Landscape transformations in the postmodern inner city: clustering flourishing economic activities and ‘glocalising’ morphologies
A. Gospodini Department of Planning and Regional Development, University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece
Abstract
This paper examines urban landscape transformations in the era of economic and cultural globalisation, intercity competition, and informational societies. It attempts to describe and interpret major landscape changes in the postmodern inner city in terms of land use patterns and morphology. It describes how new post-industrial urban economies, and in particular technology-intensive and knowledge based economic activities, and cultural and consumption urban economies, along with the development of new urban governance strategies tend to rearrange the landscapes of cities towards particular favourable choices: In terms of land use patterns, urban landscapes tend to be dominated by a kind of eclectic clustering of (a) high level financial services and technology-intensive firms, and (b) cultural activities and consumption spaces generating ‘creative’ urban islands and edges. From the point of view of urban morphology, these creative clusters represent ‘signifying epicentres’ introducing a kind of ‘glocalised’ morphology since two contrasting morphological extremities of urban space - built heritage and innovative design of buildings and open spaces - are predominantly used as key themes and competitive edges of cities. Keywords: urban landscape transformations, urban morphology, creative clusters, high level financial activities, technology-intensive firms, culture and consumption spaces, post-modern city.
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1 Introduction: urban landscape transformations under the conditions of globalization, intercity competition and postmodernity
In the last decade or so, a large number of studies – see for instance, [1–8] – have documented the strong effects of the late twentieth century economic globalisation on cities and urban networks: Traditional factors (e.g. geographical location, physical infrastructure) that once affected the location of new business to a specific place, appear to matter less than ever. Due to the capacity of capital to switch locations, all cities – perhaps with the exception of ‘global cities’ [9] having sufficient power to mastermind volatility of capital - have become interchangeable entities to be played off one against another forced to compete from positions of comparative weakness for the capital investment [10]. In the new milieu of intercity competition (see [11–13]), cities have more than ever to offer inducements to capital either by a refashioning of their economic attractiveness (e.g. tax abatements, property, transport facilities) or/and by amendments in their soft infrastructure [14]. Improvements in the soft infrastructure of cities mainly involve (a) the development of creative cultural and leisure amenities and (b) the enhancement of the city’s image through landscape transformations (see [15]): Relating to the former, postmodern urban societies are increasingly witnessing new interrelated socio-spatial phenomena such as: i) a rapid evolution of urban politics and governance from traditional managerial forms to more entrepreneurial forms [16, 17] as well as the emergence of radically new models of urban politics and governance focused on amenity urban growth, both economic and demographic, (see [18–20]). This kind of urban politics and governance seems to fit well into the profile of postmodern societies which are characterised by high mobility of an increasing middle class of young professionals and high-tech staff mainly courted by cities competing for them with public amenities [20, 21]; ii) the growth of new urban economies, and among them the predominance of new economic sectors nourished by cultural and leisure industries, (see [22–31]); iii) the appearance of new types of urban redevelopment, renewal and regeneration encouraged by the creation and expansion of new cultural, leisure and consumption spaces (see [32–38]). Turning to the enhancement of the city’s image, underlying the efforts of cities are two key objectives: i) boosting place identity, ii) promoting the ‘selling’ of city as commodity to the ‘flaneur’, or the pleasure seeking ‘urban voyeur’, a concept referring to both visitors and residents of the postmodern society (see [15]). More specifically, the processes of both economic and cultural globalisation and European integration have given rise to an increasing ‘identity crisis’ of cities rooted in two realities: (a) mass migrations that are transforming European cities into a multi-ethic and multi-cultural societies [39, 40] and (b) the march to supranationality within European Union that blurs national identities [41]. Under these conditions of uncertainty, it is believed that cities will increasingly use their cultural and built heritage as one attempt to fix the meaning of places while enclosing and defending them [41, 42]. But cities
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already use and will increasingly use also innovative design of space – urban design and architectural design - as a place identity generator [36, 43, 44]. Because avant garde urban design and architectural schemes exhibit a great potential for a) creating distinct or/and unique urban landscape and b) synchronizing in space all different social/cultural/economic groups by offering them a common new terrain for experiencing and familiarising with new forms of space. Thus, they appear to work as place identity generators in post-modern multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies in similar ways that built heritage did or/and does mainly in modern – rather culturally bounded and nation-state oriented – urban societies [44]. Related to their great potential as place-identity generators, both built heritage and innovative design of space have also undertaken an important new role for the post-industrial city concerning economic development, and especially urban tourism development [45]. Regarding innovative design of space in particular, the conditions of globalisation and intercity competition have given rise to a new paradigm: Through out history of urban forms, major urban design schemes and avant-garde design of space were mostly an outcome of economic growth of cities and countries. Nowadays a reverse procedure is taking place; and urban design appears to be consciously ‘used’ as a means of urban economic development for all classes and groups of cities [45, 46] by ‘hard-branding’ built milieu [36, 38]. In the above respect, the great potential of built heritage and innovative design of space to satisfy the conditions of post-modernity has raised these two aspects of urban space morphology as principal concerns in all major spatial interventions and strategic plans of cities aimed at improving the city’s image. This emphasis on the combination of built heritage and innovative design of space as the central themes in urban landscape transformations may be considered as generating a ‘glocalised’ landscape – i.e., an emerging new urban landscape-collage dominated by two extremities: a) that of tradition with rather local spatial references and b) that of innovation having more universal or global spatial references [15]. In the above framework, at the dawn of the 21st century, cities are being reshaped and urban landscapes are rapidly transformed to address economic globalization, handle intercity competition and meet the requirements of post-modernity. In this process, important questions are raised: What are the main components of the emerging new urban landscapes in terms land-use patterns, and morphology? How could postmodern urban landscapes be classified according to their main elements?
2 Eclectic clustering of flourishing new urban economic activities and the creation of ‘Signifying Epicentres’
It may be said that in the course of the last century, there have been two major shifts in the dominant land-use pattern of cities: The pre-modern European and North American city of the 19th and early 20th century, mostly curved on a neoclassical grid, was characterised by land-use mix. Almost all of the city’s areas, and especially inner city, contained mixed land uses - housing, commerce,
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industry, services, culture, leisure, etc. – though percentages varied from one district to another. The first major shift was in the ‘50s; the prevalence and widespread of functionalism in urban planning established land-use zoning as the dominant pattern. Thus, in the following decades until late ‘70s, Modern urban settlements developed as urban expansion or urban redevelopment, as well as new towns in metropolitan regions, consisted of exclusively residential districts arranged around a centre mixing all other land uses (commerce, services, culture, etc.) but housing; industries and transport installations were located in specially planned zones at the urban outskirts. The second great shift happened in the ‘80s; Postmodern discourse in architecture, urban design and planning (see for instance [47, 48]) strongly criticised among other parameters, land use zoning as one of the damaging planning conditions of the Modern city – a condition mostly responsible for the phenomena of underused public open spaces and unpopular urban environments. Following the ‘80s and this critical discourse, urban areas developed – and mainly redeveloped through reconstruction, renewal or regeneration processes - returned to the ‘virtues’ of land-use mix, particularly mixing housing with commercial, office, cultural and leisure spaces. In the ‘90s, within the context of this special return to land-use mix, as re-established by the Postmodern Movement in design and planning practice, there has been a gradual transformation of the dominant pattern towards an eclectic clustering of flourishing new urban economic activities. So far, the emerging dominant land-use pattern involves clustering of a) high level financial services, technology-intensive and knowledge-based firms and institutions, and b) cultural and leisure activities. Looking at urban history, flourishing economic activities been spatially grouped in the city’s centre, is not a new phenomenon. It is characteristic that in Medieval Ages, a lot of European cities had witnessed spatial concentrations of for instance, attelieux of artisans or shops of specialised craftsmen in particular streets that were accordingly named after such a concentration (e.g. goldsmiths’ Street in Frankfurt). In the condition of the transitional 20th century capitalism, and as a general trend, retail, commerce and services have also been agglomerated in CBD and particular inner city areas (e.g. shopping streets and malls). However, since the last two decades or so, in the late phases of the transitional capitalism and the era of globalisation, there has been a new tendency: (a) High level financial services (as such are included headquarters of international banks and international insurance companies, intermediate financial agencies and the like), technology-intensive and knowledge-based firms (these comprise medium-to-small sized enterprises (MSEs) of software design, Internet design and services, media, research, music and film companies, computer graphics and imaging, architectural design, industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, etc.) and (b) cultural and leisure industries (these include two main sub-categories: i) institutions and agencies of high-culture products and services imbued with artistic and stylistic substance, high values, creative and symbolic content such as museums, art galleries, theatres cinemas, music halls, etc, and ii) leisure and entertainment services such as bars, cafes, restaurants, etc.) tend to respectively cluster in special parts of the inner city produced by
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means of urban redevelopment and representing a prestigious and symbolic urban landscape [46]. In terms of urban morphology and architectural form, such landscapes are characterised by a mixture of distinctive avant-garde design schemes and heritage buildings (see [15]). Hutton [31] terms these clusters “signifying precincts” and gives an accurate description of them: They constitute the defining ‘epicentres’ of the new economy of the inner city, comprising critical production functions as well as redefining attributes of consumption, lifestyle and urban imaginary; they encompass major concentrations of the ‘leading edge’ or propulsive firms in key new economic sectors and offer special opportunities for social interaction and information exchange; they provide distinctive environmental amenities and contribute to the reformation of local identity. Attempting to describe, analyse and understand such signifying or symbolic epicentres, one may distinguish the following sub-categories:
2.1 Creative entrepreneurial urban islands of high-level financial services, technology-intensive and knowledge-based firms
As early such European examples in the late ‘80s, one may refer to London’s Docklands, especially the Canary Wharf scheme. Since the decade of ‘90s, there has been an intensification of the phenomenon, recently generating a new global paradigm: Metropolitan cities and large cities making efforts to maintain or/and upgrade their status in the hierarchies of the global urban network, consciously plan, design and develop such signifying or symbolic epicentres in order to endorse clustering of flourishing new urban economic activities. For instance, in Berlin after the demolition of the wall in 1989, the promotion of the city as a metropolitan centre of Europe and the capital of Germany, has at a great extent been supported by urban redevelopment projects in the declined areas close to the wall, such as the area of Potzdamer Platz, and the development of a signifying or symbolic epicentre of economic power intended to become a cluster of high level financial services and technology-intensive and knowledge-based firms. Similarly, current attempts for the re-qualification of Milan as a metropolitan city in south-central Europe are partly associated to major redevelopment projects in the inner city such as the redevelopment of Milan Fair area. The construction of Milan’s New Trade Fair Hub at the city’s outskirts, which will be soon completed, offered a chance to reshape the century-old original site of Milan Fair into a symbolic epicentre. According to the winning scheme of the international urban design competition, the area will become a cluster of high level financial services, technology-intensive firms and media; and it will additionally accommodate housing, a metropolitan park of 130,000 m2 and limited commercial space [49]. The new trend of creating symbolic epicentres to encourage clustering of high level financial services, technology-intensive and knowledge-based firms, applies not only to cities located in the economic core of Europe and North America but also to cities in the economic periphery of Europe as well as in Asian developed countries. For instance, Valencia, Spain, is also going to develop such an epicentre within the ‘City of Arts and Sciences’, Valencia’s culture and technology thematic area planned and designed by Santiago
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Calatrava. The ‘new financial centre’ will be housed in a large building complex with point-towers of an indeed innovative architectural form. In south-eastern Asia, Singapore, which is considered functioning as a global city [9, 50] will also follow this paradigm. Given that the island has no hinterland and no natural resources, in order to sustain economic growth and global competitiveness, Singapore’s government decided to stake the future of the city-state on creating a global niche in the biomedical sciences, infocomm technology (ICT) and media industries. The new epicentre will be developed in an area of 190 hectares, namely ‘One North’, and formerly accommodating a British military base and officers’ housing. According to the masterplan, as curried out by Zaha Hadid Architects after an international competition, the area will be characterised by land-use mix and it will become home to an anticipated 50 thousands new residents, and accommodate 70 thousands employees [51]. The competitive advantages and economic benefits of this kind of creative entrepreneurial islands attracting and clustering high level financial services, technology-intensive and knowledge-based firms, research and media are associated to certain synergies produced by close neighbouring. These include localised collective learning (as defined by Lorenz [52], collective learning is the “the creation and further development of a base of common or shared knowledge among individuals making up a productive system which allows them to co-ordinate their actions in the resolution of the technological and organisational problems they confront”), formal and informal links between firms, an increase in the degree of specialisation of skills and their diffusion so as to create an abundant supply of appropriately qualified professionals, the growth of subsidiary trades and specialised services, increased use of highly specialised machinery, inter-firm mobility of staff, the spin-off of new firms and institutions from existing ones (see [52–58]). As Keeble and Wilkinson [55] argue these clusters are characterised by what Storper [59] had termed ‘untraded interdependencies’ which extend beyond traditional customer/supplier and servicing relationships to embrace (a) formal and informal collaborative and information networks, (b) interactions through local labour markets, and (c) shared conventions and rules for developing communications and interpreting knowledge.
2.2 Creative cultural and leisure urban islands and edges
From their earliest origin, cities have always exhibited a capacity to act as centres of cultural activities and generate culture in the form of various arts and styles, new ideas and attitudes. However, by the late 20th century the post-fordist city has indeed become an economic node of cultural growth: Before the mid ‘80s, planners, architects and local authorities have been paying attention to the city’s cultural activities as one of the main means for increasing amenities offered and improving the quality of urban space. By the late ‘80s, cultural activities were seen as an important growth engine of urban economy. Using Scott’s words “…capitalism itself is moving into a phase in which the cultural forms and meanings of its outputs become critical if not
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dominating elements of productive strategy, and in which the realm of human culture as a whole is increasingly subject to commodification” [23 p. 323]. The phenomenon of cultural consumption economies in the post-industrial city has been extensively discussed in many studies. Among the first to write on the topic were Zukin [22, 60], Bianchini [61] and Lash and Urry [62]. Zukin, as early as in 1991, presented and analysed different types of consumption-based urban landscapes, such as postmodern resort colonies (Miami, Orlando, Los Angeles) and gentrified downtowns (in New York, Boston, Chicago) while in 1995 she emphatically wrote that “with the disappearance of local manufacturing industries and periodic crises in governments and finance, culture is more and more the business of cities – the basis of their tourists attractions and their unique competitive edge. The growth of cultural consumption (of art, food, fashion, music, tourism) and the industries that cater to it, fuel the city’s symbolic economy, its visible ability to produce both symbols and space [22, p.2). On the same line, Bianchini [61] argued that in the postmodern era, the relationship between cultural expression and the city has been turned on its head as cultural expression is thought of less as a socio-economic practice that follows in the wake of urban life, but is regarded instead as the motor of urban economy. Lush and Urry [62] argued that in the new environment of the Post-fordist era and globalisation, cultural industries are shaping the interface between the global and the local (e.g. regarded as global distribution networks relying on local distinctiveness); and from this, derives their great potential as major competitive edge of the postmodern city, yet more important than information and knowledge-based economic activities. In the last decade or so, we are witnessing an accelerating pace of growth of cultural economic activities of cities. A large number of studies have measured particular parameters and analysed different sectors of new cultural urban economies (see for instance [63, 23, 24, 25, 28, 64, 65]). Sir Peter Hall [28] argued that cities have passed at extraordinary speed from manufacturing to informational economy and from informational economy to a cultural economy; and “culture is now seen as the magic substitute for all the lost factories and warehouses, and as a device that will create a new urban image, making the city more attractive to mobile capital and mobile professional workers” [28, p. 640]. Scott [23, 24] interprets the accelerating pace of growth of cultural industries as a result of both the increasing disposable consumer income and the discretionary time of the middle classes in developed countries. On the same line, Nichols Clark et al. [20] describe an emerging ‘amenity urban growth’ – both economic and demographic – rooted in the fact that educated and talented young professionals and high-tech staff, who can locate themselves where they choose, are mainly courted by cities that compete for them with public amenities. These growing middle classes value the city over other forms of settlement (e.g. suburbs, small towns) and add to the gentrification processes due to the city’s responsiveness to a wide array of aesthetic concerns and its ability to become a cultural node offering diverse, sophisticated and cosmopolitan entertainment. Thus, for Nichols Clark, leading urban policies are now passing from the provision of larger incentives to enterprises than the competing
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locations to the provision of lifestyle amenities for visitors and mainly for residents [20]. Hannigan [37] in his Fantasy City described the main characteristics of cultural-consumption new urban economy; it is ‘theme-centered’, ‘aggressively branded’, ‘in constant operation’, modular in design’, separate from existing neighbourhoods, and ‘postmodern’. To the above characteristics, one should add one more – ‘clustered’: Before the ‘90s, cultural buildings and building complexes, often intending to create big architectural statements and flagship projects, like for instance, President’s Mitterand ‘Grands projets’ in Paris, generated location patterns with a more or less random distribution over the city’s centre – and perhaps some small and ad hoc local concentrations. Since the ‘90s, the postmodern accelerating pace of growth of cultural economic activities in cities has been accompanied by a parallel strong proclivity to clustering. As Mommaas [66] argues, cultural clustering represents a next stage in the on-going use of culture as a growth engine in urban economy, “a shift from a policy aimed at organising occasions for spectacular consumption to a more fine-tuned policy, also aimed at creating spaces, quarters and milieus for cultural production and creativity’ [66, p. 508]. In some cases clustering is spontaneously created and informally maintained but in most cases it is stimulated, encouraged and planned by the public sector and the city’s authorities. Newman and Smith [67] investigated the influence of public policies in creating and shaping cultural clusters through the case study of the South Bank, London. The first clustering policies in culture may be seen as originated in the efforts of cities for renewal, redevelopment and regeneration of declined and underused areas – usually former industrial areas - in the inner city. More specifically, they may be related to the uses of new cultural activities as a catalyst for urban regeneration (see [33, 34, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75]). The first cultural clustering policies may also be associated to the efforts of cities in biting intra-urban competition and hosting cultural mega-events like Olympic Games, Cultural Capital of Europe, or World Expo. In such events, the overall building installations require a large amount of space; and as often argued, a policy of clustering all these building installations in the same area may work as a chance and a tool in both regenerating declines areas and enhancing the city’s image and place identity (see for instance, [76, 77, 78, 79, 15]). The roots of cultural clustering policies in urban renewal, redevelopment and regeneration, and the enhancing of the city’s place identity can partly explain why in many cities cultural clusters constitute ‘glocalised landscapes’ – i.e., urban landscapes exhibiting a mixture of built heritage and innovative design of space (see [15]). However, cultural clustering is an on-going phenomenon; and it seems that it has recently exceeded its ‘origins’ to become more independent while entering a new phase that is characterised by a) an increase of the species of cultural products and activities getting clustered, b) an increase of the size of clusters, and mainly c) a trend towards functional specialisation of clusters: Clustering gradually tends to involve more and more kinds of cultural products and activities from production to representation and from theatre and the visual arts to pop music, the new media, and entertainment spaces like bars, restaurants, cinemas, fitness
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complexes, etc, that are grouped together in a variety of spatial forms [66]. As a consequence, cultural clusters tend to expand and cover larger and larger areas. While expanding, they simultaneously show an inclination towards functional specialization and even mono-functional identity: First, some cultural clusters gradually generate sub-clusters of homogeneous activities. For instance, in South Bank, London, a cultural cluster significantly expanded in the last decade, Newman and Smith [67] distinguish four sub-clusters gradually generated in it: two high-culture sub-clusters of national and international importance, one sub-cluster of heritage promotion and television and firm producers, and one sub-cluster of advertising related firms. Second, some cultural clusters appear to grow from the very beginning as spatial concentrations of particular cultural activities, creating functionally specialized cultural quarters, such as museum quarters, fashion quarters, multimedia quarters, etc. Such functionally specialized or even mono-functional cultural clusters have already been studied; Crewe [80] has looked at the fashion quarter in Nottingham; Attfield [71] has examined the multi-media cluster in Hoxton, London; Basset et al [81] have examined the cluster of natural history film-making in Bristol; Hitters and Richards [82] have studied the popular music cluster in Westergasfabriek, Amstrdam, and the leisure cluster in Witte de Withstraat in Rotterdam; Shaw et al [75] have studied London’s ‘ethnoscapes’ – i.e., clusters of ethnic culture and leisure – such as the ‘Banglatown’, an area with Bangladeshi/Indian restaurants in Brick Lane, and the Asian-fashion cluster in Green Street. In an analogy to clusters of technology-intensive and knowledge-based firms, the creation, development and maintenance of cultural clusters, and especially functionally specialised cultural clusters, is encouraged by the competitive advantages and economic benefits produced by such spatial neighbouring. These advantages and benefits may be conceived in relation to the particularities of cultural industries in terms of production relations and distribution methods, as described by Scott [23]: Labour processes in cultural industries involve considerable amounts of handiwork complemented by computer technologies; production is organised in dense networks of medium to small sized establishments strongly dependent on one another for specialised inputs and services; these networks form multifaceted industrial complexes that may reduce for both employers and employees the risks deriving from frequent recurrent job-search; cultural industries are invariably replete with external economies, many of which can only be effectively appropriated via locational agglomeration which gives rise to mutual learning and cultural synergies; agglomeration also facilitates the emergence of institutional infrastructure that can ease the functioning of local economy [23, p. 333]. On the same line, other studies dealing with the advantages and benefits of clustering in cultural industries introduce terms such as ‘situated business learning’ [83], ‘situated creativity’ [84]. In terms of urban landscape, cultural clustering generates new types of signifying epicentres in the postmodern inner city. In an analogy to what was earlier described as ‘entrepreneurial islands’, one may distinguish a) ‘high-culture islands’, b) ‘popular leisure islands’ and c) culture and leisure urban edges:
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2.2.1 High-culture islands As high-culture islands may be conceived inner city areas with a concentration of cultural activities such as museums of various kinds (e.g. historical museums, natural history museums, museums of modern arts, design, architecture, film, technology), theatres, operas, concert halls, convention centres, etc. Such kind of cultural islands are usually produced by means of urban renewal and redevelopment; and the new urban core consists of a mixture of traditional buildings conserved and reused and new building complexes exhibiting innovative design and architectural form. As typical cases, one may refer to the Museums Quarter in Vienna, the Museums Quarter in Rotterdam and the Museums Quarter in The Hague – all of them developed in the last years. The Museums Quarter in Vienna, which officially opened in 2001, consists of 20 museums and cultural institutes covering a surface of 60,000 sq. m. A large part of it is developed on a site where the royal horse stables, in baroque style, were initially built in the 18th century. The site was re-used as a trade fair in 1918 while since the ‘90s it has been gradually redesigned and redeveloped as Vienna’s main cultural district, neighbouring the pre-existing buildings of the Historical Museum, the Natural History museum, Hofburg and Neue Burg. Besides, the old building complexes existing in the site, new buildings with experimental form, such as Momuk (Museum Modern Kunst), were added in order to complete and enhance the new cultural cluster. The Museum Quarter in Rotterdam was master planned by Rem Koolhas as the main cultural venue of Rotterdam; it consists of four museums - two of them pre-existing the redevelopment of the site and two of them representing new constructions - located in a large ‘statue’ park; Boijmans van Beuningen Museum of classical and modern art (pre-existing), the Netherlands Architecture Institute, a new building designed by Jo Coenen, Kunsthal, a new building designed by Rem Koolhas, and the natural History Museum that was renovated and extended according to the designs of Erick van Egeraat.
2.2.2 Popular leisure islands As popular leisure islands may be conceived inner city areas with a high concentration of bars, restaurants (ethnic or/and continental), cafes, popular music halls, antique shops, fashion design shops, bookshops, music shops and avant-garde small theatres. Popular leisure islands usually correspond to formerly declined old housing and commercial areas of the inner city, regenerated by means of urban renewal. Thus, the urban fabric usually consists of vernacular buildings conserved and reused. Most European and North American cities can show evidence of this kind of popular leisure islands that often represent the city’s most lively urban quarter. As typical cases, one may refer to the Temple Bar in Dublin, Witte de Withstraat in Rotterdam, Westrgasfabriek in Amsterdam, Psiri in Athens and Ladadika in Thessaloniki, Greece. Hitters and Richards [82] analysed urban renewal and management in the areas of Witte de Withstraat in Rotterdam and Westrgasfabriek in Amsterdam and argued that management approaches adopted by local authorities to such renewal and transformation processes of conserved urban cores into
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popular leisure islands may have critical results in the cluster’s degree of creativity as incubation space, the image of the area and place identity.
2.2.3 Cultural and leisure urban edges Finally, as cultural and leisure urban edges, one may conceive of urban waterfronts. Following the decline of old harbour sites and waterfront industrial sites in many cities all over the world in the second half of the 20th century, renewal and redevelopment of urban waterfronts as culture and leisure clusters has become a well-established phenomenon internationally. As a pattern, old dock warehouses and underused maritime industrial buildings are redesigned as museums, galleries and popular music halls; old vernacular small houses are renovated to accommodate studio apartments, cafes, restaurants, music clubs, music shops, bookshops etc.; and to crown all this, flagship projects are indeed developed at the interface between water and the city – usually comprising new public open spaces and new buildings, exhibiting innovative design trends and housing high-culture activities. The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, serves as a typical example. This kind of urban waterfront redevelopment has started in North America with Baltimore’s Inner Harbour as early as in the 70s and it has gradually spread to Europe and elsewhere since the mid 80s. As early such redevelopment schemes in Europe, one may note parts of London’s Docklands, Liverpool Docks and Barcelona’s redevelopment of central waterfronts for Olympics 1992. However, urban waterfront redevelopment is an ongoing phenomenon, gradually progressing and being transformed: While in the ‘80s, it first involved countries in North America and the economic core of Europe, coastal large cities and their central seafront areas, in the ‘90s, it expanded to countries in the economic periphery of Europe (see for instance [85]), to medium size coastal cities, as well as inland cities and their riverside areas. Again Bilbao, Spain, provides such an example. One of the main strategies for urban and economic regeneration of Bilbao city in the ‘90s was the redevelopment of Nervion Estuary, Abandoibarra, a formerly maritime industrial area that declined after the relocation of the port to modern facilities in El-Abra Exterior at the outskirts of Bilbao. The redevelopment of waterfronts provided a cultural and leisure (cluster) axis along the south bank of the Nervion river including new high-culture buildings, such as the Euskalduna Concert Hall and Congress Centre, a statue park and a promenade and above all the flagship building of the Guggenheim Museum. In the last years, major urban waterfront redevelopment schemes are also realised in metropolitan cities in Australia and Asia, such as for instance Hong Kong and Melbourne. As shown by recent projects, the phenomenon of ‘waterfronts culturalization’ has not only expanded but also been transformed: On the one hand, the size of waterfront areas being redeveloped has enormously increased; for instance, in the West Kowloon waterfront site, Hong Kong, the redevelopment area is more than 40 hectares. In some cases, waterfront redevelopment expands outside the city’s centre, as in the case of Barcelona and the recent waterfront redevelopment for the Forum of Civilizations 2004. On the
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other hand, to maximise the positive effects on local economy, cultural clusters are now combined with existing or new entrepreneurial clusters, as in the case of West Kowloon, Hong Kong. The emerging new urban landscapes produced by such creative urban edges constitute extensive signifying epicentres of cultural, leisure and entrepreneurial activities that exhibit an indeed innovative design of space that is an outcome of international urban planning and design competitions.
3 Conclusions
Under the conditions of globalisation and intercity competition, the landscapes of the postmodern inner city are getting transformed in order to both lure prosperous economic activities and meet the requirements of postmodern societies. New urban governance policies by means of urban renewal, development and redevelopment projects promote eclectic clustering of flourishing economic activities such as high level financial services, technology-intensive firms, knowledge-based firms and institutions, and culture and leisure activities. The emerging clusters represent creative urban islands and edges in the inner city; and there is a trend for such clusters to increase in size and become functionally specialised. In terms of morphology, the emerging clusters polarize urban landscape by generating epicentres thematically focused on built heritage and innovative urban and architectural design. Such epicentres advance the city’s development prospects in the new competitive economic milieu, enhance place identity by hard-branding built fabric, and upgrade the city’s status in the global urban networks and hierarchies: In particular, epicentres of high level financial services, technology-intensive firms and knowledge-based firms and institutions, promote the city’s economic growth. Besides, epicentres of culture and leisure fuel the city’s amenity growth. In this way, on the one hand, they promote urban tourism development and on the other hand, they make the city attractive to new residents of the growing new middle classes of educated and talented young professionals and high-tech staff, who may locate themselves almost anywhere they like, and they are attracted by cities with enhanced culture and leisure amenities.
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