Arabic

Professor Shih-wei Lo

Tunghai University, Taiwan, R.O.C

How Public Can the Waterfront Be?

Urban Interventions in the Asian Port City --- Shanghai vs. Mumbai, Yokohama vs. Kao-hsiung

The Asian port city, like Mumbai, Shanghai, Yokohama or Kao-hsiung, is the late comer in the course of modernization, but plays crucially the frontier role for its own hinterland which had mostly been subjected to colonization. Historically and technically such port city experiences very long segregation between the port and the city. Only thank to the functional change of port shipment in the last quarter of the twentieth century, most Asian ports cities start to involve in integrating its shipping industry and city life, and formulating a new sort of public space along its waterfront.

The monumental street façade of the Bund and Pu-tung, and the exploitation alongside the World Exposition in Shanghai ---the Right wing’s showcase, the advocate for retrieving back the beach for the public in Mumbai---the Left’s grass-root movement, the reclamation of Minato Mirai 21 (i.e. the future of the harbor in the 21st century) in Yokohama---the site for the global Triennial art festival and the new mode of industry, the re-vitalization of the old bulk cargo dock in Kao-hsiung---the gates of both the city’s main river and busiest shopping area, all these interventions contribute to the Asian modes of urbanization and urbanity, which may be worthy of elaboration and may hopefully sum up with a new urbanism