What cities need to utilize their waterfronts better?

[xzmattzx]

What cities need to utilize their waterfronts better? This is a broad question to allow for many opinions. You can bring up taking advantage of and/or preserving maritime history and associated buildings; allowing better access to the water or along the water; having many forms of waterfront recreation; or repurposing land from uses that don't need to be along water; and so on.

Keep in mind that there are many types of waterfronts: oceanfronts, bayfronts, lakefronts, riverfronts, and even small lakes or streams. So, almost all cities have some sort of waterfront worth discussing.

[The North One]

Philly does a really bad job with its waterfront unfortunately, it would take a lot to fix it.

[pj3000]

All cities need to utilize their waterfronts better

[Pavlov's Dog]

Portland, Oregon has gotten a lot of credit for it's waterfront but frankly I feel it's rather overrated. You have Tom McCall Park and some other more natural parks further south but for the most part it is pretty underwhelming. On the central eastside I-5 really needs to be put into a tunnel like Boston has done so the 20-25 blocks can be given back to more intimate human use. I'd really like to see people and housing in close contact to the river with lots of cafes, restaurants and bars. In addition there are dozens of blocks east of the Willamette which could also be part of a new distirct as this area transitions from light industrial and parking.

Some ideas for inspiration that I'd like to see on the Eastide.

Oslo's Sørenga and Akerbrygge - both created thanks to tunneling of a freeway
Chicago Riverwalk -
Vancouver's Granville Island
San Antonio's Riverwalk
Copenhagen's Kristianshavn and Island's brygge
Porto - especially on the Vila de Gaia side of the river

[Chisouthside]

Most of the cities in the SF southbay, there are some wetland restoration sites but you would never really know youre close to the water because the former industrial uses.

[LAsam]

Originally Posted by pj3000

All cities need to utilize their waterfronts better

San Francisco has done a great job with their waterfront, in my opinion. On a recent trip I walked the Embarcadero from the Ferry Building to Fort Mason and found the whole expanse to be excellent. There's museums, restaurants, pleasure piers, creative offices, etc... it all feels tied together through wayfinding signs and common pier architecture, and was all fairly clean and well cared for. To top it off, there are historic streetcars that run down the entire stretch which were getting a lot of usage. I found it all quite impressive.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by LAsam

San Francisco has done a great job with their waterfront, in my opinion. On a recent trip I walked the Embarcadero from the Ferry Building to Fort Mason and found the whole expanse to be excellent. There's museums, restaurants, pleasure piers, creative offices, etc... it all feels tied together through wayfinding signs and common pier architecture, and was all fairly clean and well cared for. To top it off, there are historic streetcars that run down the entire stretch which were getting a lot of usage. I found it all quite impressive.

On the contrary, IMHO SF is completely blowing it. The problem is the usual one of too many hoops to jump through to get anything done, too many interested "advocates" and one big hoop: a mandate that port land (virtually the entire bayfront) be used for water-related purposes (i.e no hotels etc). The result is that we have a waterfront lined with rotting piers that no one wants to take on the cost of rehabilitating and a bulkhead that's going to be hugely expensive to repair/replace, especially given the needs to prepare for the sea level rise that is likely coming.

The San Francisco Port Commission issued a 2016 report on the dire state of the (sea) wall. The 100-plus-year-old structure is made up mainly of landfill, a 100-foot-wide, 30-foot-deep trench filled with rocks and rubble resulting in a “pyramid-shaped dike up to 40 feet tall, capped with a bulkhead wall that holds waters back.

. . . the Port anticipates the final cost (of repair/replacement)will be somewhere in the ballpark of $5 billion.

https://sf.curbed.com/2018/3/20/1714...air-cost-money

The Port of San Francisco has a problem . . . . behind the white stucco and red-tiled roofs (of the finger piers) is the Port of San Francisco’s billion-dollar problem: crumbling piers, rotting aprons, pier sheds that need more than $100 million in work to be made safe and usable.

With many of those historic piers in desperate need of repair, the port has decided to solicit ideas from developers or organizations with the resources, or even just the imagination, needed to take on the spectacular but challenging bayfront properties.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics...photo-14249729

Note that this plan is for a few of the piers only. One of the largest piers, Pier 32, has been the subject off repeated development plans including, at one point, the new Golden State Warriors arena, that have all fallen through, in large part because of the cost of rehabilitating the pier.

And there really are only 2 sources of funds to do this work: Bonds issues by the Port to be paid off by rents from projects built on and leasing Port land and/or direct funding by developers wanting to do projects on the piers. But ruling out all but maritime-related projects rules out some of the most lucrative ideas.

If you want to dig deeply into how complicated all this is, see the new Port Waterfront Plan Update: https://sfport.com/sites/default/fil...%20version.pdf

[mhays]

San Francisco's waterfront seems mostly low-energy and overly spaced out to me, aside from parts that are tourist traps. Or like the Ferry Building, which is a tourist trap as if curated by Sunset Magazine. The large and underused piers and wide pier spacing contribute to this. Also the boulevard is too wide.

We're doing much the same thing in Seattle. Our new boulevard will be too wide, though not as bad. The five central piers have always been tourist traps. But the piers are closer together and the activity is constant in that stretch. We just upgraded the seawall and created a much wider sidewalk, and the viaduct will go away early next year followed by boulevard construction. We're also currently redoing the ferry terminal, the sixth Beatle as it were.

[SIGSEGV]

Is it safe to build large buildings on the piers in SF (with the Earthquakes and such)? SF could always use more housing: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3661.../data=!3m1!1e3

[jtown,man]

This is probably an unpopular opinion on here but I don't really care for a city that has nothing but waterfront which is parkland. Downtown Austin(I know its not all parkland, stick with me for a sec) is less interesting to me because all you see is people kayaking and enjoying the river/lake. Here in Norfolk, from my apartment, I have a view of a lot of shipyards and industrial activity. I see barges and navy ships coming down the river all the time.

Of course I want parks in appropriate areas. But I do love some old school industrial use of our waterfronts. Just tear down the damn interstates fronting them!

[mhays]

Agreed.

Vancouver is a good example. Endless walkways, cute little fountains, greenery, etc. all the way around the Downtown Peninsula, maybe a couple miles of waterfront. But I walked clear around this without finding life long the water one evening. Despite all that density just steps away.

I love working waterfronts. They're certainly important, and they're cool.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by mhays

San Francisco's waterfront seems mostly low-energy and overly spaced out to me, aside from parts that are tourist traps. Or like the Ferry Building, which is a tourist trap as if curated by Sunset Magazine. The large and underused piers and wide pier spacing contribute to this. Also the boulevard is too wide.

We're doing much the same thing in Seattle. Our new boulevard will be too wide, though not as bad. The five central piers have always been tourist traps. But the piers are closer together and the activity is constant in that stretch. We just upgraded the seawall and created a much wider sidewalk, and the viaduct will go away early next year followed by boulevard construction. We're also currently redoing the ferry terminal, the sixth Beatle as it were.

I love the Ferry Building food hall and shop there regularly for "gourmet" food items it's hard to find elsewhere. I'm no tourist by the way.

The piers are underused for the reason I said above: It costs too much to renovate them for them to be used for the type of activities permitted and projects won't "pencil out". The Embaradero Blvd is wide for 2 reasons: It replaced a freeway and needed to carry as great a traffic load and it has the dedicated right of way for the streetcars in the center--essentially 2 traffic lanes wide. It is so much better now than the freeway it replaced, nobody but mhays is complaining about the width.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Is it safe to build large buildings on the piers in SF (with the Earthquakes and such)? SF could always use more housing: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3661.../data=!3m1!1e3

For enough money, you can engineer almost anything . . . but it isn't cheap.

[Centropolis]

midwestern/southern river cities are probably the consistantly bad offenders. cincinnati and st. louis are putting lots of money in theirs but its going to be hard to fix the gigantism issues, especially st. louis. louisville has I-64 hovering right over its waterfront which is completely ruined until thats removed. kansas city pretends like it isnt even a river city and the most important part is covered in overgrowth and rubble. nashvilles riverfront actually works ok but it helps that it was sort of like a scaled down ohio river/ohio river city from the begining and doesn't suffer from the weird midwestern gigantism issues with space/infrastructure. i need to revisit memphis this winter but they actually took a crack at human-scaling the riverfront with mud island, other than a creepy giant pyramid.

[mrnyc]

ffs cleveland does. so much potential. they are doing it little by little though.

[Centropolis]

to build on my earlier comment, the cincinnati waterfront has seen the most improvement recently of the midwest river cities in my opinion. st louis has been a construction zone for YEARS now until this month and i havent had a chance to take in all the improvements. cincinnati, howver has the bike/ped connectivity, but more importantly the activity on the opposite side of the river creating a nice dynamic of people crossing back and forth OVER the river.

louisville is squandering the most potential, as a decent downtown does already come up right to the river, but the interstate is a killer.

[mrnyc]

i dk, the city and a developer in cleveland have already put $750M into redeveloping the east bank of the flats on the cuyahoga. the next phase is on the way. that’s nothing to sneeze at either:

https://articles.cleveland.com/reale..._bank_phas.amp

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

i dk, the city and a developer in cleveland have already put $750M into redeveloping the east bank of the flats on the cuyahoga. the next phase is on the way. that’s nothing to sneeze at either:

https://articles.cleveland.com/reale..._bank_phas.amp

thats why i said “the river cities,” of which i am far better traveled than the lake cities, excepting chicago/milwaukee.

regarding cleveland, i havent been in some time, and at that time the waterfront wasn’t regarded as worthy of a visitors time by the people i was staying with way out in hudson and unfortunately i don’t have a baseline impression. i imagine it has improved greatly.

[pj3000]

Pittsburgh has done a pretty good job at reclaiming and reconnecting to its lengthy riverfronts, but needs to kick it into a higher gear.

Waterfront redevelopment is tough, especially in an old city like Pittsburgh... considering the centuries of past industrial uses, challenging topography, mulitple municipalities/land ownership at the table, and the RAILROADS. Developing a comprehensive, connected plan isn't easy... especially in Pittsburgh which has so much urban riverfront land. Pittsburgh has a lot of great riverfront parks and amenities... the issue is connecting them all together.

[Centropolis]

in that vein, here is the cleveland waterfront in 1992...appears to be a barren hellscape from this perspective.

wikipedia.com

all of the more recent ground level photos i've seen are a vast improvement so i could definitely see cleveland in the "most improved" category for the midwest.

the lake michigan cities like chicago and milwaukee have had decent-to-great waterfronts as long as i can remember going back to when i was a kid, so i think that sort of disqualifies them.