ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the contradiction between the emergence of utopian urban sites and the sprawling production networks on which they materially depend. Understanding the global mobility of the strategy for repurposing and recapitalizing industrial waterfronts requires attentiveness both to the mobility of capital in and out of the built environment and to the infrastructure-enabled externalization of costs at various scales. While Boston and Baltimore are often cited as the cities where waterfront redevelopment originated, it is New York City where the waterfront became an integral part of a complete turnaround in urban development strategy. Both on New York City's shorelines and in North American and European developments following its example, a common trope has been the distinction of the postindustrial waterfront as a counter-development to the industrial era. The global mobility of postindustrial waterfront redevelopment as an instrument for urban investment strategies ask some difficult questions about the larger production-transportation-consumption geographies into which it fits.
