Water Dependent Use Policy And The Urban Waterfront

The essays in this book, first published in 1988, explore the changes that have occurred in the modern harbour in the 1970s and 1980s and the many roles of the public port in stimulating or responding to these changes. The goal of this study is to understand the modern harbour and public port and the contemporary pressures on them. The contributors’ disciplines range among geography, law, business, political science, and marine affairs.

In port cities around the world, waterfront development projects have been hailed both as spaces of promise and as crucial territorial wedges in twenty-first century competitive growth strategies. Frequently, these mega-projects have been intended to transform derelict docklands into communities of hope with sustainable urban economies—economies intended to both compete in and support globally-networked hierarchies of cities. This collection engages with major theoretical debates and empirical findings on the ways waterfronts transform and have been transformed in port-cities in North and South America, Europe, the Caribbean. It is organized around the themes of fixities (built environments, institutional and regulatory structures, and cultural practices) and flows (information, labor, capital, energy, and knowledge), which are key categories for understanding processes of change. By focusing on these fixities and flows, the contributors to this volume develop new insights for understanding both historical and current cases of change on urban waterfronts, those special areas of cities where land and water meet. As such, it will be a valuable resource for teaching faculty, students, and any audience interested in a broad scope of issues within the field of urban studies.

Detailed account of the controversy surrounding the building of a coal-fired cement factory in the Hudson Valley.