Hafencity — all about water

I was always amazed by how European cities are trying to break through this sea-level raising fact, and many of the countries start working on this several decade ago. The historical image of a European city is characterized by dense housing, narrow street, and high population density when compared with most cities in the United States. But this fact also contributes to the innovation they are trying to come up with since every inch of land is valuable in the given context. We always hear about the new methods from Norway and Holland. But for the last project, I went to dig more about a city/district in German.

HafenCity is one district in Hamburg, and it is located between the North Elbe and the main dyke line of the city center (outside of main Hamburg dike), which means that the existing dike offers the new district no protection. So, the only flood protection measure for this city will be provided by ground-level elevation. Therefore, the government decides to lead a revision project for this district, and the new revision process breaks ground in 1997. and the goal for this project is to defend the city against the occasional storm surges by using adaptive flood control and flood damage prevention methods. In Addition, the city would like to use this chance to create a new waterfront city center with a harbor ambiance for housing, offices, culture, tourism, and shopping, which will also help the city generating more job opportunities.

In this new planning proposal, all new buildings will be required to be built 8 meters above mean sea level — out of reach of the most extreme flooding. The planning proposal also listed several considerations, from transportation and traffic, public open space to ecological and historical preservation. In order to make the city green and preserve the historical bridges (also the parking space inside HafenCity will be limited to prepare for potential flooding), the city will limit the traffic volume for each individual bridge and put public transportation in the first place by making the transportation option flood-protected and inclusive.

Image from Online Resources

From preservation aspects, the remnants of port and railway architecture will be preserved as far as possible by finding new technologies and methods to make this building flood-resistant. Also, the masterplan aims to preserve the ecologically valuable areas by protecting and improving the historical quay wall, lower the percentage of paved surface, creating public green space, and planting native species throughout the city.

This is an ongoing project. Despite the fact that this project is started 23 years ago, many of the measures are still state-of-the-art and can be used as a precedent for the rest of the world.