Site specificity in contemporary large-scale harbour transformation projects

TY - JOUR

T1 - Site specificity in contemporary large-scale harbour transformation projects

AU - Braae, Ellen Marie

AU - Diedrich, Lisa Babette

PY - 2012/3

Y1 - 2012/3

N2 - Harbour areas all over the Western world are being left idle due to global structural changes, and we observe that all too often the question of their reintegration into the urban fabric is addressed with the same standard development answers. More often than not, these vast areas are cleared to leave room for new economy-driven or branding-steered projects based on offices, housing, shopping and other object-centred programmes, resulting from time to time in saving a crane or two from demolition, which we think is not enough to justify calling a project site-specific. Our interest is thus to develop a wider understanding of site specificity for these large-scale areas and their long history of evolution from pre-industrial through industrial to post-industrial states. We propose a heuristically driven framework for scrutinising site specificity, and showcase it in two contemporary European multi-disciplinary, long-term urban development projects on former harbour sites, each selected to represent a set of outstanding site-specific aspects.

AB - Harbour areas all over the Western world are being left idle due to global structural changes, and we observe that all too often the question of their reintegration into the urban fabric is addressed with the same standard development answers. More often than not, these vast areas are cleared to leave room for new economy-driven or branding-steered projects based on offices, housing, shopping and other object-centred programmes, resulting from time to time in saving a crane or two from demolition, which we think is not enough to justify calling a project site-specific. Our interest is thus to develop a wider understanding of site specificity for these large-scale areas and their long history of evolution from pre-industrial through industrial to post-industrial states. We propose a heuristically driven framework for scrutinising site specificity, and showcase it in two contemporary European multi-disciplinary, long-term urban development projects on former harbour sites, each selected to represent a set of outstanding site-specific aspects.

U2 - 10.1080/18626033.2012.693778

DO - 10.1080/18626033.2012.693778

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1862-6033

VL - 7

SP - 20

EP - 33

JO - Journal of Landscape Architecture

JF - Journal of Landscape Architecture

IS - 1

ER -