more rent-by-the-room student dorms?

Over 30 Years of Student Housing Sucess

1. MAKE PUBLIC GOALS THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE
2. CREATE A SHARED COMMUNITY VISION FOR THE WATERFRONT
3. CREATE MULTIPLE DESTINATIONS: THE POWER OF TEN
Ideally, each destination should provide ten things to do, which creates diverse, layered activity, ensuring that no single use will predominate.
4. CONNECT THE DESTINATIONS
A walkable waterfront with a wide variety of activity along it will successfully connect destinations, allowing each to strengthen the others.
Creating connections also means enticing people to the waterfront on foot or bike, rather than relying exclusively on the car. Helsinki, Finland, possesses perhaps the best example of this kind of connection–The Esplanade, which masterfully leads from the heart of the city down to the water. Lined with trees and flower displays, the path is a gentle lure, rewarding us with a magnificent plaza with sweeping, unobstructed views of the harbor. It guides you on a pleasurable stroll straight to the waterfront’s main destination.
5. OPTIMIZE PUBLIC ACCESS
Waterfronts with continuous public access are much more desirable than those where the public space is interrupted. Even small stretches where the waterfront is unavailable to the public greatly diminish the experience. California’s Balboa Island, located off the coast of Newport Beach, makes its entire shoreline accessible to the public instead of giving waterfront property owners sole rights of use.

Access also means that people can actually interact with the water in many ways–from swimming or fishing, dining or picnicking dockside, boarding boats or feeding the ducks. If it is not possible to actually touch the water, people should have access to another type of water nearby–such as a fountain, spray play area or a swimming pool that floats next to the shore (such as the pools in the Seine during Paris Plage).
6. ENSURE THAT NEW DEVELOPMENT FITS WITHIN THE COMMUNITY’S VISION
7. ENCOURAGE 24-HOUR ACTIVITY BY LIMITING RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT
Great waterfronts are not dominated by residential development. Why? Because these are places that are full of people, day and night. They are the sites of festivals, markets, fireworks displays, concerts and other high-energy gatherings. A high concentration of residential development limits the diversity of waterfront use and creates constituencies invested in preventing 24-hour activity from flourishing.
8. USE PARKS TO CONNECT DESTINATIONS, NOT AS DESTINATIONS UNTO THEMSELVES
The world’s best waterfronts use parks as connective tissue, using them to link major destinations together. Helsinki, Stockholm, Sydney, and Baltimore have employed this strategy to fine effect.
9. DESIGN AND PROGRAM BUILDINGS TO ENGAGE THE PUBLIC SPACE
Any building on the waterfront should add to the activity of the public spaces around it. When successful, the result is an ideal combination of commercial and public uses. Towers, on the other hand, are noticeably out of place along rivers, lakes and oceanfronts. High-rises tend to be residential buildings with private activity on the ground floor. They may also create a wall that physically and psychologically cuts off the waterfront from surrounding neighborhoods.
10. SUPPORT MULTIPLE MODES OF TRANSPORTATION AND LIMIT VEHICULAR ACCESS
In Sydney, Stockholm, Venice, Helsinki, and Hong Kong, people head to the waterfront via maritime routes as much as by land.
11. INTEGRATE SEASONAL ACTIVITIES INTO EACH DESTINATION
Waterfront programming should take rainy-day and winter activities into account, and amenities should provide protection from inclement weather. Waterfronts that can thrive in year-round conditions will reap the benefits of greater economic activity and higher attendance at public facilities.
12. MAKE STAND-ALONE, ICONIC BUILDINGS SERVE MULTIPLE FUNCTIONS
13. MANAGE, MANAGE, MANAGE
A “WID” could forge partnerships between waterfront businesses and organizations and those in the surrounding district, so that waterfront programming–such as temporary exhibits of local artists or music by local musicians–reflects the community and gives the place a unique character.

How to Transform a Waterfront

Helsinki’s Esplanade provides an exceptional connection between the city center and the waterfront.
Housing does not encroach on the waterfront in Montreal, Canada
Bogota’s Simon Bolivar park is very well managed, with uses and programs on and off the water.