This paper focuses on the integration of active mobility in German riverfront redevelopment projects through the perspective of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (Latour, 2005). The research traces the socio-technical networks that shape mobility infrastructures along riverbanks and in urban river corridors, and it focuses on three case studies: HafenCity in Hamburg, the Neckarbogen district in Heilbronn, and the cross-border 3Land project between Weil am Rhein, Huningue, and Basel. The implementation of active mobility infrastructure in riverfronts is not only a functional response to urban needs, but a mix of city image building, city development strategies, and infrastructural performance (Kondolf, Pinto, 2017). That is what also characterizes riverfront redevelopment projects from the last 30 years in Germany – they are re-imagined as resilient, accessible, and symbolically enriched urban corridors (Prominski et al., 2023).
By mapping relations among municipal governments, planning, engineering, and design firms, experts, civil society, advocacy groups, material infrastructures, and legal instruments, this research examines how active mobility infrastructure in riverfronts becomes an outcome of negotiation between human and non-human actors. Furthermore, the paper compares the ANT maps of HafenCity, Neckarbogen, and 3Land by examining actor types, network structures, and translation processes in each case. The comparison is between the networks’ density, centrality, and the evolution of actors and their relations over time and how they shaped the active mobility in each case. The findings reveal key actors and relationships that stabilize or disrupt active mobility objectives. Finally, the paper shows the potential of ANT as a method for decoding design processes and offers a transferable methodological framework for observing and evaluating the spatial politics of active mobility in waterfront redevelopment processes.
Bibliography
- Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor‑network‑theory. Oxford University Press.
- Kondolf, G. M., & Pinto, P. J. (2017). The social connectivity of urban rivers. Geomorphology, 277, 182–196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2016.09.028
- Prominski, M., Stokman, A., Stimberg, D., Voermanek, H., Zeller, S., Bajc, K., & Zheng, N. (2023). River.space.design: Planning strategies, methods and projects for urban rivers (3rd enlarged ed.). Birkhäuser. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783035625271
