Siriwardane-de Zoysa, Rapti ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3891-3158 and Amoo-Adare, Epifania A. (2021) The Bipolar Waterfront: Paradoxes of Shoreline Place-Making in Contemporary Accra and Colombo. In: Global Im-Possibilities. , ed. by Godfrey, Phoebe and Buchanan, Mary. Bloomsbury Academic, London, pp. 69-88. ISBN 978-1-7869-9954-2 DOI https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350236844.ch-004.

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Abstract

Popular imaginings of the contemporary metropolitan “waterfront” embody a number of ambivalent and oppositional narratives. On the one hand, they stand to symbolize trajectories of urban rejuvenation and socio-spatial revitalization, as abandoned derelict sites such as docklands and harbors are transformed into open, vibrant communal spaces for public use. On the other, waterfront developments in the past have often encompassed mega-projects of top-down state and private investment-led planning ventures. The waterfront, therefore, also stands as an embattled leitmotif—a promised site of urban spectacle, leisured consumerism, and of neoliberal gentrification. We start with the premise that socio-environmental change often bears down disproportionately on the world’s poor (Agyeman, Bullard, & Evans 2003), and that meanings of what counts as “sustainable” and socio-ecologically just are inherently cultural, as much as they are place bound and historically contingent (Agyeman 2013).

At first glance waterfront development—whether marine, estuarine, or riverine—particularly across capital cities and metropolitan spaces stand as potent emblems of national development, of cultural production, and of cosmopolitan identity-making, taking for example London’s Canary Wharf, Cape Town’s Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, Singapore’s Esplanade, or Jakarta’s Jayakarta Waterfront (see Nas 2005; Ferreira & Visser 2007; Kong 2007). Arguably, contemporary waterfront developments around the world visibly mimic distinct socio-spatial orders of urban presence—not only do they replicate globalized capitalist features such as shopping malls, mesicol greenery, expansive communal squares, and artistic performance spaces but also embody distinct metropolitan identities and are themselves discursively constructed and enacted in everyday life, from tourist brochures to national media. Yet, apart from their emblematic presence—as aesthetic form and material fixity—waterfront sites also encompass inherently emotional landscapes and cultural memory, in similar ways that urban parklands and memorialized cemeteries do (see Tarlow 2000; Uggla 2014). Urban waterfront spaces have also been sites of socio-environmental struggle (Pinto & Kondolf 2020), connecting challenges such as shored litter, relative sea-level change, and land subsidence together with debates around sea walls and other forms of coastal fortification (Storbjörk & Hjerpe 2014; Boland, Bronte, & Muir 2017)

Document Type:	Book chapter
Programme Area:	PA3
Research affiliation:	Social Sciences > Development and Knowledge Sociology
DOI:	https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350236844.ch-004
Date Deposited:	21 Oct 2025 15:45
Last Modified:	21 Oct 2025 15:45
URI:	https://cris.leibniz-zmt.de/id/eprint/5756

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