Coping with challenges in inner- city waterfront redevelopment projects Opportunities and limitations for transferring policy practices from the case of HafenCity in Hamburg to the case of Haven-Stad in Amsterdam. 1 “In these possibilities, we remember that urban development is not just for profit, or person aggrandizement, but for the benefit of humanity and the planet as well. It is on the urban waterfront that these visions of the city are finding form. These are the sites of post-industrial city space-making”. (Shaw, 2001: 6) COLOFON Title: Coping with challenges in inner-city waterfront redevelopment projects – Opportunities and limitations for transferring policy practices from the case of HafenCity in Hamburg to the case of Haven-Stad in Amsterdam. Author: Yte Elbrich Schukking Student number: 11767162 E: [email protected] T: 06 81 90 38 72 MASTERTHESIS URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING Universiteit van Amsterdam Graduate School of Social Sciences Nieuwe Achtergracht 166 1018 WV Amsterdam The Netherlands Supervisor: Sara Özogul Second reader: Tuna Tasan-Kok Source picture front page: own work (2018) ABSTRACT The number of inner-city waterfront areas that are being redeveloped or where plans for regeneration are being made, is increasing. The shift of traditional industries and structural changes in the economic system of former harbour areas has led to dramatic changes in the functions of these areas. Waterfront regeneration projects are often seen as prestige projects, in which a lot of different stakeholders cooperate. Projects like this have frequently led to changes in the governance system of cities. This research focusses on to what extend institutional conditions (formal and informal institutional frameworks), can be used to deal with challenges coming along with the planning process of inner-city waterfront redevelopment projects. The main case study of this research is the project of HafenCity in Hamburg. HafenCity Hamburg GmbH, a private law cooperation owned by the municipality of Hamburg is created to steer and guide the planning process of this new urban neighbourhood. Due to the fact that in this project the public sector has a strong role, the amount of faced challenges is quite limited. Moreover, the project experienced challenges which were not mentioned in the literature. To deal with these challenges, the public sector created a framework in which they utilized the knowledge of the private sector and other important individual actors. Since this research follows a constructive approach, it is argued that the current literature does not address the fact that waterfront redevelopment projects in different urban contexts can learn something from each other. Therefore, the planned project of Haven-Stad in Amsterdam has been chosen as a pilot study for this research. Success factors have been identified from the case of HafenCity in Hamburg. It is argued that some of these success factors, such as policies, institutional conditions and best-practices, are transferable from the case of HafenCity to the pilot study of Haven-Stad. PREFACE By writing this preface of my master thesis, an end has come to my years at university. After graduating from my bachelor at the University of Utrecht, I started in September 2017 with the master Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Amsterdam. I can say that I am still very happy that I made this choice and that I cannot imagine any other master’s degree being more interesting to me. The last months I have worked with pleasure (and of course, with a little bit of reluctance sometimes) on this final product of my academic career. This research has brought me to the beautiful city of Hamburg, gave me new (personal) insights and put me in contact with interesting respondents from the field. I want to say thanks to my friends and boyfriend for always being around, providing me with enough coffee breaks and funny meme’s during a long study day and the good times we had together working on our master theses. It will be hard getting used to not spending every day with all of you in the library anymore. Moreover, I want to thank my family for showing their interest in my research and keeping me company for a few days on a trip to Hamburg. It made doing the fieldwork even more fun! Many thanks to all the respondents who participated in this research as well. Last but not least, I want to thank my supervisor Sara for her helpful, constructive (always fast!) feedback and the pleasant cooperation. Good reading! Yte Elbrich Schukking June 2018 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ...................................................................................................................................... 1 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................... 4 1.1 Context and matter ............................................................................................................... 4 1.2 Case of interest ...................................................................................................................... 5 1.3 Relevance of this research .................................................................................................... 6 1.4 Focus of this research ........................................................................................................... 7 1.5 Outline .................................................................................................................................... 7 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .................................................................................................... 8 2.1 Urban redevelopment of waterfront areas ......................................................................... 8 2.2 Institutional conditions ....................................................................................................... 10 2.2.1 From government to governance ................................................................................ 10 2.3 Planning processes of urban waterfront (re)development ............................................... 12 2.4 Challenges in urban waterfront planning processes ......................................................... 14 2.5 Which factors can lead to success? .................................................................................... 17 2.6 Transferability of policies .................................................................................................... 18 2.7 Summary of the theoretical framework ............................................................................. 20 3. METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................................... 21 3.1 Research design ................................................................................................................... 21 3.1.1 Why these two case studies? ....................................................................................... 22 3.1.2 Sub questions and stages of research ......................................................................... 22 3.2 Operationalization ............................................................................................................... 23 3.3 Methods of data collection ................................................................................................. 24 3.3.1 Policy review ................................................................................................................. 24 3.3.2 Interviews ...................................................................................................................... 25 3.4 Methods of data analysis .................................................................................................... 26 3.4.1 Field of influence analysis ............................................................................................ 26 3.5 Conceptual framework ........................................................................................................ 27 2 4. HAFENCITY HAMBURG EXPLAINED ........................................................................................ 28 4.1 HafenCity: a public-private partnership steered by the public ......................................... 28 4.2 Coping with challenges in HafenCity .................................................................................. 32 4.2.1 Challenges that did not occur in HafenCity ................................................................. 32 4.2.2 Faced challenges known from literature ..................................................................... 34 4.2.3 Unexpected challenges ................................................................................................ 36 4.3 Institutional conditions of HafenCity .................................................................................. 38 4.3.1 Different planning styles composed of different planning determinants ................. 40 4.4 Success factors from HafenCity .......................................................................................... 43 5. PILOT STUDY: HAVEN-STAD AMSTERDAM ............................................................................. 46 5.1 Setting the context of Haven-Stad ..................................................................................... 46 5.2 Foreseen challenges and stakeholders in case of Haven-Stad ......................................... 48 6. POLICY