Creating the Creative Urban Waterfront in Scandinavia: Harbour Areas from Industrial Multitude to Planned Creative Spaces

For decades now, the waterfront areas of industrial harbour cities of Europe have been among the prime spots for large-scale redevelopment. The classic freight harbour gives way to the mechanised container terminal, and the remaining spaces are redeveloped, very often with a clear reference to cre- ative users and inhabitants. The overall questions of this chapter are how these urban spaces become creative and how their creativity changes across the phase of deindustrialisation. How is the multitude of the industrial har- bour giving way to an intended or planned creative space? Conceptualising this as a process of de- and eterritorialization, the harbour is approached as an assemblage with components ranging from global discourses over national urban systems to working culture and local material structures. The primary case will be the harbour of Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city.