Waterfront tourism and public art in Cardiff Bay and Lisbon's Park of Nations

Abstract

Many former port cities in the Western world have been undertaking waterfront revitalisation within a wider re-imag(in)ing rationale to boost place competitiveness and to reposition themselves as leading tourism destinations. Previously deindustrialised and derelict waterscapes have thus turned into mixed-use areas and, through overall enhancement of the public realm and existing facilities, together with the creation of iconic architecture, they have been assigned with new values, meanings and symbols. These aesthetically appealing sites of cultural entertainment and conspicuous consumption now constitute venues for outdoor sports, leisure, entertainment and shopping activities that offer an extensive range of hedonistic experiences aimed at increasingly demanding and eclectic visitors. But these processes are bound up with social and power relations in their localities, and are contested. This article seeks to examine the cases of Cardiff Bay and Lisbon's Park of Nations as two European capital waterfronts that adopted this strategy of spatial intervention in the 1990s to reinvent their images. This article considers, in particular, how two distinct waterfront revitalisation projects have introduced new urban centralities in their hosting cities, and how contemporary public art associated with water and maritime motives has come to reshape the public realm, to redefine its social and cultural appropriation, and to assume a central role in the creation of new place identities. The contested nature of public space and the social and cultural tensions at stake in urban regeneration will be considered through the case studies.