ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the morphology of the waterfronts in Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand and compares morphological processes and challenges facing current planning management on both waterfronts. It describes the changing waterfront landscapes and seeks to explain the physical changes in terms of the key morphological agencies at work and their evolving roles in the development and implementation of waterfront planning and design. Large-scale waterfront redevelopment is designed and built with the intention of generating tourism and leisure activity, and eventually forms the Tourism Business District along the stretch of the waterfront. A. Gospodini proposes that morphology is particularly conducive to clarifying three aspects of tourism development: the preservation of aspects of the city’s past, authenticity in terms of spatial morphology, and richness in meaning. Tourism-induced urban design pays attention to facadism and pastiche streetscape recreation, or an over-sanitization of both the history and the life of an industrial town.
