Urban waterfront facing integrated coastal management

Abstract

Essentially, this paper aims at discussing the trends of waterfront development in the context of the urbanised coastal areas, and the possible integration between waterfront organisation and integrated management of the coastal area. To deal with this subject, first the external environment influencing waterfront evolution is considered, focusing on global change, the globalisation of economic systems, and geopolitical change. The diffusion of waterfront re-vitalisation programmes is considered in the context of the urban growth of coastal areas concentrating attention on the numerical increase of megacities and proto-megacities. The Ekistics theory, according to which urban growth will lead to the creation of the ecumenopolis (planetary urban system) including the marine ecumenopolis (urbanisation of all the coastal belts), is considered with the aim of foreshadowing the possible role which could be played by maritime waterfronts in the course of the 21st century. The focus then shifts to the waterfront itself considering the historical triggers for waterfront revitalisation plans. In this context the waterfront functions are incorporated into the coastal use structure by adopting a matrix-based representation. The expanding basis for conflicts between the waterfront functions is emphasised. A framework of options occurring in waterfront development is presented with the aim of responding to two questions: (i) how the waterfront may be designed to be consistent with sustainable development, in that acting as a top rank spatial system conforming to integrated management of the coastal area; (ii) whether and how the waterfront could act as a leading spatial system to carry out integrated management of the coastal area within which it is located. Discussion of the former question leads to designing the optimum choice among the possible objectives of waterfront management, while discussion of the latter question leads to considering the waterfront as the central subsystem of the coastal system, and to reckoning its organisation as including high-rank functions of the coastal area. Reasoning leads to focusing on the design of waterfronts able to optimise their integration into the coastal system, and their development within coastal management. To realise this prospect an international discussion on the waterfront –coastal area integration may be desirable in order to pursue two basic goals: (i) to explore how coastal area management and waterfront planning may usefully interact generating a long-term positive feedback; (ii) to design the optimum waterfront organisation, intended as a planning and management model to be used as a reference basis for integrating the waterfront functions with coastal management strategies.