This thesis asks why some cities deliver what they promise on post-industrial waterfronts, and others do not. Between the 1990s and 2010s, six North American cities (Chattanooga, Detroit, Cincinnati, Toronto, Buffalo, and Baltimore) each launched ambitious plans to transform former industrial shorelines into new mixed-use districts. All six had master plans, public financing, and political backing. Their outcomes diverged dramatically. This study argues that divergence was not primarily explained by market strength or design quality. It was shaped by institutional structure. Drawing on primary planning documents, financial records, and original interviews with project executives and public officials, I compare how each city organized authority over land, secured infrastructure capital, and structured public debt. Four variables proved most consequential: whether land control was consolidated within a lead implementing entity, whether backbone infrastructure was capitalized independently of projected private development, whether public debt repayment was contingent on speculative tax increment growth, and whether implementation was housed within a mission-specific organization insulated from political turnover. Projects that aligned these conditions delivered substantially more of what they promised. Projects that did not prove vulnerable to market shifts, renegotiation, and program reduction regardless of planning ambition. The findings suggest that the most consequential decisions in waterfront redevelopment occur before construction begins, at the moment governments establish who controls the land, how infrastructure gets financed, and what institution is actually responsible for delivery over time.
Sawyer Husain (Thu,) studied this question.