A View From The Sea The Regeneration of Marseille Waterfront: Iconic Buildings And Mediterranean Sea

Abstract

In this paper I will discuss how the isomorphic trend of urban regeneration of waterfronts implies a modeling which is not free from critical points. If we focus on the growing use of art and culture as a tool, both in stable museum form both in ephemeral festival form, we must pair this tool with a local contextualization which requires a deep and multi-prospectic knowledge of the territory. In this context a view “from the sea” becomes fundamental when we think to renovate the identity of the port cities materially and, at the same time, symbolically. First a general introduction about the actual evolution of strategies for regeneration of coastal areas will be given. Then two fundamental specific case-studies in the regeneration of the city of Marseille  will be discussed: Vieux Port and the Esplanade - Fort St-Jean. These areas, studied during my Ph. D. thesis, are meaningful for the connection generated between the local reality and the original project, based on a general purpose model. This paper will try to employ ethnographic methodology to examine which functions have been associated to renewed areas and how these acquired functions can be connected with project steps and with already observed results in other cities. A descriptive approach is predominant in this work; anyway a critical judgment cannot be avoided. This sort of judgment is not to be extended to all the other effects which cannot be directly observed within the case-study.