From Waterfront Regeneration to Fluid City Planning

Abstract

In current global crisis the strong flows of financial, social and relational capitals that powered urban regeneration over the last fifteen years are no longer available to be tapped in an indiscriminate manner as was the case until just a few years ago. The most dynamic cities in the future will no longer be those that are able to attract urban projects and investors driven by the real estate market or leisure-based development, but the cities that have deep and different cultural resources and that are able to use them as the basis for creating new urban cultures and for generating new economic values. Revitalising waterfront is no longer easy opportunity for long-term investments or for using the financial capital gains of corporation, hedge funds or sovereign funds, but a more creative-driven port city has to provide precious opportunities for real development – not only quantitative but more and more qualitative – that is able to produce effects in both the domain of collective assets and that of private capitals. Waterfront regeneration has to intercept in a proactive way the “creative city” theory (Landry, 2000). Few years ago, I identified the need for concrete evolution and pointed out the factors that make it possible for urban creativity to become a launch pad for new economies and a creative force for new cities and not simply an attractive force for intellectual resources. Today the paradigm of the creative city calls for a third evolutive leap forward because it is capable of producing multiplication and regeneration effects on urban development