The Cool Sea: a waterfront regeneration toolkit
The waterfront at Leith
View of the Baltic and Sage arts complexes
at Gateshead from Newcastle waterfront
Hull: The Deep - a strong
symbol of waterside regeneration
Waterfront Communities Project
PO Box 12473
1 Cockburn Street Edinburgh EH1 1ZH t:
+44 (0)131469 3562 / 3652 f: +44 (0)131 469 3716
email: waterfrontcommunitiesproject@edinburgh.gov.uk
Project Manager:Sara Thiam
website http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/wcp/index.html
The Waterfront Communities Project – a learning network of nine North Sea cities engaged in regenerating their waterfronts – has concluded with the publication of a ‘toolkit’ outlining their experiences.
The Cool Seais a 180-page publication which aims to sum up the tools and methods which can be applied to waterfront regeneration tasks. Edinburgh City Council took the lead in the three year EU funded Waterfront Communities Project, working in association with Heriot-Watt University’s School of the Built Environment.
Partners in the project
It drew together nine waterfront cities from six countries which all share a common link to the North Sea. The partner cities, each leading on a different theme, are Edinburgh, Gateshead, Hull, Schiedam (Netherlands), Hamburg, Aalborg and Odense (Denmark), Goteburg (Sweden) and Oslo.
The ‘toolkit’ covers a range of regeneration issues including regional planning, social integration, harbour heritage and urban design. The main issue most waterfront cities share across Europe is the decline of traditional port activities, such as cargo handling and fishing, and the consolidation of business in fewer and larger ports.
Dockside areas often became neglected and subject to high levels of deprivation. However, increasing pressure for land for new build has led many waterfront cities to turn to their declining harboursides. But there are pitfalls: some are failing to re-establish links between the newly regenerating waterfronts and the wider urban fabric.
Too often new developments are blighted by poor urban design, and styles of architecture that bear no resemblance to the local vernacular. The Cool Sea aims to highlight ways that waterfront cities have been successful in avoiding this, instead involving local communities in creating quality environments. Not surprisingly, this has been achieved most notably in the port cities of Holland and Denmark.
The publication concludes that having a ‘visioning process’ is key to successful regeneration, in which a long-range (30 to 40 year) strategy is taken. Transport is one key factor. For example, major investment was made into the Oslo tram system to underpin regeneration.
The importance of urban design
Urban design is one of the main themes of the Cool Sea, as cities seek to avoid regeneration leading to bland and characterless new development. The challenge is to retain and recreate the complexity and diversity of form of the inner city. At the same time, new uses have to be found for old port buildings, or former industrial warehouses, rather than losing elements of the maritime heritage.
Another important challenge is to integrate new and old neighbourhoods to avoid ‘them and us’ issues being created as newcomers move in. The Cool Sea highlights case studies of good practice carried out by the nine participating cities, covering a broad range of areas. These include achieving design quality in the public realm (Aalborg), building on harbour heritage (Hamburg), and integrating waterfront with city-region strategic objectives (Edinburgh).
Case study examples from all nine cities can be found on the Waterfront Communities website.
Edinburgh Waterfront Communities Project Granton is a waterfront area (140 ha) that is reasonably close to the centre of Edinburgh. Here declining industrial activity has opened up the opportunity to redevelop brownfield land to respond to the need for housing and other developments in an economically expanding city, thus contributing to the protection of the well-established green belt.
Edinburgh Council took the initiative of commissioning master plans for an area owned by itself, the port authority and a gas company. In order to implement the plan in the council-owned area, and to coordinate activities with the other landowners, the local authority and the regional development agency have established a joint venture company.
Through this process, the area aims to provide new high quality, attractive mixed use and housing areas, employment and leisure areas, and integration with the existing neighbouring deprived housing areas.
Further information about the project can be found on Waterfront Communities website.
The city of Aarlborg leading on design quality and public realm
The Fjordkatalog is a strategic master plan prepared by Aalborg City Council (Denmark) to steer the development of two waterfront areas by the city centre, on the north and south banks of the Lim Fjord, which are owned by the council and several private landowners. These previously industrial areas are designated to become a multifunctional contemporary urban district. Preparation of the plan involved comprehensive public debate on the issue of redevelopment of waterfront areas, in which local citizens and property owners participated. Meetings, planning panels, guided tours and debate in the local media were used to involve people.
Further details can be found on the Waterfront Communities website
Aalborg Harbourfront is an area located next to Aalborg city centre for which, under the local authority leadership, a master plan, local plans and design guidance have been prepared through a participatory process. The planning process has taken 3 years, involving different sectors of society through various innovative participatory approaches.
Central to the initiative is the creation of a concert hall and music academy, which in combination with other cultural facilities aims to contribute to the regional objective of turning Aalborg into a 'knowledge-based' city through offering an attractive environment to highly educated people.
Further details can be found on the city of Aarlborg website
