Deconstructing the Edge: Urban Expansion Through Industrial Sites: The Changing State of Port Cities

Abstract

Port cities traditionally developed around protected harbour edges, placing the harbour industries in the centre of the urban context. Over the last century port cities have often evolved away from their port-based industries, which historically provided the basis for their economy, towards a global economy of commerce and tourism. The harbour fronts, originally settled for the agglomeration of overseas trade, became situated in close proximity to expanding urban centres. Through continuous urban population growth there is a desperate need for expansion, and industrial port sites become crucial areas for this development. Wellington’s CentrePort provides a prime example with its vast size, vicinity to the city centre and open flat land. CentrePort is still a thriving economic zone but the economy is changing and this area is now seen as essential to the development and expansion of the city. This thesis questions how the future design of industrial port zones adjacent to cities’ CBDs can be strategised to enable new and diverse programmatic elements to inhabit the same space. The work of Peter Rimmer, B. S. Hoyle, Richard Marshall, Charles Waldheim, Sebastien Marot, Joanna Rosval, Alejandro Zaera, Tricia Cusack, Alex Wall and Susan Nigra Snyder are examined to critique this unique form of urban expansion relating to identity, the water’s edge, multi-programmatic layers, and the changing face of industrial ports in the 21st century. The thesis considers two functioning and corresponding scales, the urban and human. The urban scale approach proposes to construct a topography-based “landscape infrastructure” that understands, clarifies and reinforces the composition of the city as a whole. The human scale approach draws inspirations from the immediate contexts of the working port. The combination and interaction of these two scale approaches allows for a functioning progressive re-development that takes into consideration the composition of the expanding city as a whole (urban scale), while also addressing the character of the port itself (human scale) as a separate identity. By bridging the gaps between the two different scales, the thesis argues that different types and densities and timings of urban expansion can happen while maintaining consideration for human-scale and productive port operations.