Local identities on change- urban waterfront regeneration within the global city Istanbul

Abstract

Over the last decades, many cities worldwide have promoted urban waterfront regeneration for a variety of reasons building on the particular scenery of these sites. The success of the first well known urban waterfront regeneration project, Baltimore Inner Harbor regeneration (1960), has served as a prototype for cities around the world with the desire to position themselves in the race to become Global Cities (Harvey 1989) by providing strategically located high-quality investment opportunities to attract global capital, or by constructing attractive spaces to promote tourism and leisure. Nowadays, almost every city at water's edge is engaged in regeneration projects with strong political impetuses and interest from various parties: authorities, developers and neighboring communities (Hoyle 2001).