Form, function and sign: Signifying the past in urban waterfront regeneration: Fid-Bau Portal

Form, function and sign: Signifying the past in urban waterfront regeneration

O'Brien, Colm

This paper discusses the urban waterfront in Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne as a case study in the handling of the ‘past’ in urban regeneration. It explores the connections between the outcomes of the conservation process and the ‘past’ that supposedly validates the principles of conservation. The paper begins with an analysis of the waterfront's urban form and traces its evolution since 1960 when Conzen described it and the urban port was in its last stages of use. Since then—through the use of ornamental landscaping, riverside promenades and particular architectural forms—a process of urban regeneration has created a picturesque waterfront. Conserved remains of the past are also a part of this. These conserved remains are analysed as ‘sign‐vehicles’ encoding denoted meanings to show how—through social transformations—they have actually become self‐referential ‘signifiers’ that deny the historical process. As a popular rhetoric espousing the idea of a ‘living history’ draws on conservation outcomes in the use of the past as ‘commodity’, it is argued that those features apparently valued as ‘symbols of the past’ are actually testament to discontinuities, and thereby illustrate an ambiguity observed by Harvey (1989) in the postmodern city.