysis of the results achieved. In addition, many specialists in this field managed to develop a sort of “guide of good practice” for cities and planners interested in undertaking an effort associated with reshaping the waterfront site. But one can easily spot that most of the cases discussed are based in climate zones allowing extensive public use of the waterfront sites for the most part of the year. Therefore, the phenomenon of waterfront redevelopment is frequently associated with extensive development of large scale urban structures, in the climate realities allowing extensive public usage of these. On the basis of the “success stories” of many cities undertaking the waterfront urban redevelopment process also municipalities located in “less privileged” from the climate point of view areas as well as small-and medium-sized cities tend to rethink their water related urban structures. This relates both to cities located in the hot and cold climate zones – which to large extent make the traditional type of waterfront redevelopment patterns unviable, both due to climate conditions and – being the result of those – different economic and cultural realities. In result, the design patterns based on the traditional “success stories” seem to be unsuitable for these locations and the designers and developers of waterfront sites located in such cities have to look for the alternative solutions. Same applies to small- and medium-sized cities, which not necessarily bear potential for implementation of the mixed-use, large-scale urban projects. In these cases also the problem of relations between “global” trends associated with development of mass tourism as well as with implementing the typical mixed-use patterns and specifics of local economy and cultural environment has to be taken into account. Within the proposed paper the specifics of small-and medium-sized waterfront cities, located outside the “climate comfort zone” will be elaborated. Within this group the special attention will be paid to the cities located in the northern Europe. Usually these are small and medium –sized municipalities, rarely aspiring to become the leading centers of urban development in their respective countries. At the same time their economy was traditionally based on fishing, small-scale maritime industries and local trade. In addition, in many cases these cities are not extremely attractive for mass tourism and are located aside from major transportation routes. Therefore, it seems necessary to rethink the “urban waterfront development pattern” within these sites, as the strategies based on copying the solutions known from larger cities cannot be effectively used.