Flows

The regeneration of urban waterfronts is one of the key urban design and planning stories of the late twentieth century. No longer required to serve as working ports or industrial sewers, waterfronts have become places of urban transformation with potential to attract investment and reverse patterns of decline. The waterfront has also been a primary scene of experimentation in architecture, planning and urban governance. These transformations are played out in a globalising world with increasing tensions between global capital and local place identity – tensions that are mediated by city and state governments with strong imperatives to attract investment and construct images of progress. The urban waterfront has become a new frontier of the city with opportunities for significant aesthetic, economic, social and environmental benefits; it is also the new battleground over conflict between public and private interests.