Transforming Urban Waterfronts

Gene Desfor is Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar at York University.Jennefer Laidley has been Project Manager for four years on the ‘Changing Urban Waterfronts’ research project, and has published articles on waterfront development in the academic journal Cities as well as in the periodicals Relay and Fuse. Quentin Stevens is Senior Lecturer in Planning and Urban Design at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. Dirk Schubert is Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, Comparative Planning History, Housing and Urban Renewal at the HafenCity University.

• Introduction: Fixity and Flow of Urban Waterfront Change Section 1: The Waterfront and the City 1. Maritime Ports and the Politics of Reconnection 2. Fragmentation on the Waterfront: Coastal Squatting Settlements and Urban Renewal Projects in the Caribbean 3. Dockland Regeneration, Community, and Social Organization in Dublin 4. Waterfront Revitalizations: From a Local to a Regional Perspective in London, Barcelona, Rotterdam, and Hamburg Section 2: Global and Local Dynamics on the Waterfront 5. Urban Waterfront Transformation as a Politics of Mobility: Lessons from Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct Debate 6. London Docklands Revisited: The Dynamics of Waterfront Development 7. San Francisco’s Waterfront in the Age of Neoliberal Urbanism 8. New York City’s Waterfronts as Strategic Sites for Analyzing Neoliberalism and its Contestations Section 3: Naturalizing Development and Developing Nature 9. Deep Water and Good Land: Socio-Nature and Toronto’s Changing Industrial Waterfront 10. Visibility and Contamination on the Buenos Aires Waterfront: Under the Bridges of Puerto Madero and La Boca Section 4: New Practices of Property-Led Development 11. The German ‘City Beach’ as a New Approach to Waterfront Development 12. Exploring Innovative Instruments for Socially Sustainable Waterfront Regeneration in Antwerp and Rotterdam 13. Flows of Capital and Fixity of Bricks in the Built Environment of Boston: Property-Led Development in Urban Planning? Conclusion: Patterns of Persistence: Trajectories of Change

"It is the broad scope of this text that is most appealing. It avoids any over simplification as it establishes the foundation for a comprehensive theory of urban waterfront development. While it makes no claim to offer such a theory, this text is a must read for anyone interested in moving beyond the platitudes of any single disciplinary perspective on waterfront change."-Robert G. Shibley, Professor of Architecture and Planning, and Director, The Urban Design Project, University at Buffalo, State University of New York"Going beyond a ‘successful story’, typology of waterfront visions, and how to make and remake ‘charming’ urban waterfront, this book gives critical and reflective perspectives on urban waterfront change by looking at it as a dynamic process of ‘Fixity’ and ‘Flow’ across space and time. Based on empirical findings from international experience, the book covers various issues on history, economic, politics, culture and biophysical, with full of tensions and contradictions." -Kasama Polakit, Florida Atlantic University"The book is very recommendable for its variety of new disciplinary approaches and for the widening of perspectives on problems and issues of waterfront transformations."-Hans Harms, HafenCity University, Hamburg, in Planning Perspectives, vol 27, no 1, p. 149-151