ABSTRACT
Ideas in planning and architecture have traditionally taken around thirty years to go from being radical and experimental to becoming the accepted norm, from being argued in political, professional and academic institutions to becoming the textbook methodology. The first stage in the process belongs to the visionaries able to offer new insight that somehow captures the Zeitgeist. They are followed at the second stage by the developers who expand the idea, often finding a broader application. During the third stage the idea is so widely accepted that it becomes standard practice. At this point of general recognition the idea is often discarded or radically altered by a new generation who, through hindsight and analysis, are once again able to respond to further change in an original way. Baltimore Inner Harbor was the largest of this first generation of waterfront redevelopments. It was followed by two rapid and overlapping generations of development that also saw the ideas taken up internationally. The fourth generation of rethinkers should now be emerging.
