Exploring the potential of urban grain in design-led waterfront regeneration activities based on placemaking: A study of the Haliç waterfront area

Abstract

Urban regeneration activities aim to boost the local economy by constructing new master planned developments, establishing business centres, repurposing industrial buildings in former industrial sites, rehabilitating buildings in conservation areas in historic city centres and clearing informal settlements that were established in previous years. Different approaches were examined by the experts regarding how urban regeneration should take place as the three categories of regeneration were identified in this study. One of which is focused on the structure and the role of the public, private and non-governmental organizations, second one deals with the place-based regeneration activities addressing social and physical issues and the last one provides the strategies that focus on an activity or event. Local or national governments need to focus on sites where heritage buildings are located, and they should encourage place-based regeneration activities by concentrating on social and physical issues. Design-led and culture-led are classified as this kind of regeneration strategies. The development schemes focused on cultural issues in the 1980s and 1990s dealing with culture-led regeneration strategies in order to encourage investment to attract visitors to place promotion that consisted of concert halls, street festivals, best hotels, national parks, museums, art galleries and public art places. Generally speaking, large waterfront development schemes, that are mostly considered as culture-led regeneration activities, have extensive design programmes including museums, exhibition halls, convention centres and sport facilities and deprive the existence of the surrounding urban fabric. However, every nation was affected economically and socially due to the recession in 2008, the results and impact of design-led approach began to be felt. In fact, some local municipalities experienced difficulties in this global financial crisis and that weakened the structure of property-led urban regeneration strategies. This regeneration strategy focuses on the placemaking approach which was developed in the late 1980s and concentrated on the fine urban grain issues. The term 'urban grain' is used by designers to describe the pattern of plots in an urban block in the urban fabric. This pattern is dominated by small plots which gives the definition of fine urban grain that provides mix of use, streetscape, street life and urban blocks which relate to the importance of variety and diversity. Globally, fine-grained urban fabric has played an important role in waterfront regeneration schemes. Governments try to encourage place-based regeneration activities addressing social and physical issues in several waterfront areas. The three waterfront schemes in Europe included numerous conceptual ideas that were highlighted to illustrate the potential of ideas. This study investigated the importance of creating quality places for urban regeneration and examined the key features of successful projects in the long term. Based on the criteria gleaned from the literature, the overall evaluation of these waterfront developments can be viewed as successful examples. The results of these waterfront development schemes suggested that two of them fulfilled the requirements of placemaking activities as well as the urban grain whereas, one of them could not sufficiently define all the requirements of placemaking activities. Nevertheless, the majority of the activities compiled with place branding. It also had a connection of place promotion as it combined city's past with its present. Like the other waterfront areas, the Haliç waterfront area has always been an important location and was considered as an integral part of the existing urban fabric that gave its strong sense of place and vitality. There were numerous changes took place due to the establishment of large-scale industrial facilities in the 1850s. The coastal road linked these facilities to the different parts of the Haliç area, which was clearly depicted in the historical maps, and still exists today determining the border of the study area. It proudly houses the recent culture-led regeneration outcomes. Today, the Haliç waterfront area is viewed as an underutilised post-industrial waterfront area adjacent to the historic city centre. It appears that viability and vitality have not been improved solely through the regeneration activities that have focused on green spaces and parks since 1985, after the demolishment of most of the existing buildings on the waterfront area. The scholarly literature on post-industrial waterfront developments indicated that waterfront areas were in a state of constant transition and many post-industrial sites, that are located around the waterfronts, were involved in cultural preservation, public outdoor activities, and parks. Critiques of such developments expressed their concerns regarding green gentrification at the expense of social equity and shared economic prosperity. Acting towards environmental challenges to provide green spaces has increasingly become a favourable approach since the 2010s. This study aimed to find an answer as to whether regenerating this area through placemaking schemes consisting of green spaces would be sufficient or not. In another aspect, it specifically examined the issues concerning placemaking schemes in the Haliç waterfront area. The exploratory sequential mixed method design was chosen as the methodology of this case study that consisted of three phases. The study commenced by exploring the qualitative data in the first phase; the following phase was designed to determine a feature that needed be tested as the urban fabric not existed at the moment, then continued with the semi-structured interviews together with the questionary survey in the third phase. The analysis of the semi-structured interviews with the experts revealed what was grounded in the data and helped to confirm the formulated hypothesis. The results of the questionary survey described the preferences of the visitors and inhabitants in the study area as well as suggesting that, the fine-grained urban fabric on the waterfront as part of placemaking activities that establish viability and vitality through diversity would contribute to the regeneration of the Haliç waterfront area.