Eleventh International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

This paper will investigate whether the existing waterfront development model can adapt to the coming environmental depredation occasioned by climate change. The paper will explore how by re framing the typical waterfront development site within the wider urban catchment, an understanding of larger environmental problems such the contamination of urban waterfronts by polluted urban stormwater and the increase in pluvial and maritime flooding can be apprehended. Through the use of catchment analysis and GIS modelling, the position of an urban waterfront development can be understood as part of a hydrological gradient from the hinterland to the receiving environment. The environmental remediation and amelioration of stormwater production, sea level rise, pluvial flooding and an increase in urban heat will be discussed. The key investigation will be into what the consequences of appropriate environmental remediation will have on the conventional waterfront development plan. The investigation finds that the urban waterfront can become a resilient and adaptive landscape, a valuable indigenous and ecologically viable ecotone that will help to increase biodiversity, ameliorate the consequences of sea level rise and contaminated stormwater and reduce the effect of atmospheric warming. However, the contemporary urban waterfront planning model, a dense, gridded, highly impervious masterplan must be transformed. The paper looks to an alternative history of modern urbanism, with its roots in the garden city movement, as a new planning model that can accommodate the necessary remediation regimes while retaining the expected real estate return.