Urban seascaping: dos and don’ts of integrating a marine nature-based approach to waterfront development

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