The Fluid City Paradigm: a deeper innovation

Abstract

Waterfront regeneration needs to be disruptive: a paradigm shift and a deeper innovation of methods and tools must be set up in order to act in the changing times we live. In current global crisis, a true metamorphosis, the strong flows of financial, social and relational capitals that powered regeneration of urban waterfronts over the last twenty 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 big projects and rich investors driven by the real estate market or leisure-based development, but the cities have deep socio-cultural diversity and are able to use it as the basis for creating new urban cultures, open and flexible, for activating identity resources in branding design and for generating new circular economic values. Revitalising urban waterfront is no longer easy opportunity for long-term investments or for using the financial capital gains of corporation or hedge 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, in both the domain of landscape and that of economies, in both the domain of leisure and that of resilience.