HafenCity - Hamburg, Germany

As Manchester has Salford, Hamburg has Hafen City - much touted regeneration examples of old canal-based industrial area.

According to NYT:

HafenCity, a new district on Hamburg's central harbor on the Elbe River, is one of the most ambitious urban construction sites in Europe.

HafenCity itself won't be finished for another 10 to 15 years. But since 2000, when Hamburg came up with the now nine-billion-euro master plan to transform 388 acres of its vast central harbor into a brand new district, increasing the size of the city center by 40 percent, things have been moving at a steady clip.

There have been expensive mistakes and delays — all witnessed by visitors drawn as much by its architecture as by its expanding construction costs. But the project, which has exceeded its initial budget by more than 200 million euros and its initial completion date by two years, is slowly taking its eventual shape: a glass wave 12 stories on one side and 18 on the other.

The spotlight so far has been on the Elbphilharmonie, a 350-million-euro (and counting) project, with a tentative completion date of 2013. Designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron to look like a glass wave cresting atop a brick warehouse, it will eventually house the NDR Symphony Orchestra's concert hall, a five-star hotel and about 60 luxury apartments.

Already Sandtorkai, one of the 10 neighborhoods that will make up HafenCity, is complete; 50 percent of the area is either under construction or ready for it to start. Roughly 1,500 people are already living in HafenCity, and about 6,000 people are commuting to work there.


o Hamburg regeneration - Joong Ang Ilbo. 2010. 7. 20.
o Hamburg Hafen City Regeneration - NYT 2010. 7. 12.
o Hafen City on Wikipedia
o Hafen City Website