Urban Seascaping: Dos and Don’ts of Integrating a Marine Nature-Based Approach to Waterfront Development
- Lincoln University
Published in Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (SASBE 2024), edited by Ali GhaffarianHoseini, Amirhosein GhaffarianHoseini, Farzad Rahimian and Mahesh Babu Purushothaman. Springer Nature, Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, volume 591, 2025, pages 1558 to 1566. DOI 10.1007/978-981-96-4051-5_148.
Abstract
This paper presents design explorations for coastal cities to re-envision the current dualistic boundary between city and sea, human and nonhuman, in light of the sea-level rise and storm surges. As the water enters our cities, there is an increased need to go beyond the traditional defence-driven handling of water and to engage more meaningfully with the marine world. Therefore, this paper explores coastal ecosystems, focusing especially on their capacity to support life, mitigate climate change, strengthen coastal resilience and impact the local culture due to their ecosystem services. The paper analyses a case study from the city of Vejle, Denmark, where a design competition explored alternative waterfront development and coastal adaptation strategies in the form of marine nature-based solutions. However, findings from Vejle indicated that there was a tendency for many design proposals to resort to business-as-usual spatial typology using concrete bulkhead edges seen in many coastal cities with a bias for land-based plantings over marine nature. The findings demonstrate how urban designers and landscape architects exhibit a lack of understanding of the aquatic realm, proposing designs that are not conducive to marine life by inhibiting the flow of the water and hindering sunlight for marine vegetation to grow. In response to this tendency, the paper highlights a small built project in Wellington New Zealand that exhibited a novel approach to re-envisioning waterfront development that after 20 years, it has reported a surprising increase in biodiversity and transformed this area into a more hybrid, interconnected, and dynamic zone.
Keywords
Session
Presented in Track L, Saturday 9 November 2024, 11:00 to 13:00, room WG 1020, Auckland University of Technology. Session chair Assoc. Prof. Timothy Adekunle.
How to Cite
Ryu, S. J. (2025). Urban Seascaping: Dos and Don’ts of Integrating a Marine Nature-Based Approach to Waterfront Development. In A. GhaffarianHoseini, A. GhaffarianHoseini, F. Rahimian, & M. B. Purushothaman (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (SASBE 2024) (Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, Vol. 591, pp. 1558–1566). Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-4051-5_148
About the Conference
Presented at SASBE 2024, the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, held in Auckland from 7 to 9 November 2024 and chaired by Professors Ali and Amirhosein GhaffarianHoseini, founders of GDI Academy. The version of record is published by Springer Nature; this page is the conference archive record kept by GDI Academy.