Visions for the waterfront development across the world have a binary that needs to be rooted an anchored in the local and everyday.
- These examples are primarily retail developments, they propose leisure as the appropriate use for city waterfronts and are driven by the demands of speculative finance. The built form emerging from such proposals often consists of large, internalised blocks fronting the water across a strip of privatized ‘public’ pathway.
- Are shopping, dining and leisure now the only way we can imagine using our rivers? Is a more imaginative vision possible?
…a vision less monosyllabic… a vision that has more sophisticated social and commercial drivers?
- Are there ways of thinking about the development of the Sabarmati Riverfront that might give rise to a rich narrative of spatial experience and more specific relationships with site edges? That might be more appropriate for local climate and more engaged with local patterns of use?
