Journal of Urban Design

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The transformative role of rivers in the evolution

of urban landscapes: a case study from urban
rivers of Chelmsford in Essex

Saruhan Mosler

To cite this article: Saruhan Mosler (2020): The transformative role of rivers in the evolution of
urban landscapes: a case study from urban rivers of Chelmsford in Essex, Journal of Urban Design,
DOI: 10.1080/13574809.2020.1835466

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13574809.2020.1835466

Published online: 04 Nov 2020.

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JOURNAL OF URBAN DESIGN
https://doi.org/10.1080/13574809.2020.1835466

The transformative role of rivers in the evolution of urban

landscapes: a case study from urban rivers of Chelmsford in
Essex
Saruhan Mosler
School of Sustainable Environments and Design, Landscape Architecture Department, Writtle University
College, Chelmsford, UK

ABSTRACT
Urban rivers across Europe have a long history of anthropogenic
intervention and active use that make up a key part of our cultural
landscapes. This article focuses on the morphological transformation
processes of urban rivers in Europe. It approaches the topic through
a review of the function, meaning and identity of rivers within the
urban context. This is illustrated here using the case study of the urban
sections of the rivers Chelmer and Can in Chelmsford, Essex, tracing
the formation and transformation of their urban character and identi­
fying the determinants of the development of Chelmsford’s urban
form over time.

Introduction
Urban rivers embody the social, cultural and economic conditions that influence the
urban landscape through a multiplicity of agents. In the process of urban morphology,
rivers act both as products and producers of spatial development and its culture, in
conjunction with human responses to specific conditions in a place (Abshirini and Koch
2016; Kropf 2017, 21). In spite of urban growth and changes in land use, rivers have been
symbols of interdependency, continuity and permanence within the context of dynamic
urban environments; in the broader sense the river represents the historic relic of the
urban landscape, spatially anchoring and physically linking urban fabric to the wider
context of its geographical patterns (Conzen and Conzen 2004; Roque, Brito, and
Veracini 2020).
In the future planning of cities the urban fabric, with its natural and historic
components as a cultural representation of place (Pendlebury and Strange 2011),
signifies the way people have organized, lived, evolved and continued to utilize
resources actively (Findlay and Taylor 2006; Lowenthal 2007; Roe and Taylor 2014).
In most instances, the utilization of the water’s edge had been strongly linked with
the economic growth of the settlements, including industrialization, creating new
landscape forms. Over time, these zones became aesthetically problematic, disinte­
grating urban public spaces, and separating the inner-city from the water, as in
European river cities such as Vienna, Budapest, London and Duisburg. ‘Most

CONTACT Saruhan Mosler saruhan.mosler@writtle.ac.uk

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 S. MOSLER

industrial cities’, as Shaw (2001, 160) has put it, turned their backs on their water­
fronts (Larice and Macdonald 2013; Tolnai 2018).
As cities around the world undergo a new phase of development, sometimes with
significant and controversial impacts, there is a renewed interest in the river as a common
good, stimulating new social and cultural practices and re-engagement with its historic
and social urban context (Paul and Meyer 2001; Watson, Walker, and Medd 2007; Grimm
et al. 2008; Everard and Moggridge 2012; Holt, Moug, and Lerner 2012; Castonguay and
Evenden 2012).
This article aims to undertake a critical analysis of the river’s transformative role and its
changing relationship with the urban landscape form. Firstly, a review of the identity and
role of urban rivers in the European context is undertaken and then the morphological
processes that have led to the changes to the urban river landscape are examined.
This review uses a case study of urban rivers Chelmer and Can in the city of Chelmsford,
Essex to exemplify the role of the rivers in the transformation of the urban landscape. This
enables the identification of urban morphological processes as determinants of form
(Morris 1994), having directly or indirectly acted upon the formation and transformation
of the river and its landscape. The method used in the analysis of the roles of rivers is
supported by different sets of information, including plans, archival and contemporary
maps, data findings and photographs.

Historic and economic roles of urban river landscapes

The role of rivers as natural attractors for the creation and extension of settlements,
growth of their communities, and developing industries within a varying cultural context
has been identified as an integral part of urban morphology (Mumford 1934; Mauch and
Zeller 2008; Kropf 2017). The emergence of urban cores along rivers and river valleys
initiated the organic pattern of development through urban morphological processes.
Across Europe, since the earliest civilizations, and certainly from the beginning of med­
ieval period, the formalization of trading and economic systems not only contributed to
the intensive growth and expansion of urban areas, but also changed people’s relation­
ship with rivers (Tuan 1974). Particularly throughout the productivist period of the
industrial revolution, rivers were used extensively for navigation, transportation as well
as a variety of industrial purposes, including producing wheat, the processing of paper,
the tanning of leather, and waste disposal (Walsh 2000; Reader 2004; Findlay and Taylor
2006). Economic growth as the agent of change impacted the form and activity (Kropf
2017, 22), producing the basic units of land use, with repeated use over time, or
a normative creation for a specific use. The market and the enterprise, as ordering factors
of the urban territory, ascribed definite roles to the usage of urban space and its rivers
including extractive, residential, or industrial (Magnaghi 2005), while inner city cores were
evolving as dense commercial centres with suburbs as residential zones, and urban river
edges turned into fragmented and marginalized spaces.

Urban spatial typologies in the industrialization period

As political and social systems changed, rivers and their frontages have a long legacy as
determining factors in the urban morphology of places. The industrialization of rivers
 JOURNAL OF URBAN DESIGN 3

resulted in a typology of urban spaces – including harbours, ports, docks, embankments,

riverside paths, parks, squares and connecting streets. The river’s role was as a spatial
force, determining both the direction of growth and the shape of the urbanized area,
including organizing streets and spaces between buildings, the river acting as an active
agent in the process of urban development (Sargent 1972; Jacobs 1995; Meyer 1999). This
includes connecting and breaking patterns, intersecting land and confining develop­
ments, as well as generating spaces for green corridors and parklands in the centre of
the urban landscapes as remnants of earlier political and economic systems (Waller 2000;
Bosselmann 2008). The emergence of industrial zones along the rivers occupying flood­
plains in the 19th century as new landscape typologies reconfigured the spatial and
functional organization of the urban fabric. Built interventions on the river edge, such
as embankment walls as flood defence and riverbank reinforcement influenced the urban
morphology, as embryonic cells of town development. This eventually led to the creation
of a hard boundary between the water and the land, and therefore a disconnection and
segregation from the townscape (Prominski et al. 2012). As the urban population
increased, rivers were culverted and converted into streetscapes, buried underground,
allowing different functions and patterns of use in cities such as sewage and drainage
systems (Copas 1997; Meyer 1999).

River system management, engineering and urbanization in the modernist

era
The Modernist era in urban planning was the height of the functional and rationalist use
of urban components, degrading urban rivers in an attempt to supposedly progress
human life (LeGates and Stout 1996). Urban development gained new momentum in
connection with improved building technologies which were also used for flood defence
and available means to channelize the river (Haidvogl et al. 2013).
The loss of human-river connectedness marked a devaluing of rivers that reduced them
to the status of a largely functional system, a means for transport, passage and disposal. In
its urban form, it was stripped of its physical character down to the bare necessity –
a channel of water. In 1929 Le Corbusier, in his proposal for the utopian ‘contemporary
city’ scheme in Paris eliminated the urban river from the inner urban core, highlighting its
functional importance as an infrastructural object, as a like ‘liquid railway’ that should be
taken out of the urban context with a rigid approach and dismissing its cultural meaning
and relationship to the urban landscape. Similar to this was Louis Kahn’s proposal for
Philadelphia reconceived rivers as expressways as part of the infrastructure (Meyer 1999;
Samalavicius 2011). All previously recognizable natural behavioural traits were removed or
tamed using elaborate combinations of river armour, weirs, locks and sluice gates. By the
early and mid-twentieth century the abandonment of rivers as main transport routes and
the switch to rail and road marked the final stage in the depersonalization of the river. River
landscapes that were previously the outcome of an organic interaction between humans
and nature were rationalized and tamed (Del Pozo and Gonzales 2012), in particular in the
urban centres. The channelized rivers with their unwanted floodwater and scattered debris
seen as a disgrace for cities, were hidden from the urban fabric, disintegrated from public
open spaces (Kibel 2007; Lieske 2012).
4 S. MOSLER

The revival of rivers in the era of post-industrial urban regeneration

After the deindustrialization in the cities, came the emergence of antispace or lost urban
spaces (Trancik 1986), including harbours, docks and piers, which were transformed into
post-industrial sites creating opportunities for new developments such as public spaces,
parklands and housing. During the 1990s new approaches in urbanism started to transform
and integrate rivers into urban regeneration schemes (Adams, Perrow, and Carpenter 2004;
Prominski et al. 2012). The river’s permanence as a vital component in the historic fabric of
the city gained a new value in the revival of urban centres, improving the public space
through its place distinctiveness (Pendlebury and Strange 2011). Today, the existing natural
and historic built-in character of river landscapes is amplified as a framework upon which to
build a vibrant public space. This framework is recovered as an armature for spatial
organization creating active riverfronts with multilinear walks, cycle trails, parks and wildlife
edges (Meyer 2005).

Case study: urban rivers in Chelmsford

Study area
The Rivers Chelmer and Can flow through the county of Essex, in eastern England and
belong to part of the larger hydrological system of North Essex Catchment region, dischar­
ging into the North Sea via the Blackwater Estuary (Figure 1). The North Essex region
includes the catchment of four major rivers: the Chelmer, Blackwater, Colne and Stour, as

Figure 1. Chelmsford’s hydrological system within the North Essex Catchment Area (Source:
Environment Agency).
 JOURNAL OF URBAN DESIGN 5

well as Holland Brook and other smaller watercourses. These rivers flow into estuaries on the
Mid-Essex Coastline and finally into the North Sea (Environment Agency 2019) (Figure 2).
The Chelmer and Can become urban rivers in Chelmsford, which is the administrative centre
of the county of Essex and has a population of just under 100,000 (2011 Census).

Figure 2. Location of the City of Chelmsford in the county of Essex. The yellow circle highlights the
area where rivers flow into the North Sea at the estuary of Maldon (Source: Digimap).
6 S. MOSLER

This is a large urban area in the vicinity of London with significant planned
growth, particularly in relation to housing development over the period 2021 to
2036 (Bakopoulou 2018). Central Chelmsford is situated at the confluence of the
Rivers Chelmer, Can and the third and smallest, the Wid (Figure 3). Consequently,
the town centre and residential areas along the confluence zone are at risk from
flooding by these three watercourses. Pollack et al. (2016) refer to the rivers’
catchment area as a socio-natural site, facilitating and controlling the cultivated
land and townscape; in this respect Chelmsford’s rivers are heavily abstracted,
serving the urban population through water supply including irrigation, food and
drink production as well as wastewater recycle discharge (Environment Agency
2009; Bakopoulou 2018).

Rivers’ role as form determinants

In order to understand the urban morphological processes that led to the formation
and transformation of the urban landscape and the spatial relationships between
rivers and the city, the historic changes in Chelmsford were traced and analysed
through contemporary and archival maps, documents and literature. This helped to
identify a sequence of morphological roles performed by the rivers in determining
urban landscape form.
In the study of urban morphological processes, physical, social, environmental and
economic conditions are all agents that lead to transformations and are important in
understanding the origins of the built environment. Each of the roles set out below

Figure 3. Urban rivers of Chelmsford (Source: Digimap modified by Mosler).

 JOURNAL OF URBAN DESIGN 7

reveal interdependencies and interrelationships between the natural context, built

form and spatial qualities (Chapman 2005) and the Zeitgeist - in time and space - as
recurrent phenomena or diminishing trends. They reflect the approaches that
informed the decision-making in urban design and planning.

Role 1: Shaper of the cultural landscape

The interaction between topography, geology and hydrological systems, overlaid
with anthropogenic interventions, has defined the spatial character and the long-
term co-evolution of the city with its rivers (Pollack et al. 2016). As a source of food
and water, the river valleys in Essex played an important role in the organization of
human activities, attracting continuous occupation from at least the Mesolithic
period. (Timby et al. 2007; Gilmour and Loe 2015). Rich in gravel and sand due to
the geomorphological positioning of Chelmsford on the route of ancestral Thames at
least 600,000 years ago (Figure 4), flint in the area attracted people as a tool-making
resource from the landscape. Archaeological records show that gravel has yielded
worked flints from the floodplains and river valleys, which are the earliest evidence of
humans in Essex (Lucy 1999). Woodland clearance and exploitation of the river
Chelmer valley floor were possibly very early interventions in the natural landscape
of the floodplain, starting from early Bronze Age (Krawiec et al. 2017) and a number
of small settlements, enclosures and farms dating from the Neolithic and Bronze Age
have been discovered in the river valley.

Figure 4. Geological map of Chelmsford area within the city limits. The yellow colour indicates the
river basins rich in alluvium with clay, silt, sand and gravel (Source: Digimap).
8 S. MOSLER

The strategic position of the area led to the development of a Roman civilian town
south of the River Can from circa 60–65 AD (Figure 5). As Pitts (2008, 499) states, the small
town of Caesaromagus (Chelmsford), which featured a mansio in the early 2nd
century AD, served as a rest-stop for travellers on the road between Colchester and the
provincial capital at London on the major road system crossing the Rivers Can and
Chelmer. Some Roman roads or tracks have been detected along the River Can, where
bridges were built to cross the rivers (Codrington 1903; Torry 1985). The organic urban
growth in Chelmsford originates from the medieval embryonic town development,
through land ownerships and regional routes between London and Colchester. In about
1100, Bishop Maurice built a bridge across the River Can to divert the traffic from Writtle to
Chelmsford. Consequently, a weekly market developed near the bridge and became the
foundation of the market town. So in overview, the natural topographical constraint of
the rivers within the river valleys, the strategic importance of routes across the Rivers
Chelmer and Can and the significance of the former Roman town laid the foundations of
the cultural landscape and urban morphology of Chelmsford.

Role 2. Spatial creator of urban tissue

The origins of the urban centre were established through the role of the two rivers as
a connector and boundary. After the Norman conquest, a bridge from about 1100 on the
River Can was one of the early interventions along the river. It led to the expansion of the
town via roads between London and Colchester (Tuckwell 2013, 20). This enabled the
connection of two small settlements: the remnants of the Roman settlement in Moulsham
Street (previously out of the town, to the north) and the cathedral area. The cheapest plots
were down towards the river and in the fourteenth century a canal was built to discharge
waste towards the river (Reeve 2016). One of the oldest existing Chelmsford maps, by John
Walker from 1591 (Figure 6), shows the Chelmer’s position as a buffer between gardens and
the town, with river frontages depicted as meadows and orchards. As Raven (2003) states,
the town’s role was recorded as an important urban agricultural marketing and services
centre, with a weekly market supplying corn, meat and fish creating a network of carrier
transport system for goods and people. Ceolmaer’s Ford is the origin of the name
Chelmsford, and fording places such as these, located on the northern banks of the Can
were used as crossing points (Holmes and Raven 2014), connecting places and people.

Role 3. Activator of economy: production and processing of food and generated

industries
The Rivers Chelmer and Can’s highly dynamic flow regime, with small average
discharge as well as recurrent major, flash flooding has posed challenges to its
use throughout its settlement history. In particular all the floodplains within the
urban area have been exposed to the fluvial dynamic, that is, they are still regularly
flooded, however, not all with the same intensity. Population growth and settle­
ment expansion around the urban core intensified the use of river edges, smaller
pastoral fields, areas of rough pasture or wet meadows with larger arable fields
dominating the floodplains. River valleys were fully occupied with agricultural
activities during and after the late Bronze Age (Atkinson and Preston 1998; Brown
and Medylcott 2013).
 JOURNAL OF URBAN DESIGN 9

(a)

(b)

Figure 5. (a) The map of Roman England. (b) The section is showing the strategic location of Chelmsford.
The blue circle indicates the position of the small town Casearamagus (Chelmsford) along the Roman
Road connecting Londinium (London) and Camuladunum (Colchester) (Source: ARCHI UK).
10 S. MOSLER

Figure 6. (a) The Surveyor John Walker’s Map of Chelmsford in 1591. (b) The detail shows the typical
y-shaped highstreet form indicating the organic embryonic growth between Rivers Can and Chelmer
(Source: Essex Record Office).
 JOURNAL OF URBAN DESIGN 11

The rivers’ early industrial significance is represented by water-powered river mills

dating back as early as Domesday survey (1080–1086), with around 225 sites (Hodgen
1939; Garwood 2008) in the Chelmsford area particularly at Springfield, Victoria Road,
Barnes Mill and Sandford Mill. The development of watermills created a particular riverine
landscape type with its associated buildings (millhouses, granaries and stables), structures
(sluices and weirs) and watercourses (Garwood 2008, 4). The high numbers of mills for
grain and their spatial distribution around the populated areas along the rivers led to the
increasing importance of the market town and its economic wealth, and consequently the
growth of urban-centred industries and businesses. This in turn modified the urban tissue
of the post-medieval period, with the addition of new patterns in the urban landscape
through the foundation of mass production sites including Hoffmann Manufacturing
Company (ballbearings) in 1898 and Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Co., the first purpose-
built radio factory in the world, in 1899 (Bettley and Pevsner 2007; Swan 2015). These new
industrial sites included production areas as well as large housing estates for workers
which stretched the northern edge of the urban centre as the New Street Development
towards the floodplains of River Chelmer (Figure 7).

Role 4: Connector of spaces and society: transport and navigation for goods and
marketplace
The rivers’ industrial importance increased through the end of 18th and beginning of 19th
centuries due to the canalization of 14 miles of the River Chelmer leading to the Chelmer
and Blackwater Navigation from the newly-constructed Springfield Basin canal to the

Figure 7. 1900s map of Chelmsford. The purple dots are showing Marconi Factory, Train Station, Gas
works and Moulsham Mill (Source: Digimap modified by Mosler).
12 S. MOSLER

‘port of Maldon’ commencing in 1797 as the main connector to the hinterlands (Meyer
1999, 296) (Figure 8). After this point the canal enabled the urban dwellers to transport
goods ranging from food, coal, building material, to the extraction of human, animal and
coal waste via the barges or river lighters carried by the horses allowing the town to grow
(Priestley 1969; Musson and Robinson 1969). Consequently, the river gained a new role,
changing the relationship with the town. This in turn was reflected in the urban form and
development, and wharves were built alongside the Navigation basin. Monumental
buildings based on trade and the growth of the town, such as Shire Hall and industrial
blocks of plots for river sides were built within these periods. The arrival of the railway in
1842 had a major effect on the urban morphology and consequently the river, creating
a growth in population with associated residential expansion in the newly formed sub­
urbs. This was a vital factor in diminishing the importance of the navigable river, changing
the significance of the town from a market town to industrial town and then commuter
town, due to its position between London and East Anglian towns such as Colchester and
Ipswich. The rivers’ former role in providing local food production sites were diminished
though the effects of industrialization and the expansion of the railway networks, which
led to greater availability of non-local products and materials.
The most visible impact of River Chelmer on the urban form can be seen at the
confluence site eastern edge of the town centre that was occupied by the Chelmsford
Gas Company in the first half of 20th century (Armstrong 2000). This site had been
undeveloped floodplain until the gas works were built between 1913 and 1940 and
other industrial land use enclosed the river frontage at the eastern edge of the urban
core; it became a gateway to the countryside along the river and Blackwater Navigation
Canal.
The rivers’ role as the spatial connector linking the urban centre with parishes and
districts in the northwest and east of the city centre has been vital in directing the
growth and maintaining the morphological continuity of the city. Rivers and green
public spaces are vital infrastructure for the historic and contemporary urban fabric. The
rivers are centrally positioned in the continuous urban area of Chelmsford, creating
green fingers through the urban area and linking the parishes along the rivers’ flood­
plain through parks, walking and cycle routes. This in turn led to the morphological
shape of the city as early as the 19th century. A case in point is the urban park and green
corridor along the River Can. This stretch of the river in the west part of the town had
been already used as open public park in 1880, whereas in the 1930’s new suburbs were
emerging around this area. A similar pattern can be seen in the north eastern direction,
towards Broomfield village along the River Chelmer.

Figure 8. Blackwater Navigation Canal map showing its entire route between Chelmsford and
Heybridge Basin in Maldon (Port of Maldon)(Source:© Essex Waterways Ltd.).
 JOURNAL OF URBAN DESIGN 13

Role 5. Flood holder

After serious flooding in the late 1950s, a significant flood defence scheme was planned
and built in the 1960s. Chelmsford is currently offered some protection from river flood
events by a flood alleviation scheme built in 1964 (Figure 9). In connection with modernist
town planning and new technologies to channel the river, the role of the rivers gained
a new momentum and the relationship was fundamentally changed. The curving river
course was maintained, but heavily modified through the construction of the channel and
an automatic weir was installed downstream to maintain water levels within the town.
The rivers’ new role as the main flood holders separated riverfronts from the public urban
space, diminishing visibility and accessibility of the water and hiding behind the build­
ings. Figure 10 shows the visible changes in urban morphology after 1940s, giving its
contemporary form as a channelled inner-city waterway. The expansion of the motorways
due to the growth in car ownership in 1950s and 60s created new urban typologies
(Armstrong 2000, 231) and led to the use of riverbanks as backspaces, carparks and service
vehicle yards with non-permeable surfaces creating access for shopping malls along the
river edges (Figure 11). Today, as the legacy of the modernist town development, the
rivers Can and Chelmer are channelized with concrete embankments through the devel­
oped central area, with the automatic weir maintaining water levels for an acceptable
appearance (Figure 12). Both rivers are flanked by built development, before emerging
into flood meadows.

Role 6. Potential catalyst in the urban regeneration

The next impetus to the shift in the role of rivers started to take shape in the 1990s
and 2000s influenced by the decline in manufacturing industry and the reduced
dominance of car traffic (Hall 2006). Through planning policy and an urban regen­
eration programme influenced by the principles encapsulated in the government’s
report ‘Towards an Urban Renaissance’ (2000) the aim was to promote intensification
of city centre living and working through integrated urban design for safe, attractive
places. This included embracing a ‘waterfront development’ approach for urban
waterways (Figures 13 and 14) led by local authority policy and retail development.

Figure 9. Transformation of the river course and the urban patterns: (left) late 19th century; (right) 20th
century.
14 S. MOSLER

Figure 10. The channelized sections of the rivers Chelmer and Can (Source: Digimap modified by Mosler).

Figure 11. Service yards and passageways along the river Chelmer (Source: Digimap modified by Mosler).
 JOURNAL OF URBAN DESIGN 15

(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 12. Channelized River Chelmer flows at the backside of the buildings (a, b and c): Express
walkway at the backside of the Odeon building (a); service areas and car park along the shops (b), and
view towards the Roman Bridge along the canal (c).
16 S. MOSLER

Figure 13. Waterfront developments between 1990 and 2020 in Chelmsford (Source: Digimap
modified by Mosler).

The Springfield Basin Canal wharf regeneration was one of the first new mixed
business and residential developments with an emphasis on the river and canal
heritage in urban design. Consequently, a 19th century dockland aesthetic (Hall
2007) was adapted to regenerate river fronts whereby the riverfront revival trans­
formed the character and legibility of the town.
A recent addition is the construction of a new footbridge (2019) to connect both sides
of Central Park (Bell meadow and Sky Blue Pasture) across the River Can, within the
floodplain. This echoes a previous bridge (1895), with the aim of more access to the water
edges. As a contrast, the new Chelmer Waterside development on the peninsula site
between the river Chelmer and the Navigation basin, formerly the gas works, displays
a different programming for the river edge and public space design. Designed as a high-
density inner-city housing development, it has limited space next to the river front, but
takes advantage of the waterside outlook. The heights and the size of the blocks create
a hard edge between the river valley and the new urban quarter. The river acts as a buffer
zone and a boundary where the urban neighbourhood is stretched to the river edge, as
well being an important part of the pathway and cycle network for everyday use by
residents.
Chelmsford’s historic urban tissue (Kropf 2017) is still reflected in the urban centre; this
can be observed in the townscape which still reflects the medieval town street formation
with the shape and height of the frontages (Beresford and St Joseph 1979). The principal
unit of urban growth was the burgage plot alongside the river valley, which acted as the
elemental force that determined the shape of the town centre.
 JOURNAL OF URBAN DESIGN 17

(a)

(b)

Figure 14. The new city centre development (Bond Street) along the River Chelmer (a and b): Multi-
functional usage of retail, leisure and living along the river (a), and new public spaces along the river
through leisure (b) (Photo by the author, 2019).
18 S. MOSLER

Figure 15. Concentric growth diagram shows the spatial distribution of the settlements in relation to
the rivers Chelmer, Can and Wid in Chelmsford.

The approach of contemporary urban design and land use planning policy leans
towards a reconciliation between river and the city: public spaces where access to the
waterfronts is created through developing mixed use development; rediscovering the
riverfronts as an attraction and renewed identity shaper for the city. In doing so, the river’s
continuity signifies the identity of the town within its historic rural and industrial context
while embracing change (Pendlebury and Strange 2011) (Figure 15). The recovery of this
relationship requires the embracing of visual and functional diversity, a sense of coher­
ence, and strong links to the network of public spaces.
Waterfront development, as part of the urban intensification policy approach has
represented the main transition from canalization of the river in the 1960s to the active
frontage of the river in the last decade. The creation of a new cultural relationship
between river and the public space, is part of the strategic private investment, ‘strategic
pawns’ (Meyer 1999). This newly acquired urban identity, reshaping the relationship of
 JOURNAL OF URBAN DESIGN 19

river with its urban surrounds, reflects the historic local vernacular fabric of the city and
newly visible and partly accessible riverside public spaces.
The relationships that once played an active role in urban morphology lost their relevance;
this in turn estranged the rivers with their urban landscape. Waterfronts and river edges’
position in the urban development should be accentuated through stronger integration
within the fabric of the city; transforming its townscape concept and reinforcing rivers’
heritage. Urban design and development proposals need to revitalize channelized river
sections and transform edges for active use to improve the public spaces, to unfold the
hidden potential of the inner urban landscape. Chelmsford is still in search of a close and
harmonious relationship with water; this can be achieved when river edges become acces­
sible as vital components of public space, used actively in people’s everyday lives. The success
of this re-emerging relationship between rivers, users and place’s collective identity will
depend on the spatial quality of newly programmed spaces as spatial and social activators.

Conclusion
In this article, the urban river is embodied as a link between the past and the future of
a city. It is anchored in the history of the settlement and people, and was adapted to the
social and economic changes in the socio-cultural and economic environment. River
fronts are important elements of the urban fabric and heritage. Current debates on
river systems tend to focus on river ecology and restoration as part of a larger strategy
towards a more sustainable existence. And yet, within the framework of planning and
landscape architecture attempts to integrate the river as a cultural and landscape phe­
nomenon into the contemporary urban domain have had limited success.
River landscapes enhance urban space quality by offering views, accessing water,
creating recreational areas, allowing visual permeability of built spaces, creating land­
marks (Lynch 1996), and enhancing aesthetic values. The aesthetic appreciation of the
serpentine line of a stream (Kenwick, Shammin, and Sullivan 2009) not only increases
visual quality of the environment, but also develops spatial expression (Kaplan and Kaplan
1989). However, the perceived importance of the riverside is a common issue in urban
spaces. Today rivers are signifiers of human history, shapers of urban morphology,
activators of urban public spaces and landscapes, connectors of nature and culture, and
lead to the engagement of place with people and communities; they are therefore a vital
catalyst as an urban regenerator for urban development, tourism, and more importantly
major blue (drainage) and green (ecological) infrastructure supporting urban systems and
providing sustainable, livable and high-quality places for people.
The Rivers Chelmer and Can in Chelmsford demonstrate that the new relationship of
rivers with the cities is spatial, environmental and functional; hybrid planning practices
and programmes will accommodate cities’ development and growth, together enabling
enhanced lived experience.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Roger Estop for contributing to the development of the article through
insightful review and Nikolas Barrall for proofreading the manuscript and providing invaluable feedback.
20 S. MOSLER

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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