Transforming Industrial Waterfronts into Inclusive Landscapes: A Project Method and Investigation of Landscape as a Medium for Sustainable Revitalization

Urban waterfronts in port cities have experienced a dramatic shift in the process of expanding industrialization, which causes severe ecological and social problems in postindustrial cities. Transforming manufacturing sites to inclusive landscapes requires costly remediation and careful planning to foster smart development that promotes the city’s economic vibrancy, enhances social and cultural contexts, and improves quality of life. While conventional reclamation strategies mainly focus on the technical aspect of simply performing to meet minimum engineering standards, new industrial urbanism offers a pathway to relink the manufacturing waterfront in contemporary city life through ‘landscape medium’. This paper explores the evolutionary phases of industrial waterfronts from a diachronic perspective and proposes a theoretical framework that utilizes the landscape medium to integrate historically separated elements, including people, infrastructure, and buildings. Using the Yangpu waterfront in Shanghai as a case study, we analyze a completed reclamation project and summarize four sustainable design approaches—connecting, resilient, locality, and inclusive—that can transform obsolete manufacturing sites into inclusive urban landscapes. The primary contribution of this regeneration plan is to reconstruct a continuous and adaptable waterfront field that can accommodate diverse activities and changing needs. To validate our urban design framework, we examine another industrial waterfront renewal project along the Soochow Creek, which has been successfully approved in conceptual design. Overall, our research demonstrates the potential for sustainable, inclusive, and adaptable urban design to revitalize industrial waterfronts and create vibrant, livable urban landscapes.