Making Ground, Losing Space: Land Reclamation and Urban Public Space in Island Cities

This article foregrounds urban public space by considering land reclamation in island cities. Land reclamation is nearly ubiquitous in the urban development of coastal cities, and island cities in particular are subject to exceptionally dense urbanisation and thus exceptionally strong conflict over urban space. Drawing upon theories at the intersection of the land and the sea (liquid, archipelago, and aquapelago spatiality), we analyse socially problematic aspects of the creation of new urban space through land reclamation. Land reclamation occurs in island cities such as Bahrain, Copenhagen, Dubai, Hong Kong, Macau, New York City, and Xiamen in order to construct space for urban industrial, residential, and leisure functions while avoiding the social conflict that often accompanies urban renewal efforts. However, whether in the case of publically accessible leisure parks or secessionary island enclaves for the ultra-rich, land reclamation processes serve powerful societal forces and represent the capture of urban space for elite interests. This reduces the prospects for urban public space and limits the horizons for the development of more socially just future cities. The transformation of unclaimed fluid space into solid private space is a relative form of accumulation by dispossession, even if the public has never been aware of what it possessed.