Waterfront Regeneration Research Articles

Social Media Users’ Visual and Emotional Preferences of Internet-Famous Sites in Urban Riverfront Public Spaces: A Case Study in Changsha, China

With the increasing online exposure of urban public spaces, the new concept of “internet-famous sites” has emerged in China. Social media users are the main contributors to this new phenomenon. To fully understand social media users’ preferences in such kinds of public spaces, this article took 27 typical riverfront internet-famous sites (RIFSs) in Changsha City (China) as an example. Through social media platform selection, keyword research, text and image data extraction, visual and emotional symbol coding, and manual calculations of coding frequency, this study investigated social media users’ perception of RIFSs, especially on visual and emotional preferences. The online images and review comments were extracted from the popular Chinese social media platform “Xiaohongshu”. We found that (1) the popularity of each RIFS had a significant head effect and there were far more positive emotions than neutral and negative emotions in review comments. (2) RIFSs in Changsha were divided into five categories: commercial RIFSs, art exhibition RIFSs, historical and cultural RIFSs, ecological recreational RIFSs, and uncultivated RIFSs. Social media users had different visual focuses on each kind of RIFS. (3) Social media users provided specific reasons for their emotional preferences towards different types of RIFSs. This study can provide a new perspective on improving waterfront vitality and offer a targeted and attractive method for waterfront regeneration that is different from traditional methods.

Urban Waterfront Regeneration on Ecological and Historical Dimensions: Insight from a Unique Case in Beijing, China

To address current ecological issues and a lack of historical preservation in Beijing’s waterfront, it has become necessary to establish an urban design project that optimizes these aspects. This study focuses on “Beijing’s Waterfront Overall Urban Design,” a project that integrates government requirements with Beijing’s waterfront urban design characteristics and problems to establish an urban layer system from two dimensions: historical and ecological. It explores how the urban layer system can be applied to Beijing’s overall waterfront urban design, from investigation to evaluation, analysis, visualization, and strategy development. First, an urban layer system for Beijing’s waterfront was established from a historical perspective, based on urban setting and construction stages and space utilization, referring to the literature and field surveys. The evolution of urban layers of waterbodies, the water–city relationship, and water functions was systematically analyzed. Second, an urban layer system was established for the ecological dimension of Beijing’s waterfront based on a literature review, expert interviews, and analytic hierarchy process methods. It included four urban layers: waterbody, greening, shoreline, and ecological function. The quality of the ecological urban design of 54 waterfront reaches in Beijing was evaluated using questionnaires and field surveys. Third, a series of urban layer maps was generated using the mapping method. Finally, urban design strategies were developed based on the combined historical and ecological characteristics and problems of Beijing’s waterfront. The results of this study and the concept of an urban layer system for waterfront urban design can benefit waterfront urban design projects and future studies.

Observing patterns for the urban fabric as a place shaping continuum on the waterfront of the Haliç area, Istanbul

This paper examines placemaking and the outcomes of urban design issues in a waterfront area. The fine-grained urban fabric has played an important role in waterfront regeneration schemes globally. Acting towards environmental challenges to provide green spaces has increasingly become a favourable approach since the 2010s. An ideas competition was held in 2020 to address the issues on the waterfront of the Haliç area. The seven semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the competing discourses on each project created by the teams who attempted to deal with the unsolved urban fabric. Making use of a series of semi-structured interviews, this research paper investigates the existence of the urban fabric as a place-shaping continuum in the Halic area.

ASSESSING THE SOCIAL VALUES OF HISTORICAL WATERFRONT: A CASE STUDY OF SUNGAI PETANI, KEDAH, MALAYSIA

Waterfronts are vibrant areas that are heavily utilised by people with activities in pre-industrial cities. Riverfronts and towns have a tight association during this time frame. As a result, industrial plants were shut down and modes of transportation were altered. In the face of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation in Sungai Petani, Kedah, there is a growing concern that the economic and environmental changes may negatively affect the social values among the community. Overall, this research aims to identify several key areas for the historical waterfront regeneration of Sungai Petani. A social impact assessment was conducted to analyse the social values of the existing waterfront to expand the aspects of social and culture to the planning of urban waterfront regeneration in Sungai Petani. Results of the questionnaire revealed that respondents showed their satisfaction and opinion upon the waterfront element. There are 61.6% proportion of the respondents who consider that the community cohesiveness is the greatest strength of the Sungai Petani’s waterfront. This is followed by cultural vibrancy (47.2%), beautiful streets (40.8%), streets in harmony with nature (28.8%), and beautiful river (12%). At the end of the study, solutions were suggested for the regeneration of historical waterfront and correcting mistakes in existing spaces in light of these determinations.

Identity Change Before and After the Regeneration Project of the Waterfront Area Based on Industrial Heritage—A Case Study of Yangpu Waterfront (China)

This paper takes Yangpu Waterfront, a famous industrial heritage belt in Shanghai (China), as the researchobject, with the purpose of sorting out the identity transformation that this waterfront industrial area has experienced in the past century. Taking the comprehensive development on both sides of the Huangpu River carried out in Shanghai in the early 21st century as the dividing line, Yangpu Waterfront has also been reborn after the waterfront regeneration projects that have been in full swing in recent years. This identity change is reflected in physical settings, observable activities, and meanings. The article is based on historical research and current situation analysis, including a part of user satisfaction evaluations.

Reshaping water-related urban places with collaborative participation: a critical examination of the Kabataş waterfront

PurposeThis study aims to draw a general framework for recreating water-related urban places. It discusses design criteria and processes that will strengthen people's and the city's relationship with the waterfront. It also explores the functional requirements of a participatory process to incorporate social and functional relations into place making.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on a comprehensive case study of the Kabataş project process. Data collection methods include archive searches, questionnaires, interviews and analysis. The study analyses the architectural decisions, the role and perspectives of the key actors and the current dynamics that shape the process. It points out shortcomings and needs of communication and collaboration with different stakeholders, especially with the users.FindingsThe results show that political and power dynamics play an important role in shaping the process. Non-transparent processes increase the gap between the aspects of community and decision makers in current practices. Establishing holistic, waterfront-specific and collaborative approaches is a necessity. The results also show that the success of participation depends on procedural dynamics such as scope, method, timing, representativeness of the community, institutionalisation level, transparency and deliberation.Originality/valueDespite the intense interest in waterfront regeneration, few studies have focused on the potential of the participatory process. The study examines the intersections of waterfront design decisions and collaborative participation at various scales and emphasises the importance of local actors in the social production of space.

V&A Dundee and Cultural Institutions in Dundee: The Role of Museums in Culture-Led Regeneration

This paper will examine V&A Dundee and the role of the museum in culture-led regeneration of a post-industrial city. It will set the museum in the context of existing cultural institutions in Dundee and the significance of the previous work undertaken by institutions in moving towards culture-led regeneration, showing that this has been in progress for over forty years. V&A Dundee is promoted as the centrepiece of the city’s one-billion-pound waterfront regeneration, prompting comparisons to the ‘Bilbao effect’, and subsequent examples. This paper will analyse the main objectives of the museum alongside its perception as a driver of culture-led regeneration, but also illustrating the limitations of culture-led regeneration.

Adaptive Reuse of Port Heritage Leads to Urban Waterfront Regeneration: A Proposed Case Study in Zhuzhou City, China

Improvements in transportation and logistics have forced many ports lost their functional status even abandoned in the recent globalization context. While these deteriorated port-related area could get revitalization when reusing the port heritage as a catalyst to rebuild the better connection to the city, just as the ideal redevelopment projects worldwide have revealed. They provide ways to identify and conserve the port heritage, especially set a research foundation to explore how to use them for urban economic, social-cultural and environmental sustainability. In this sense, three common perspectives towards adaptive reuse of the port heritage have been introduced, respectively representing as multi-functional creator, adhesive back to the city and environmental-friendly messenger, based on which, practical implementation can be directly performed despite the scale of the port area. Consequently, this approach selects a typical port heritage site (Yong Li dockyard) in Zhuzhou, which is just an average industrial port city in center China, to illustrate that the essential factors extracted from project icons will also work for proceedings with considering their own context. In addition, a visual adaptive reuse plan is proposed, aiming to trigger the urban waterfront regeneration by recreating the port heritage as new roles to increase economy, satisfy residents and improve environment. Additionally, this research might shed lights on other cities with potentials.

The life and death of the ‘Baron mall’: The shifting politics of urban regeneration in Valparaiso

The waterfront regeneration of Valparaiso in Chile has been the expression of significant institutional efforts aimed at reaching the so-called urban renaissance of the port-city, seeking to overcome the sustained symptoms of urban decay and economic underperformance. Over the years, a locally born idea became a controversial proposal led by the central government: A privately developed commercial project, named Puerto Baron (Baron Port). This article explores spatialized political struggles both underpinning and undermining this project, from institutional and elite interests pushing its realization to social actions triggering its end. In Valparaiso political and economic forces coalesced across different scales in their attempt to materialize a project that transfers globalized spatial imaginaries with tangled territorialized politics that exceed the limits of the city. Although state-led entrepreneurialism sets the waterfront regeneration agenda, interdependencies with networks of elites and local government were key to sustaining the project. In opposition, social movement strategies of scale jumping help to contest and influence the project’s delay. The case highlights the fragile nature of governing coalitions in Valparaiso as a shift in municipal power, which brought an alignment towards grassroots actors, ended the rather flawed regeneration project of Baron Port. The paper shows how unbounded spatial politics become highly permeated by interests at different scales, though still dependent on national centralized actions and definitions.

Post-socialist discourse of urban megaproject development: From City on the Water to Belgrade Waterfront

As many as twenty years after the overthrow of its authoritarian political regime, Serbia remains a ‘proto-democracy’, supported by the economic ideology of wild neoliberalism. Under such circumstances, urban development is subject to various abuses, such as the misapplication of legal procedures, neglect of the public interest, and politicisation of planning. In particular, urban megaprojects exhibit various distortions, as they require special regulations, additional funding, long-term timeframes, and ad hoc actor-networks. Against that background, this paper examines the main ideological landscapes behind the Belgrade waterfront regeneration, illustrated by two projects – City on the Water and Belgrade Waterfront. By collecting 65 articles from the daily press, we identify relevant stakeholders and present their statements to depict their positions, viewpoints, interests, and specific value frameworks. The research is directed towards 1) recognition of conflicts and coalitions, 2) elucidation of decision-making patterns, and 3) identification of power structures in these two projects. Finally, comparing the key findings in each case helps understand the transformation of the ideological narratives and their effect on urban governance.

The politics of World Heritage Sites: city planning, bird shit architecture and European impunity

ABSTRACT Liverpool holds the unenviable distinction to be the first UK city to lose its United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site status. It was inscribed in 2004, placed on the ‘in Danger’ list in 2012 and de-listed in 2021 due to the perceived negative impact of extensive waterfront regeneration. Planning permission for the £5.5 billion Liverpool Waters project and Everton Football Club's £500 million stadium sealed the city's fate. This is both interesting and unusual. First, very few properties appear on the ‘in Danger’ list, and before Liverpool, only two other sites had been de-listed since the mid-1970s. Second, extant knowledge indicates that European states enjoy ‘impunity’ from World Heritage Committee decisions. However, this was not the case with regards to the UK State Party and Liverpool. Through an analysis of city planning and the ‘politics at the site’, this article problematizes how and why Liverpool was controversially de-listed as a World Heritage Site. Beyond the case study, this article contributes to, and drives forward, international debates on World Heritage Sites.

The afterlives of urban megaprojects: Grounding policy models and recirculating knowledge through domestic networks

This paper interrogates and expands understandings of agency in processes of knowledge circulation by focusing on actors switching their position from the demand-side to the supply side of policy knowledge. In doing so, we contribute to recent debates about the importance of accounting to other scales beyond the local–global binary that dominates the policy mobility literature and to the politics of policy translation and dissemination. Emphasis is given to the performative role of domestic actors and their practices in localising mobile policies of urban regeneration in ‘gateway cities’ while leveraging and recirculating knowledge within their national contexts. Conceptualised as policy brokers and policy entrepreneurs, such actors are attuned to the local dynamics and able to distil context-specific lessons that are sensitive to national regulatory frameworks, funding and political contingencies. We focus on two urban megaprojects of waterfront regeneration in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro that introduced new practices of land monetisation while making use of inter-referencing, drawing on in-depth interviews with policy actors and archival material. We argue that an attention to ‘follow the reformatted model’ reveals how policy models mutate as they conform to contextual factors and to particular interests. The analysis of such processes allows us to transcend the local–global dichotomy and to trace multiscalar connections between multiple projects.

Olympic Waterfronts: An Evaluation of Wasted Opportunities and Lasting Legacies

Mega-events such as the Olympic Games are powerful tools for city-branding and urban development, carrying the ability to create lasting physical, political, social, and economic legacies. Waterfront redevelopment has become a primary mechanism for revitalizing urban spaces, especially through brownfield requalification, and the Olympics have not been indifferent to this trend. Several recent editions have engaged in the rehabilitation of urban waterfronts. To analyze common mistakes that may impair the quality of these interventions, we apply a revised version of a binary evaluation tool to nine such Olympic Waterfronts, starting with Barcelona 1992, assessing their contexts, budgets, programs, plans, and environmental integration. The results show that the Olympic Waterfront can drastically change the image of the city, greatly contributing to the perceived success of the event’s legacy and creating new urban centralities. However, the inadequate management in the planning, delivery and, especially, legacy stages of the event can compromise this “Olympic Effect”. The test application of the evaluation tool proved successful in the context of mega-event planning and post-event transformation. It could potentially be useful in informing present and future decision-making regarding waterfront regeneration projects by highlighting pressure-points that, if not addressed, may hinder the future success of the interventions.

Urban collage: how can affective dynamics shape waterfront landscapes?

ABSTRACT This article unravels the factors of affective dynamics that shape and sustain waterfront regeneration while critically examining the essence and influence of megaprojects. It examines why and how urban atmospheres can be provoked and manipulated to dominate the rationale, political orientations, intrinsic motivations, and power struggles behind waterfront landscapes. It provides explicit insight into how waterfront regeneration operates affectively and atmospherically through the convergence of emotion-focused planning, value-creation approaches, and affective adaptability to transform the physical and political landscape. Focusing on the ‘Asia New Bay Area’ (ANBA) project in Kaohsiung, this article explains why and how megaprojects can be accepted and supported by local people, despite a lack of professional evaluation, public participation, and revenue. The key claim of this article is that addressing the city’s affective dynamics and atmospheric resonances is critical for understanding how megaprojects can be employed to direct public emotions and concerns.

Replicated or homegrown planning model? The mutual constitution of ideas, interests and institutions in the delivery of a megaproject in Rio de Janeiro

ABSTRACT On the surface, contemporary urban megaprojects suggest a convergence in form: office towers, hotels, museums, shopping and renewed public spaces often involving transnational firms and renowned architectsHowever, framing local policiesas instances of a ‘serial reproduction’ of iconic landscapes obscures more than reveals how circulating planning models are reproduced and institutionalized. To this effect, this paper suggests a complementary approach between the literature of policy mobilities and new institutionalism focusing on how policies are ‘arrived at’ and the role of ideas in the policy process. An analytical framework is applied to the case study of a large-scale waterfront regeneration programme in Rio de Janeiro to examine the mutual evolvement between ideas, interests and institutions. The paper concludes by stressing the importance ofpaying attention to how policy knowledge is assembled, institutionalized and interests identified.

Mythology as a Driver of Creative Economy in Waterfront Regeneration: The Case of Savamala in Belgrade, Serbia

This article explores the impact of mythology on urban planning within the creative economy framework. In an urban environment, mythology provides new potentials and introduces the possibilities of built heritage as well as its prose and narrative forms, historical contexts, and social relations. Activists, artists, and other cultural workers promote the culture of freedom of expression in this authentic space. Their bottom-up approach allowed Savamala to become one the most interesting quarters of Belgrade. Meanwhile, the Belgrade Waterfront project is nearing completion and the question whether it will preserve the cultural heritage of Savamala arises. This article investigates the role of mythology in Savamala’s riverfront regeneration, the use of narrative myths and mythical spatial potentials, and the role of mythology in urban planning today.

색채 중심의 셉테드 디자인 관점에서 구도심 친수공간 노후지역의 도시재생에 대한 연구 - 부산시 영도구 봉래2동 봉산마을을 중심으로

Like other developed countries, Korea is moving away from the high-efficiency and fast growing urban development and toward eco-friendly and sustainable urban regeneration. At present, urban regeneration has been implemented in the waterfront areas of most prosperous urban areas, but the diversified development of many old urban areas, including urban regeneration, has not yet begun. On the other hand, recent and annual criminal activities have been occurring constantly. Therefore, there is a growing interest in Korea, and one of the measures that has been created through environmental improvement and other safety measures to address it is CPTED. Based on the psychological effects of color, color inhibits crime from the psychological aspect. Both urban regeneration and crime prevention have essential and relevant research and analysis of color in this study, we will conduct a study on the application of CPTED design color suitable for urban regeneration in old areas of waterfront. Bongsan Village was selected as the site of this study, located below Bongrae Mountain near Busan Port in Yeongdo-gu, Busan. This study draws a conclusion by analyzing how to combine the color application of the septed design with the urban regeneration of waterfront and the color application of septed design after on-site investigation of theoretical consideration and color. In conclusion, it has unity by applying colors harmoniously with the surrounding environment, but it needs to be built on aestheticism. In deriving the research results, it appears to be a place where high brightness or chroma is not more than 50 percent and still needs to be supplemented, and it analyzes the coloration of the entire village in more detail and builds it so that the effect of crime prevention can be concrete. Through research, waterfront urban regeneration and septed design show that can be connected through color. If you look at these studies, it is necessary to consider CPTED when implementing waterfront urban regeneration projects. This direction can be used not only in Bongnae Village but also in other waterfront regeneration projects.

Waterfront regeneration in Australia: Local responses to global trends in reimagining disused city docklands

AbstractThis article applies ideas about critical urban assemblages to understand the planning processes, politics, and delivery of waterfront regeneration from an Australian perspective, drawing on the Port Adelaide waterfront in South Australia as a case study. Waterfront regeneration is associated with global economic deregulation, market‐led development, changes to planning regulatory requirements, and “streamlined” governance arrangements. The global spread of waterfront regeneration is an outcome of such processes, with individual waterfronts being “remade” and reimagined to reflect priorities emphasised by those forging urban policies linked to inter‐urban competitiveness and neoliberal urbanism. Waterfront developments may be categorised as “models” of success or failure that limit deeper analysis that can advance theory and practice. How such projects reflect interactions across local and global scales rather than just being expressions of global forces is a question often ignored; so, too, are those considering how policy and politics mediate those relationships. Ideas, strategies, capital, people, policy, and politics are dynamic, provisional, and contested, and are produced and assembled in particular ways to suit specific spatiotemporal contexts. On that understanding, the aim of this article is to highlight how the Port Adelaide waterfront is undergoing assembly and reassembly to reflect socioeconomic priorities and metropolitan planning agendas.

Port Heritage, Planning Challenges and the Role of GIS Tools in Multi Layered Cities

The aim of this study is to present arguments showing that on the port heritage area, underground cultural inventory should be considered from the historic landscape point of view within the framework of the conservation plans. This study focuses on the Yenikapi region, whose settlement history of the Historical Peninsula changed following the rescue excavation performed at the end of The Bosphorus Rail Tube Crossing Project (Marmaray). The area covering the Port of Theodosius, whose multi-layered urban formation started in the Neolithic period and which was one of the most significant grain trade ports in the Byzantine era, and the port heritage within the background of this area consist of important spatial formations. However, waterfront regeneration projects have disrupted the spatial continuity of cultural heritage under the effect of neoliberal policies. The methodology of the study, which involves the use of the Geographical Information System (GIS), is based on the overlapping of the archaeological surveys from the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, geological structure data from the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, and historical maps. The conservation planning approach in a metropolitan city like Istanbul, whose archaeological layers reflect the port heritage, should be developed by applying the concept of historic urban landscape.

Governance of Waterfront Regeneration Projects: Experiences from Two Second‐tier Cities in Sweden

Governance of Waterfront Regeneration Projects: Experiences from Two Second‐tier Cities in Sweden