Transforming Urban Waterfronts: Fixity and Flow

In port cities around the world, waterfront development projects have been hailed both as spaces of promise and as crucial territorial wedges in twenty-first century competitive growth strategies. Frequently, these mega-projects have been intended to transform derelict docklands into communities of hope with sustainable urban economies?economies intended to both compete in and support globally-networked hierarchies of cities.

This collection engages with major theoretical debates and empirical findings on the ways waterfronts transform and have been transformed in port-cities in North and South America, Europe, the Caribbean. It is organized around the themes of fixities (built environments, institutional and regulatory structures, and cultural practices) and flows (information, labor, capital, energy, and knowledge), which are key categories for understanding processes of change. By focusing on these fixities and flows, the contributors to this volume develop new insights for understanding both historical and current cases of change on urban waterfronts, those special areas of cities where land and water meet. As such, it will be a valuable resource for teaching faculty, students, and any audience interested in a broad scope of issues within the field of urban studies.

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.