Waterfront regeneration in the Netherlands: The gases of Rotterdam and Maastricht

The regeneration of obsolescent urban waterfront areas has proved to be a recent focus of urban policy throughout Europe. Despite an apparent convergence in the practice of waterfront regeneration within European cities, such practice in the Netherlands has evolved in a distinctive manner. The latest manifestation of a policy response has been the designation of ‘key projects’, for which waterfront areas in Rotterdam and Maastricht have been selected. The resulting proposals for integrated, mixed‐use development schemes would appear to present a relatively sophisticated response to the problem of declining waterfront areas.     

Physical Planning in Entrepreneurial Urban Governance—Experiences from the Bo01 and Brunnshög Projects,Sweden

Recent research has argued that urban policy has turned towards entrepreneurial forms of urban governance, resulting in a more fragmented and decentralized setting within which public policy is formulated and implemented. This implies that the context for public sector urban planning is also influenced by this “turn”. This article questions this “turn” by arguing that, in Sweden and in practice, forms of fragmentation and decentralization coexist with remnants of coherence and centralization. It focuses on two planning projects, one in Malmö and one in Lund. A case study approach is followed, using official documentation and expert interviews. The article indicates that public authorities and planners remain crucial in urban development projects as initiators of projects, when they bring in financial incentives or lease out the plots for development, or when they add to the project's political legitimacy and bring to the table different actors that would otherwise be less likely to join forces. It concludes by discussing how public sector urban planning is adjusting to the changes brought forward by entrepreneurial urban governance. The article contributes to the literature on how urban planning is adapting to changes in the context for urban governance.     

Class,Community and Communicative Planning: Urban Redevelopment at King's Cross,London

Abstract: This paper presents an argument for considering issues of class in analyses of communicative planning projects. In these projects, class interests tend to be obscured by the contemporary preoccupation with the class‐ambiguous category of “community”. Through a case study of a project of urban redevelopment at King's Cross in London, we conceptualize and map class interests in an urban redevelopment project. Three aspects of the planning process that contain clear class effects are looked at: the amount of office space, the flexibility of plans, and the appropriation of the urban environment as exchange or use value. These aspects structure the urban redevelopment but are external to the communicative planning process. The opposition to the redevelopment has in the planning discourse been articulated as “community”‐based rather than in class‐sensitive terms. We finally present three strategies for reinserting issues of class into planning theory and practice.     

Muddy shore to modern port: redimensioning the Montréal waterfront time-space

For Montréal in the nineteenth century, as for most port cities, the waterfront served as the primary interface between the city and the markets of the world. This paper examines how and why the primitive waterfront of Montréal as of 1830 was repeatedly adapted and transformed into a modern port district by 1914. Beyond a detailed examination of the set of physical changes on the waterfront, this paper draws theoretical insights from geographical interpretations of the rhythm of capital accumulation to explore the formative and adaptive processes underlying waterfront redevelopment. Global innovations in transport and cargo-handling technology are recognised as the preconditions for the periodic redimensioning of the port of Montréal, and it is established that these changes were driven by the perennial demands of local investors to accelerate circulation and thus reduce the turnover time of capital. This paper offers a new perspective on waterfront development by conceptualising the entire port as a comprehensive circulatory system and then exploring the redevelopment of various components in relation to others. The findings indicate that massive increases in traffic—the number and size of ships—through the port were correlated with the redimensioning of all of the connected components of the circulatory system; that is, the major arteries such as the St Lawrence River ship channel, as well as the smaller capillaries like finger piers.     

房地产开发导向的城市更新——我国现行城市再发展的认识和思考

文章介绍了西方国家关于房地产开发导向的城市更新实践(Property-led Redevelopment),以及相关的增长机(Growth Machine)、城市政体(Urban Regime)等理论。在此基础上,分析了我国城市再发展的实践。为实现城市经济增长,城市地位提升,城市形象改善等多元目标,房地产开发已经成为我国城市再发展的主导模式。为此,文章细致分析了我国当前房地产开发导向的城市再发展的动力机制和基本特征,并对当前的再发展模式进行反思。对这些问题的讨论,旨在正确引导市场转型期中国的城市再发展。     

The Redevelopmental State: Governing Surplus Life and Land in the ‘Urban Age’

This article theorizes changing configurations of development governance emerging as states attempt to reconcile two contradictory pressures of global urbanization: dispossessing capitalist accumulation and demands for inclusive welfare. It introduces the ‘redevelopmental state’ as a dynamic spatio‐political framework for understanding how hegemonic rule is tenuously forged amid potentially volatile urban land struggles. Whereas Northern urban redevelopment theories are less attentive to post‐colonial urbanization processes and most developmental state scholarship has not focused on cities, the redevelopmental state offers an alternative conceptualization. It centres on how emerging regimes of territorial rule, development and political participation contour access to land and social benefits in Southern cities. Forged at key conjunctures of social pressure, these redevelopmental state spaces work through and beyond formal policies and institutions, and articulate with nationalist cultural politics of belonging and aspiration that foster consent for redevelopment while also legitimating exclusions, violence and dispossession. A case study of Mumbai illustrates redevelopmental state spaces that suture ethno‐religious nationalism, urbanized accumulation and populist welfare to unevenly distribute life capacities, garnering both cooperation and contestation. The article concludes by suggesting ways this spatially attuned framing can provide insights into the recent rise of ethno‐nationalism and authoritarian populism around the world.     

‘So long,and thanks for all the fish?’* Examining the built and cultural heritage of the Jaffa port redevelopment

‘Heritage’ is a term that is ambiguous in the best of circumstances; however, it becomes even more so in urban environments where conflicts of identity and culture are pivotal, as in Israel’s mixed Israeli-Palestinian cities. In this paper, I examine the recent redevelopment of the Jaffa port, Israel. Jaffa’s ancient port has had a significant role in facilitating industry, commerce and social ties in the area, and it has recently been remodelled by the city as a cultural and entertainment hub. Through interviews with key stakeholders and observations, I examine the role of heritage in the redevelopment using two broad categories: heritage of the built environment and cultural heritage, including the practice of fishing. I argue that while efforts have been made to conserve the waterfront’s heritage, the redevelopment has resulted in an artificial space that does not speak to the local culture of Jaffa as it is interpreted by the port community, including the fishermen. The Jaffa case study suggests that more attention should be paid to the delicate role of urban planners in facilitating change in a politically and culturally contested environment.     

Urban development,redevelopment and regeneration encouraged by transport infrastructure projects: The case study of 12 European cities

This paper attempts to describe the potential of urban transport infrastructure projects such as metro, regional rail and tram, to indirectly work as a catalyst for the development and redevelopment of urban areas as well as the regeneration of declining areas. The paper presents the outcome of research on a sample of 12 European cities—Athens, Bratislava, Brussels, Helsinki, Lyon, Madrid, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Stuttgart, Valencia, Vienna and Zurich. This research is part of the Transecon project which was funded by the European Commission under the competitive and sustainable growth programme of the fifth framework— and concerned with all kinds of different indirect effects (economic, social and spatial) of new transport infrastructure investments in European cities. The outcome of the research points out that urban transport infrastructure may have a catalytic effect on the development, redevelopment and regeneration of urban areas but there are a lot of other influencing factors which make such re-urbanization processes a successful or unsuccessful story.     

Urban Indians: Patterns and Transformations

For centuries American Indians have been an object of Western fascination. All too often this fascination has been an invented view of Indian people. This is especially evident with the recent movement of Indians to urban areas within the United States and Canada. Not only has this movement been ignored by society in general but it has also received almost no comment in the geographical literature. In this analysis the complex character of urban Indian communities is sketched, a variety of interpretations of these communities is outlined and the implications for planning and public policy are examined. The recent emergence of Indian organizations provides an innovative alternative for planning and public policy—cultural planning for urban redevelopment.     

Public space and memories of migration: erasing diversity through urban redevelopment in France

This article examines the meaning of public space and impact of heritage-led urban redevelopment in a diverse neighbourhood in Montpellier, France. It traces the relocation of a North African market from a central city plaza in favour of French antiques, and the resulting contestation over what constitutes local heritage, who has the capacity to determine how public space is used, and the seeming erasure of migrant identities and memories from an important community site. The paper considers how urban areas are re-imagined through a change in the materiality of public space, and outlines the role of outdoor markets in defining the social function of such spaces. The paper examines the intertwining of physical erasure (urban redevelopment and the removal of a diverse food market) and cultural erasure (the loss of certain community memories), and how these processes speak to broader debates about French national identity, cultural heritage, and the meanings attached to public spaces.     

Women,Communities, Neighbourhoods: Approaching Gender and Feminism within UK Urban Policy

In recent years some commentators have looked at successive waves of UK urban policy from the perspective of gender, although these commentaries have been somewhat marginal within wider discussions of urban policy and politics. This article seeks to make the case for a renewed emphasis on gender, which moves beyond tracing the role of men and women in relation to urban policy programmes, in two particular ways. First it is argued that a more sophisticated analysis of the gendered nature of urban governance is needed, in other words how forms of gendered labour, subjectivity and power work through and within policy projects; and second that there should be a wider consideration of what feminist visions of cities and politics, both past and present, might contribute to the project of a critical, and hopeful, analysis of urban policy and politics. The paper seeks to make a practical as well as theoretical intervention in relation to gender and feminist perspectives on UK urban policy. It is argued that there has been a silence around such issues in recent years, both in analysis and in policy discourses, and that this silence has masked how gendered labour and power has often been woven into urban governance. For example, forms of women‐centred organising have been relied on in a range of government projects seeking to build community and participation within poor neighbourhoods. Such reliance may be increasing in a context of austerity. As well as this critical analysis of current policy, the paper argues for the reinvigoration of feminist visions of cities that suggest different framings of aspects of urban life. For example, rethinking the lines between public and private spheres might result in different forms of housing or sites of civic participation. Through engaging anew with such perspectives cities might become more just, caring, and equal for all.     

广州珠江滨水区更新模式的思考

珠江滨水区的更新对于广州城市的社会经济发展具有重要的作用,是广州城市景观更新的重要组成部分。本文通过总结并借鉴国内外滨水区更新的多种模式和经验,提出了广州珠江滨水区多层次的更新理念,探讨了内部更新与向外扩张相结合、政府与民营合作的多层次复合更新模式,制定了珠江滨水区的更新策略,构建了"两河一岛四岸"的发展框架。     

Working Port or Lifestyle Port? A Preliminary Analysis of the Port Adelaide Waterfront Redevelopment

This paper presents preliminary analysis of a larger study examining the re‐making of the Port Adelaide waterfront. It offers insights into the way the processes of urban entrepreneurialism endeavour to appropriate and transform landscapes by building on a particular heritage of place while simultaneously dismantling this image to recreate an alternative form. The proposal to refashion the Port's waterfront into a lifestyle and tourist destination will dramatically transform the current socio‐spatial organisation of working and community life as perceived and valued by those local communities currently living in and around the Port area. The removal of a small group of boatyard operators from the inner‐harbour, as part of the redevelopment, is symbolic of local concern of the potential loss of a particular way of working and community life that is steeped in history, heritage and class and is particular and peculiar to the Port Adelaide waterfront. The findings support the view that the process of urban entrepreneurialism in the re‐imaging of place is transformative, selective and exclusive.     

大型节事对城市旅游空间发展的影响机理

大型节事(Mega-event)既是城市发展中的一项社会、文化、经济活动,也是一个重大的空间事件。事实上,社会经济实践往往最终都会通过空间事件而得以实现。基于对大型节事、城市旅游空间等概念的认知及节事活动相关"旅游角色"的诠释("触发器"→"指示器"→"调节器"),从时间上的"峰聚"现象、选址上的"裂变"效应及运作上的"网络"互动等影响视角,探究了大型节事对城市旅游空间发展的影响机理,并以2010年上海世博会为实证案例,重点讨论了世博会与上海城市旅游空间的互动发展(形成上海都市旅游新增长极,提升黄浦江旅游发展轴功能,重构上海城市旅游空间核心轮廓)。     

Flexible urban governance. The case of Copenhagen's recent waterfront development

In this paper, the most recent wave of Copenhagen's waterfront development is analyzed and interpreted in the context of broader economic tendencies and political strategies. Recent events illuminate relationships among politicians, bureaucrats and capital to regulate an accumulation process that is highly intertwined with international, national as well as urban interests. Beginning in the late 1980s, the national state, the local state and the port authority, undertook a number of planning and policy initiatives to create a process for transforming Copenhagen's waterfront. When contradictions from the logic of profit maximization became apparent and threatened to de‐rail long term economic growth, a new ad hoc and ‘flexible’ process of urban governance was established to get development back on track. Senior politicians created a so‐called ‘Vision Group’ that functioned as a ‘meta‐steering’ committee providing direction to local development by identifying a development approach that attempted to resolve, at least temporarily, tensions among global market tendencies and the interests of the main actors. In this way, the Vision Group achieved its political purpose to create a shared vision and a discourse for the development of the waterfront. The new strategy was effective at various scales of governance, but circumvented local planning practices.     

Nodes and places: complexities of railway station redevelopment

An interpretation of the redevelopment prospects of railway stations and their surroundings is proposed. Station locations are at the same time nodes and places, affected by both global and local dynamics. Their potential roles within increased transport integration and emerging multi‐centered urban regions provide the foundations for their transformation. However, the task is a complex one, as a discussion of the issues connected with the intensification of flows, the accumulation of activities, and the tangle of actors which characterize these projects shows. More attention must be paid to the integration of the node and place dimensions and of diverging redevelopment strategies.     

Spatial Poetics Under Authoritarianism: Graffiti and the Contestation of Urban Redevelopment in Contemporary China

This article investigates the expression of resistance to urban redevelopment in the authoritarian context of contemporary China. Where conventional channels of public expression are closed, the very space of urban transformation becomes an important medium of contestation. Through the practice of “spatial poetics”, residents manipulate the taken-for-granted meanings attached to urban space, challenging the spatial codes that authorise redevelopment. Working across four spatial dimensions—territory, place, scale, and network—these poetic manipulations allow residents to de-naturalise existing power structures, escape their effects, and re-code space with alternative meanings. The article illustrates the practice of spatial poetics through an analysis of Ciqikou, a historic district of Chongqing undergoing redevelopment. Residents expressed their resistance to redevelopment by writing slogans on buildings slated for demolition. By emphasising relationships of scale, network, and place, residents’ graffiti challenged the territorial basis of the Chinese party-state’s redevelopment project and revalorised the neighbourhood as worthy of preservation.     

China's Emerging Neoliberal Urbanism: Perspectives from Urban Redevelopment

Abstract: China's urbanization is undergoing profound neoliberal shifts, within which urban redevelopment has emerged in the forefront of neoliberalization. This study aims to understand China's emerging neoliberal urbanism by examining the association between urban redevelopment and neoliberalism. Rather than a deliberate design, neoliberalization in China is a response to multiple difficulties/crises and the desire for rapid development. The neoliberalization process is full of controversies and inconsistencies, which involve conflicts between neoliberal practices and social resistance, and tensions between central and local states. Nevertheless, China's neoliberal urbanism has a responsive and resilient system to cope with the contradictions and imbalances inherent in neoliberalism. Meanwhile, neoliberal urbanism is more tangible at the sub‐national scale, since the local state can most effectively assist neoliberal experiments and manage crises. This study not only contributes to the understanding of China's neoliberal urbanism, but also has multiple implications for neoliberalism studies in general. First, in examining the interrelationship between the state and market, it is the actual effect of legitimizing and facilitating market operation rather than the presence (or absence) of the state that matters. Second, a new nexus of governance has formed in the neoliberalization process. Not only the nation state but also the local state is of great significance in assisting and managing neoliberal projects. Third, this study further validates the importance and necessity of scrutinizing neoliberal practices, in particular the controversies and inconsistencies within the neoliberalization process.     

The Unstable Coastline: Navigating Dispossession and Belonging in Colombo

This article explores how residents of a small coastal fishing enclave in Colombo live with cumulative waves of dispossession brought on by exclusionary projects of urban development. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I introduce the analytic of navigation to describe how people move, plan and live with both present and future threats of dispossession. Navigation offers a unique perspective on questions of agency and resistance in oppressive conditions. Rather than framing subjects as “resisting” projects of world-class city-making, this analysis shows that urban residents instead engage in complex and occasionally contradictory modes of living with uncertainty. I complicate existing understandings of the term “navigation” by describing how questions of nation and belonging are crucial to comprehending how people navigate. Ultimately, I suggest that expressions of belonging and obligation to an imagined community might not only be strategic, but instead reflect some of the broader social forces which structure possibilities for action.     

Class Monopoly Rent and the Redevelopment of Portland's Pearl District

This study examines the role of class monopoly rent in shaping the spatial form and pattern of urban redevelopment processes in the contemporary neoliberal city. Since an initial flourishing literature during the 1970s and 1980s, urban land rent theory has fallen from the analytic radar of critical urban studies since the early 1990s, with the influence of class monopoly rent often considered an aberration of how capitalist real estate markets normally operate, if not rejected. Consequently, class monopoly rent has never been systematically elaborated. Based on an empirical analysis of Portland's Pearl District, this study suggests that the influence of class monopoly rent in contemporary processes of urban redevelopment is far more pervasive than often recognised, representing a “standard institutional practice” that is endemic (rather than aberrational) to the working of neoliberal urban governing regimes, and embeds in the social and physical landscape in a multiplicity of ways.