Routledge Transforming Urban Waterfronts: Fixity and Flow (Routledge Advances in Geography)

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. Review "It is the broad scope of this text that is most appealing. It avoids any over simplification as it establishes the foundation for a comprehensive theory of urban waterfront development. While it makes no claim to offer such a theory, this text is a must read for anyone interested in moving beyond the platitudes of any single disciplinary perspective on waterfront change."-Robert G. Shibley, Professor of Architecture and Planning, and Director, The Urban Design Project, University at Buffalo, State University of New York "Going beyond a ‘successful story’, typology of waterfront visions, and how to make and remake ‘charming’ urban waterfront, this book gives critical and reflective perspectives on urban waterfront change by looking at it as a dynamic process of ‘Fixity’ and ‘Flow’ across space and time. Based on empirical findings from international experience, the book covers various issues on history, economic, politics, culture and biophysical, with full of tensions and contradictions." -Kasama Polakit, Florida Atlantic University "The book is very recommendable for its variety of new disciplinary approaches and for the widening of perspectives on problems and issues of waterfront transformations."-Hans Harms, HafenCity University, Hamburg, in Planning Perspectives, vol 27, no 1, p. 149-151 About the Author 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.