2022 Summer Issue - 51

Until recently, most European port redevelopments
involved transforming a neglected industrial
waterfront into an upscale mixed-use neighborhood
intended to bring together food and leisure activities,
retail, condominiums, and offices in a way that
gave the city a stunning new venue and a fresh face
to the world.
They still do that. But in the current era of global
warming, planners are having to think harder about
how to go about it. It no longer is enough to swap
out barges for yachts and warehouses for sleek glass
seafood restaurants. With the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change predicting a sea-level rise of
3.28 feet (1 m) or more by the end of the century and
at least 10 times as many violent storms, planners
are taking a more defensive approach to waterfront
design in the hope that they can deliver the appeal of
urban life near the water without putting lives at risk.
Planners have been thinking about the consequences
of global warming for some time, according
to José Sánchez, director of Agenda AIVP 2030 of the
International Association of Cities and Ports. What
has changed, he says, is that the concern is more
pressing, with a bigger and more public focus on how
to mitigate damage.
However, at the same time, Sánchez says, the
scale of the challenge continues to grow as waterfronts
are being designed to accommodate an
increasingly broad range of activities, bringing more
people to precisely those places likely to be hit first
and hardest by storms and swells.
Staying High and Dry
Rotterdam, Netherlands, is a good example of this
dynamic. Twenty-five years ago, Rotterdam was a city
" with its back to the water, " says Alexander Geenen,
program manager of Stadium Park-Feyenoord City,
Rotterdam. " And it's now really turned-new apartments,
new high-rises have been built quite close to
the water, celebrating the water. While on the one
hand it might be a potential threat to the future, it
is a value to have [the Rhine River] flowing through
the city. "
The section Geenen works on, Feyenoord City, is
a mixed-use redevelopment that will include about
2.8 million square feet (255,000 sq m) of housing,
roughly 689,000 square feet (64,000 sq m) of commercial
space, 893,500 square feet (83,000 sq m)
of sports fields, and eventually a stadium for the
Feyenoord football club. (Due to the sudden rise in
construction costs, the timing of construction of the
stadium is currently uncertain.)
Like other European port cities, Rotterdam has
taken a number of measures to reduce its flood risk.
One important measure is building what in Dutch is
called a waterplein-a square of water-that is normally
a playground for basketball and other sports,
but in the event of flooding or heavy rainfall can serve
as a collecting pond that keeps the storm sewers
from being overwhelmed, according to Geenen. The
city has also encouraged owners of flat-roofed buildings
to install roof gardens and even sponsored
contests to get people to replace tiled courtyards
with vegetation.
" The idea is that you take pressure off the large
district wastewater systems by putting in rainwater
harvesting solutions, " such as retention ponds or
permeable walkways, explains Billy Grayson, executive
vice president for ULI Centers and Initiatives.
" Having more of that green infrastructure integrated
into dense urban environments is something that
we're seeing a lot of cities pursuing, including cities
in Europe. "
Ironically, part of that infrastructure involves
adding more nature to an artificial landscape. Rotterdam
has reshaped some of its rivers by widening
them to reduce the chance of flooding. Last year, the
city also made some adjustments to a 4,600-footlong
(1,400 m) artificial island in the Nieuwe Maas
River. City landscapers added a sandbank on one
side and lowered some of the island to turn it into
tidal land. A year later, plants have grown on the
sandbar and wildlife is making itself at home. A
6.5-foot-long (2 m) sturgeon has been seen in the
river and a beaver has taken up residence on the
island, " which is something we did not expect to
happen so quickly, " Geneen says.
Hamburg, Germany, has faced a similar set of
challenges in its HafenCity project but dealt with
them somewhat differently. HafenCity is a 395-acre
(160 ha) port redevelopment that will bring 7,500
homes, several universities, and 45,000 jobs to 6.5
miles (10.5 km) of the Elbe River waterfront.
" We are really a waterfront project with all the
advantages because you have wonderful promenades
and a direct link to the water, but you also have these
challenges of rapid flood protection, " says Susanne
Bühler, a spokeswoman for HafenCity.
SUMMER 2022
URBAN LAND
51
2022 Summer Issue

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