Can Malmö’s waterfront make room for people and nature?

Nyhamnen is a former industrial harbour area undergoing major transformation. As the city grows, pressure on attractive waterfront locations is increasing. Future public spaces will need to accommodate both people and ecosystems, while also addressing rising sea levels and other climate-related risks.

This is where the FLORENCE project begins.

– The quayside represents a unique opportunity to transform one of the city’s hardest and most engineered landscapes into a living edge – an environment that can support biodiversity, adapt to climate change and create new relationships between people and nature, says David Gough of MARELD Arkitektur, who leads the project. 

The project’s name stands for Flexible Landscapes Offering Resilient, Equitable, Nature-based Coastal Edges. It brings together research on urban planning, landscape architecture, ecology, resilience and inclusion to explore how waterfront environments can be designed and managed in new ways.

Softer and more varied waterfront edges can, for example, provide space for plants, animals and aquatic organisms, while contributing to biodiversity, cleaner water and improved flood management. They can also create new qualities for people, offering places to spend time, meet others and experience water and nature at close range.

– The way we speak about the coast, as a line, is very much influenced by how it is communicated through maps. But a line between land and water is only momentary and changes as soon as it is registered, something that we all know from personal experience. In reality the coast is never static, but instead a constantly changing zone with more or less wetness or humidity, says Carola Wingren, researcher at SLU. 

Bringing different perspectives to the same place

The FLORENCE project is carried out together with partners including the City of Malmö and the Swedish Geotechnical Institute (SGI).

Carola Wingren is joined by two other SLU researchers, Misagh Mottaghi and Kes McCormick. Together, they bring complementary perspectives on how the waterfront can be transformed.

– The waterfront brings together many different uses, values, and forms of care. Designing for inclusion means recognizing these different perspectives and creating space for both social and ecological life, supporting the needs of humans and nonhumans alike, says Misagh Mottaghi.

For Kes McCormick, collaboration is central to how such places are developed.

– Creating vibrant urban environments starts with embracing collaboration and engaging communities in designing and shaping the future. It is often messy and difficult but also the core of progressive and impactful urban governance, says Kes McCormick.

What makes a quayside inclusive?

A key question in FLORENCE is not only how ecological values can be strengthened, but also how people can use and experience new waterfront environments.

Access to water and nature, safety, attractiveness and opportunities to meet others are among the qualities people often value in waterfront public spaces. At the same time, a new place does not automatically become inclusive simply because it is open and accessible.

The project will therefore also explore who uses the site, who may risk being excluded and how different groups experience the changes. Interviews, observations and participatory workshops are among the methods that may be used.

– Many forms of exclusion are shaped by early decisions that have already determined who gets what, and how. Besides, nonhuman forms of life, including plants and animals, are often absent from these earlier and also current considerations. Inclusion is therefore a process, not an outcome: it requires questioning assumptions and continually identifying new needs, concerns and possibilities, rather than simply evaluating the result at the end to tick a box, says Misagh Mottaghi.

On the ecological side, the project will investigate areas including water quality, ecosystem service potential, flood mitigation, biodiversity, and soil and ground conditions. 

GIS analyses and different forms of risk assessment will be combined with qualitative methods to capture both ecological and social aspects of resilience.

From analysis to possible futures

The work will begin with an in-depth understanding of Nyhamnen – its history, identity, local conditions and the people affected by its transformation. At the same time, the site will be considered in a broader context through research and experience from other urban waterfront environments.

Different design ideas will then be developed, tested and evaluated. The project takes a deliberately speculative approach, using “what if?” questions to explore alternative ways of imagining the future of urban quaysides.

The results will ultimately be translated into design strategies, guidance and other knowledge resources that can support the continued development of Nyhamnen.

A quayside needs to function as a public space, ecological habitat and climate adaptation measure, while also being possible to build, maintain and adapt over time. Nature-based solutions often involve more variation and seasonal change than traditional hardscaped waterfront environments.

– We are used to thinking of well-maintained landscapes as neat and orderly. But ecological richness often comes with a certain degree of messiness or wildness as we have termed it in Jubileumsparken, Gothenburg. The challenge is to expand our understanding of what a valuable and beautiful urban landscape can look like, says David Gough. 

Laws, planning practices and technical standards often assume a clear boundary between land and water. FLORENCE instead seeks to explore what happens when this boundary is understood as a dynamic zone – and what this could mean for how future waterfronts are planned, designed and managed. 

Contact

Misagh Mottaghi

misagh.mottaghi@slu.se