User-friendly waterfronts: a dialogue of responsiveness and placemaking

Abstract

In contemporary times, waterfronts reveal themselves to have a special role in offering society diversified opportunities for economic development, public enjoyment and civic identity. Optimally, successful waterfront developments strive to exert user-friendly impacts on the quality of life in urban settlements. To this end, the aim of this paper is to explore the process of creating user-friendly waterfront developments. In doing so, the paper elaborates on certain sets of criteria that can be implemented in the process of creating a uniquely user-friendly waterfront development. The sets of criteria under study are related to the two notions of "responsiveness" and "placemaking". These two notions are chosen under the hypothesis that the concept of user-friendliness is comprehensive in its nature while being quite associated with the criteria of successful making of places that can be responsive to people needs, demands and aspirations. The scope of the paper is then narrowed to cover mixed-use waterfronts developments. The choice of this set of developments in particular is based on their vitality and coherent relationship with the criteria of responsiveness and successful placemaking. Mixed-use waterfronts are diverse in their activities and offer wide possibilities of user-friendliness. In light of all of this, the research methodology of this paper is devised to elaborate on the concepts of waterfronts, placemaking, waterfronts development, responsiveness, and mixed-uses while following a multidisciplinary path in the trial to weave all these terms together into one coherent discussion that is related to the quality of life and user-friendliness. All of these terms intersect to yield a focal study point that is concerned with successful placemaking criteria and their coherence to responsive design criteria. The discussion is finally sealed with the matching of placemaking criteria with responsiveness criteria within the scope of providing a clearer view of the principles that can guide the development of user-friendly waterfront developments.