'Our harbor. .. their dream' Heritage, history and heartache in the redevelopment of the Port Adelaide waterfront, South Australia
Date
2012
Authors
Szili, G.E.
Rofe, M.W.
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Conference paper
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Proceedings of the 15th International Planning History Society Conference, 2012, pp.1-15
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15th International Planning History Society Conference (15 Jul 2012 : São Paulo)
Abstract
Following the demise of the industrial economy, many western cities and their industrial precincts have become synonymous with social, economic and environmental malaise. As a result, recent trends in urban policy have revealed an explicit emphasis on the redevelopment and revitalisation of these underutilised industrial landscapes. Indicative of these landscapes are ports and other neglected waterfront sites. The redevelopment of the Port Adelaide waterfront in South Australia serves as an exemplar of such a post-industrial transformation. Dominated by entrepreneurial governance arrangements, powerful public and private sectors have coalesced to reinvigorate the decaying landscape through physical restructuring and discursive tactics aligned with city marketing and place making campaigns (Szili & Rofe 2007; 2010; 2011;Rofe & Szili 2009). In doing so, images of growth and cosmopolitan vitality supplant the stigmatised images associated with deindustrialisation, portraying the region as once again economically vital and socially progressive. Central to this reimaging is an explicit recognition and engagement with the Port's maritime history and heritage. Drawing on the successful post-industrial transformation of other waterfronts such as the Melbourne and London docklands (see for example Butler 2007; Dovey 2005; Marshall 2001), the incorporation of heritage-sensitive design in Port Adelaide was not dissimilar to other ports globally.
Possessing a rich maritime and industrial history and heritage, the development consortium responsible for the Port's revitalisation openly espoused the protection, preservation and celebration of the 'maritime flavour' of the Port. Indeed, discussions held with key stakeholder informants revealed the benefits of heritage-sensitive design as serving both the needs of city marketing strategies and the needs of existing residents in nurturing their 'sense of place'. However, whilst the rhetoric of the public-private partnership ostensibly involved history and heritage, the reality for the local community was quite different. Foremost of these concerns were issues regarding the discordant scale and form of the new development within the existing heritage precinct (Szili 2011). Moreover, concessions in planning mechanisms and regulations appeared to favour commercial profitability over heritage-sensitive design. As such, significant community opposition arose, with many locals viewing the redevelopment as grossly insensitive to the history and heritage of the landscape and its people. Thus, through the Port Adelaide waterfront redevelopment experience, the following paper traces the inadequacies of such entrepreneurially driven revitalisation schemes in meeting local heritage concerns. In doing so, the authors highlight the tensions inherent in the transformation of redundant industrial waterfronts to postindustrial landscapes of cosmopolitanism and vitality.
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Copyright 2015 The Authors