Engaging the periphery : integrating port and city

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 76).The common urban waterfront is hardly approachable, much less swimmable, encrusted with wharves, switching yards, sewage out-jalls and other barnacles. It is the true civic outcast, the ghetto of ghettos, familiar only to longshoremen, sanitary engineers and carp. -- THE WATERFRONT. After World War II, a number of factors came together to affect the urban waterfront. Subsequently, these factors lead to the demise, and later the waterfront redevelopment phenomena of our time. In the 1940's, the United States led the world in a series of technological innovations in Port design and industry. Most pertinent to the urban waterfront was the introduction of the container system which revolutionized the shipping industry, much to the expense of the urban waterfront. Soon after its introduction, the container system became the benchmark system in Port technology rendering the traditional "break bulk" dock facilities obsolete. With this systemic change also came a set of infra structural requirements. Container ports require large, new spaces, plus more acreage for backup space as well as deeper and wider channels for the ships. In addition, they also require access to transportation and infrastructure, rendering the existing industrial warehouses and their waterfront rail networks useless. As a result, many urban waterfronts became deserted industrial compounds functioning neither as a viable port for industry nor as a waterfront to the city. At approximately the same time, America's entire pattern of settlement began to shift in the 1950's away from central cities to suburban sprawl. Consequently, vast amounts of urban waterfront land became available, relatively cheaply without dislocating current users. One of the first uses for these abandoned shoreline areas was to aid the burgeoning highway system. As the highway system took hold in the city's infrastructure, the city and the waterfront became alienated entities. Since the formation of the city as an inhabitable entity, the waterfront has played a key role in its development and its sustenance. Within the context of urban life the waterfront can become a pause or reconnection to serenity, vital to restoring a sense calm to the city's inhabitants. Modem waterfronts should become a "center" of sorts favoring public interests over industry and private enterprise. In this arena, the task of urban design is to provide the necessary interface between the city's core and its periphery therefore engaging the life of the city of the pulse of the people. With respect to this philosophy, this Thesis attempts to provide an interface between the city's core and its periphery.by Darren David Brathwaite.S.M