Design Innovation Strategy for Waterfront Public Service Space in Shanghai, China: Lesson from Global Experiences and Expertise

Waterfront public space is a significant carrier that exemplifies the vitality and image of a waterfront city, and its design capability plays an important part in forming the city’s image, brand, and cultural soft power. There are still many outstanding issues with the current design of urban waterfront space, such as the inability of the small space to adapt to a diversity of service content, the lack of clarity in the directionality of the demand for residential services, the limitations of digital service applications. This paper utilizes the micro-renewal practice of Huangpu Riverside public leisure service facilities as its research object and incorporates the concept of foreign exemplary cases to provide effective design recommendations for the future design of waterfront service space. The research refines the problems and summaries the design strategies of the research status of public service space using the methods of literature and case analysis. The current research findings are reflected in three aspects: Firstly, the functional requirements of public services have shifted from a single-function design to a green and composite-function design. Second, the application of digital mobile devices influences the facility utilization rate. Thirdly, public service facilities serve not only the daily requirements of residents, but also as an important conduit for urban cultural exchange. This research will contribute to the revitalization of waterfront public service space and the development of adaptive reuse design guidelines, thereby fostering the high-quality development of urban waterfront public space.