Through this process of change, cities ignore many global impacts of redevelopment of industrial urban waterfront uses into spaces of the post-industrial knowledge-based economy, including environmental degradation associated with specific changes in land use, uneven development globally, and the volatility of a global economy. The primary focus of cities becomes attracting global capital through reinventions of image, focusing redevelopment on a superficial level created for capital exploitation. In order to avoid the negative consequences of structuring the urban environment around the needs of a global economy, local governments must focus their urban waterfront redevelopment policies on the needs of the local community by focusing resources on planning for long-term, sustainable, locally focused economies.
Neoliberalism and entrepreneurial governance
Neoliberalization, the global process the decreasing power of governments and increasing privatization of governments’ social functions emphasizes the competitive nature of inter-urban relations. Within the context of globalization and financial markets, the global economy becomes an environment in which local governments must act in manners protecting their own economic vitality. The neoliberalization of government and economic functions has had a profound impact on urban governance and the city’s relationship with waterfronts. This relationship creates a duality of development and under-representation for groups with lesser economic means. Jason Hackworth discusses the increasing reliance of municipalities upon commercial lending institutions in order to engage in large projects (2007, 30). In particular, municipal governments are beholden to an increasingly concentrated system of bond-ratings, forcing a shift toward market-based approaches in the governance of a city (Hackworth 2007, 38). Responding to this increased reliance on concentrated financial power, cities are compelled to govern in a manner that prioritizes a particular global form of economic growth above diverse social needs. The urban form that results from this restructuring of local governments becomes increasingly shaped by the trends of global finance, which favor certain social groups over others. By engaging in this economic process, cities are forced to conform their objectives to globally homogenous development goals established by a coalition of developers and banks willing to invest only in certain forms of urban development.
The hollowing out of local government power in pursuing local social objectives created by these shifts in finance leads cities to competition for finite capital investment. Ben Jessop describes how increased competition for economic growth between cities results in increasingly “entrepreneurial cities,” municipalities emphasizing the necessary creation of “self-image” as a way of marketing the city (2000, 89). Jessop describes this process of capital investment as one ultimately fraught with contradictions due to the nature of inherent winners and losers in the image battle (2000, 91). Waterfronts which formerly were sites of industrial or port functions become central to a process of image creation, ultimately framed by the public and private sectors as a place of economic interest. Jessop notes the role of transnational banks in creating and “exploiting local differences” through imperatives for cities to compete with others for capital investment (2000, 87). Global trade liberalization, gradually lessening the influence of the state over social matters, accentuates the need for cities to provide for their own means of economic activity, which results in the image creation imperative.
The current forms of waterfront redevelopment most common in post-industrial cities are merely a reflection of the form of governance seen to elicit the greatest productivity and growth. Neoliberal restructuring of governments in the late decades of the twentieth century had profound influences on the immediate responsibilities of local governments. Margit Mayer shows how the new role cities adopted in response to these neoliberal shifts in finance created increases in local government spending on fostering economic growth (1994, 318). Local governments not only increase their budget in attempts at economic growth, but these efforts take a distinctly image-based approach, marketing the city toward certain growth industries (1994, 319). This process is highlighted by the emergence of public-private partnerships. These partnerships have grown out of efforts to streamline the planning process, offering private developers expansions of planning power and access to resources previously relegated to local governments. Developers are more willing to invest and participate in the development process with cities willing to grant them great oversight and influence over the process of creating urban spaces consistent with their profit motives.
Gene Desfor and John Jorgensen describe this new process of public-private partnerships in the case of Copenhagen as “flexible urban governance,” emphasizing the break from traditional centralized and democratic forms of land use and development to appeal to global capital and finance’s needs. They attempted to achieve this by splitting up functions of the planning process (2004, 487). On Copenhagen’s waterfront, characterization of the Port as primarily an economic actor responding to the free market created a massive privatization of space occupied by office buildings, literally “walling off the waterfront from the rest of the city” (2000, 486).
The post-modern global waterfront
In this increasingly competitive inter-urban environment, cities seek to maximize the productivity urban space within the global economic system. R. Timothy Seiber discusses how this post-industrial redevelopment of urban waterfronts globally has taken a uniform approach between cities, as municipalities have reproduced models seen as effective (1991, 121). Created as an attraction for a newly urban elite, Seiber argues that urban waterfront redevelopments “articulate the sensibilities of the cities new elite residents” (1991, 121). Post-industrial waterfronts are remade with the attractions and entertainment venues desired by the upper class, following the global trends in restructuring cities to emphasize the cities’ attractiveness to the urban professional class. Seiber discusses how post-industrial cities’ “heritage marketing” often focuses its historical references solely on certain images more easily palatable to the professional class, emphasizing “the mercantile, preindustrial era of these ports, rather than their more recent industrial, ethnic, and blue-collar dimensions” (1991, 129). This reveals another use of the creation of marketable images by cities in attempts to appeal to a global audience, rather than the actual residents that have laid claim to their waterfronts through many iterations of the city’s waterfront.
Though the redevelopment process takes decades, and new environmental considerations are incorporated, as well as social uses for the space, ultimately the framing of the discussion follows from an assumption made about the inevitability of the current economic structures in place. As semi-permanent developments, and significant changes of land use, projects of the magnitude that the urban waterfront renewals require, must also include evaluations of long-term sustainability of the local municipality and its relation to the global economy. Urban waterfront renewal projects have failed to fully incorporate a discussion of the merits of economic growth and its impacts on all social classes of the city, the instability of a global economy and its potential impact on private enterprises within the city, and the merits of local manufacturing.
Diversification of port authorities
A major player in the redevelopment of waterfronts is the port authority. Port authorities have a degree of autonomy from the normal governance of cities, independently seeking the most productive uses of port land. In the midst of a decline of traditional port functions and increased prominence of centralized deep-water ports, and under pressures for new economic growth, port authorities engage in diversification of port uses. Operating as semi-independent public agencies, port authorities are given greater opportunity to introduce competitively in an environment sealed off from complete public oversight (Brown 2009, p.11). With this operating flexibility, port authorities are given strong planning capabilities for their waterfront space, and the forms that redevelopment of the waterfront space takes is greatly influenced by trends in global capital investment. The port authorities’ modus operandi widens from their former industrial nature and change take on the same post-industrial character that drives the surrounding economy.
This new diversified port authority undergoes a change of management to meet the needs of a global post-industrial space, argues Peter Brown, hiring directors with background in private enterprise in addition to public authority experience (Brown 2009, 148). Breaking from historical precedent, which meant hiring directors with strong maritime-related backgrounds, the “diversified port” requires a management versed in the entrepreneurial process. These individuals, almost always recruited from outside of the particular city, are hired for their own diverse talents and experiences in “cargo, real estate development, public relations, transportation and aviation” (Brown 2009, 150). In order for urban ports to undergo a transformation, the port authority needs an individual capable of navigating the public-private environment and communicating it to the public in a simple, marketable manner. Port authority directors’ backgrounds in private institutions assure that the structure and functioning of the authority are increasingly driven by entrepreneurialism and competitiveness.
Undergoing change in management begets a change in operating structure and public image. Brown notes the creation of “departments of public-, media-, and governmental relations,” as authorities increasingly see the importance of image creation and communication with institutions vital to the port’s economic expansion (Brown 2009, 154). As an institution such as the port authority increasingly markets itself and the economic growth that, it argues, can be created through private development, a narrative with very little room for negotiation, as the primary goal of the authority is to maintain solvent.
The role of images and the media
Public investment in the planning and redevelopment of urban waterfronts depends largely upon the creation of a image used to familiarize the public with the redevelopment plans. John Logan and Harvey Molotch describe the role of the city’s media in forming a vital part of the “growth machine,” a coalition of local actors whose influence radiates throughout the political process. Local newspapers, for example, have a great deal of interest in promoting certain forms of growth in order to protect their private business interests, and may influence the wider debate based on arguments for public investment in certain forms of land use (Logan and Molotch 2007, 63). Logan and Molotch emphasize the degree to which media coverage of discussions related to economic growth and the political process within a municipality are kept as “symbolic” issues in the media, while important decisions are relegated to backrooms among local public and private actors (Logan and Molotch 2007, 64). Furthermore, they describe the increasing conglomeration of media outlets, and resulting delocalization due to the diminished coverage of diverse local policy issues throughout the urban environment. Local private actors will operate in the realm of images to promote a particular method of growth to government officials eager to present a symbolic representation of global economic participation, and the promotion of the image reverberates through the avenues of media and public opinion. The process of image creation becomes the most vital step in most cities’ plans for urban waterfront redevelopment in the actual marketing of the plan to the public.
Public money is continually used to invest in projects that privatize the waterfront and create an environment friendly to global capital, creating places built to reflect a lack of place. Meanwhile, communities within the city with no use to the global economy are pushed away from the urban waterfront by the subsequent rise in real estate values and new uses of land. A highly influential relationship between public and private actors is created through this relationship, one built on the argument for the importance of economic growth above all in political decisions at the local level. Central to this coalition is an assurance of the attractiveness of a municipality toward business elites (Logan and Molotch, 2007, 62). Changes in economic structure allow greater influence for private developers, as they have taken a larger role in cities’ image-making process.
Sharon Zukin describes the concept of image creation associated with place in terms of the “symbolic economy” that forms through conscious decisions on the part of influential actors within the city (Zukin 1995, 281). The deliberate creation of culture, as is seen in the reallocation of former industrial land to cultural institutions, is used a way of attracting economic development through “place entrepreneurship” (Zukin 1995, 284). The distinct physical form the city takes comes from a particular set of characteristics desired by those the culture is created to attract.
Portland: Green professional utopia
Portland represents a post-industrial city that has seen tremendous growth on its urban waterfront through extensive efforts to redevelop according to the creation of distinct images. Chris Hagerman discusses how the process of attracting global capital investment in growth industries correlates with the creation of an environmentally conscious approach to the urban redevelopment process. The post-industrial waterfront landscapes of Portland largely reflect a symbolic, identity-based redevelopment of the city’s waterfront. This grows out of the creation a superficial image of progressive, ecological restoration, veiling a more forceful takeover by the upper classes in Portland’s attempt to conform to global capitalist trends. In the case of Portland, there is little resistance to principles of environmental stewardship, but the true relationship to the environment is distorted. Hagerman describes the collision of remnants of an industrial past, and new constructions of a post-industrial present on Portland’s newly redeveloped waterfront. In order to maintain the image that Portland has set out to project, it requires a “denial of the social context of the industrial economies that shaped these landscapes, their decline and the lives of people who lived and worked here” (2007, 291). Through the redevelopment of displaced industrial economies, Portland does lip service to its economic goals, as the reality of outsourced industry reveals tendencies of relocation to countries with lower environmental standards. This ultimately impacts the planet’s ecological health. A post-industrial reuse of former industrial space, no matter the desired image of such an action, has profound causes and effects in the economic and social global geographies of human settlements.
Externalities of the post-industrial waterfront
Most egregiously left out of the planning dialogue in the waterfront redevelopment process are the long-term economic, social, and environmental impacts of a post-industrial waterfront. Growth in a municipality’s post-industrial “creative” or “knowledge” economy, and the redevelopment of former industrial space for participation in this sector of the global economy means the physical alteration of a space with long-term impacts. These alterations inherently rely on the present financial and geographical structure of global trade, which allows for the externalization of industry and industrial labor. This is a land use and economic model based on uneven development, both in the reallocation of land to private developments and the concurrent fixed nature of roles of cities and states globally.
Urban waterfront redevelopment that repurposes land into a space of images for global elite class does not take into account the instability of the global financial system and fluctuations inherent in the act of global trade and capital flows. The recent global recession has emphasized the capitalist system’s volatility. In particular, real estate investment, the very act that many urban waterfront redevelopments engage heavily in, has been a major cause of global financial destabilization. Capital has grown too influential in the plight of social classes within cities, as efforts to attract members of a small elite class have led to a resort to a homogeneous, globally replicated growth model. This, by definition, lacks any relation to the long-term and historical uses of the space, and minimizes the ability of cities to adapt to fulfill their citizens’ needs.
Melbourne: Remaking the waterfront for consumption
The city of Melbourne has undergone many of the transformations held in common with other post-industrial urban waterfronts. Leonie Sandercock and Kim Dovey discuss the redevelopment of Melbourne’s waterfront in terms of the assumptions made in the government’s planning process about the type of development to focus on former industrial space. The creation of a “Civic Vision” focused redevelopment of the waterfront on arts and entertainment venues in an effort to project a new image of Melbourne, emphasizing a new connection to the city (2002, 154). By the 1990s, changes in government to a new “somewhat Thatcherite agenda” meant a transition into “flexible” planning processes, valuing the needs of private actors in redeveloping the waterfront. Similar to the privatization of space seen in post-industrial cities globally, the Melbourne waterfront saw a focus on the tourist draw, headquarters for global corporation, multiple convention centers, and as a centerpiece of the transformation, the Crown Casino (2002, 157). These developments emphasized short-term tax revenue generation through casino licensing fees and the attracting of corporations, while privatizing the waterfront and turning it into an image to be consumed.
The transformation of the waterfront into a series of private entertainment venues is best exemplified by the Crown Casino, an expansive, limited-access structure cutting a large stretch of urban waterfront off from the rest of the city (2002, 158). Melbourne’s waterfront becomes a global and regional attraction, and a way of marketing the city with a common language spoken among global elites. It is a language that prioritizes the use of space for global economic uses seen by growth regimes as inherently productive, while other needs and alternatives to this economic model are insignificant.
Suburbanization and the commodification of the urban waterfront
As cities have evolved into larger sprawling metropolitan regions, the central city takes on a new image in terms of tourism and marketability. As economic and social activity increasingly takes place in suburban places, the urban center is used for its comparative advantage to less historical or cultural suburbs. Building on the “place entrepreneurship” described by Sharon Zukin, cities turn cultural heritage and historical relevance of a place into the opportunity to market it as an attraction (1995, 284). This stems from the inherent meaning that people derive from the identity of a place, and becomes a catalyst for focusing urban redevelopment on former industrial ports and waterfronts. Development aimed solely at attracting tourism and visitors to the city through infrastructure that encourages this leaves out considerations beyond global competitiveness.
Creating local alternatives to the global economic system
Given the inequality that urban development has fostered when formed in response to changes in the global economy, local actors in the public and private sectors of cities must unite to create an urban environment not beholden to global capital, but the immediate needs of its citizens. These changes to the built environment should be based around four principles, taking shape in a democratic fashion. First, local governments must resist short-term reactions to the global economy. By responding to global economic shifts in the form of massive redevelopment and class takeover of urban space, cities increase their reliance on outside political, economic, and environmental changes. Second, urban space must be flexible to changing economic and social needs of the community. This allows for innovation and experimentation of new localized forms of commerce, public meeting space, and a diverse mix of other uses. Third, municipalities should invest in programs promoting the growth of new locally based and oriented businesses. By providing for more of the goods and services essential to urban life from within the city, the city’s government and individuals are free to pursue participation in an economy built on community trust and involvement, not the decisions of far-removed economic actors. Fourth, the urban form should follow the needs of individuals, concentrating on improving living standards for local residents, through a respectful relationship between production and consumption that takes all parties into account. Cities over the few decades leading up to the twenty-first century have undergone a financial transformation stemming partly from wider global economic changes. Land use restoring traditional uses, such as infrastructure for small-scale industry and manufacturing would go to great lengths to restoring a local, community-centric model.
Conclusion
The decreasing power of governments in providing for the social well being and increased privatization of state functions, combined with the competitive forces of globalization and financial markets, create an environment in which local governments must act in manners which protect their economic viability. In matters of former economically productive waterfront space, new forms of development that create economic growth and increased tax revenues are seen as the most effective use of finite urban space. Though the redevelopment process takes decades, and new environmental considerations are incorporated, as well as social uses for the space, ultimately the framing of the discussion follows from an assumption made about the inevitability of the current economic structures in place.
As semi-permanent developments, and significant changes of land use, projects of the magnitude that the urban waterfront renewals require, must also include evaluations of long-term sustainability of the local municipality and its relation to the global economy. Urban waterfront renewal projects have failed to fully incorporate a discussion of the merits of economic growth and its impacts on all social classes globally. The instability of a global economy and its potential impact on private enterprises within the city, and the merits of local, community-based economies. Current projects represent a narrow view of the role of the city and economy that is rooted in the increasing need for cities to become entrepreneurial and competitive, contending for limited capital flows from and increasingly concentrated source. This shift has translated, through the lens of the media and backing of the business community, to election of politicians who engage in efforts to increase growth by any means necessary, a principle that has come to define much of what the local government does. Connections between local private interests and members of municipal governments only strengthen a city’s identity as an economic generator first and foremost.
Contrasting global concentrations of economic power, there needs to be a re-imagination of the role of municipalities in a global era. This new city cannot base it's economic viability solely on the ability to attract global capital, but must foster education and the creation of local alternatives to a top-down system, and can take the form of infrastructure, public investment in local economy, independence, and autonomy, oriented in ways that emphasize the human and local scale. The most difficult roadblock to this is that the established political and economic powers control most of the capital, and preach the inevitability of global trade, the kind that marginalizes communities and discourages social and local economic ingenuity. Current waterfront redevelopment projects represent a narrow view of the role of the city and economy that is rooted global economic imperative to create competitive and entrepreneurial cities to contend for limited capital flows from and increasingly concentrated source. This shift has translated, through the lens of the media and backing of the business community, to election of politicians who engage in efforts to increase growth by any means necessary, a principle that has come to define much of what the local government does. Connections between local private interests and members of municipal governments serve strengthen a city’s identity as a global economic generator first and foremost. This is a process that will be repeated infinitely so long as influential actors within cities continue to structure their city’s operations around the attraction of finite global capital above all else.
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