Urban-Rural Linkages and Their Port City Waterfronts: Asia Pacific Region

Port cities and their waterfront districts are often at the sociopolitical and economic center of larger urban-rural areas that influence their organization, trade products and relationships, transportation networks, and governance. These cities are frequently located at the mouth of major river systems, on former estuaries that drain bioregions stretching well beyond the jurisdictional boundary of the city or port itself. This chapter identifies socio-ecological interactions between city waterfronts and their urban-rural areas and the convergence of these interactions in the context of Sustainable Urban Development (SUD) and improved Social Determinants of Health (SDH). The chapter begins with an overview of urban-rural linkages and their connection to urban waterfronts through blue-green-gray (BGG) infrastructures. The authors outline the impacts that urban-rural linkages and urban waterfronts faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and discuss opportunities for improved sustainable outcomes across the urban areas of port cities within the Asia Pacific. The authors conceptualize three categories – spatial planning; enhancing legislation and governance; and inclusive investment and finance, in which urban planners, landscape architects, policy makers, and spatial designers should focus their efforts to deliver improved SUD and SDH solutions within the region. The chapter concludes with a call to action, by considering the lessons that SUD and SDH solutions provide for achieving urban resilience and the SDG goals within/for critical BGG networks between port cities and their urban-rural areas. The chapter addresses the knowledge pillar of the UN Habitat III Strategic Framework by aiming to capture, create, organize, and disseminate knowledge that builds capacity of stakeholders and governments.