Re.Structure: Finding the synergetic relationships between functioning urban ports, trapped landscapes, and public life

In many countries around the world, contemporary urban ports have a major economical, infrastructural, and dominant presence along strategic waterfront edges. In terms of public life, these industrial private entities disconnect themselves from their parent city due to the interaction between a number of factors, namely; topography, orientation, positioning, port typology, the safety and functionality of ports, urban planning, and the effects on the natural ecology. The changing nature of how a city utilizes their waterfront questions whether urban ports have a role within the heart of the city. The potential to restructure port areas and their surrounding spaces that have been effected by development leads to the creation of dynamic public life entities. With these large infrastructural entities, the areas surrounding the boundaries are compromised and are trapped in a confusion of development and derelict design. Trapped landscapes often have detrimental effects on natural environments. This negative impact can be seen in the urban fabric of the city, and in the public well-being and life of the occupants of those spaces.  This thesis investigates urban areas trapped by functioning port infrastructure, specifically the area known as the Quay Park Quarter, situated in Auckland, New Zealand. The Ports of Auckland Ltd (POAL), directly north of the area, imposes a dominating, privatised and industrial statement to contribute to the nature of this trapped landscape. The Quay Park Quarter includes heritage sites, railway infrastructure, and ad-hoc developments, some of which were initially intended to rejuvenate the area.  This thesis aims to address the privatised issues surrounding the contemporary urban port by challenging the role and incorporation of public life as a means to restructure such areas. This thesis argues that active port areas can be reconfigured, restructured and reimagined in ways in which to utilize public life along active waterfront networks. This thesis will also argue that this utilization of public life can actively change the way in which trapped landscapes can be restructured for the future. By considering the ecological impact, the city’s growth and surrounding developed areas, positive changes can be made at multiple scales within the city context.  This thesis proposes that this can be investigated through observing three interrelated scales to discover city systems and functions, the intimate, neighbourhood and metropolitan. The intimate scale involves the interactions with one’s self in the environment that surrounds them, as well as the composition of all things to create public life. This creates a sense of locality for being in the environment. Because of the port’s impact on this urban area as well as its external and internal functions, the neighbourhood scale addresses the reconfiguration and restructuring of the port infrastructure that has impacted this trapped urban area. The metropolitan scale involves how the public life network fits within the context of the city, through the means of landscape infrastructural components. The collaboration of these three scales allows for an interchange between what the human can experience in addition to the systematic functionality of the city. This offers unique insight beyond the master planning of such urban areas to actively engage with life on the ground. The reconfiguration and restructuring aspects of these areas allow for a variety of resolutions to both actively engage with public life within industrial areas and facilitate the release of trapped landscapes back into the surrounding context of these areas.