ADAPTIVE REUSE OF HISTORIC WATERFRONTS: MORPHOGENESIS OF THE “FESTIVAL MARKETPLACE” IN THE USA AND BRAZIL Brian J. Godfrey Department of Earth Science and Geography Vassar College, Box 482, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604-0482, USA E-mail: godfrey@vassar.edu Paper presented at the International Seminar on Urban Form, Ouro Preto, Brazil, August 28-31, 2007 Abstract: Historic urban waterfronts have undergone dramatic contemporary transformations around the world. In many maritime cities, the development of container shipping and other modes of transport left derelict central waterfronts of rotting piers, empty warehouses, and vacant factories by the 1960s. Since then, global post-industrial transformations have emphasized historic conservation and adaptive reuse to create new recreational, residential, commercial, and tourist landscapes in deteriorating port districts. A focus on urban morphogenesis—the creation and transformation of urban form—helps to explain this redevelopment of redundant waterfronts as places of consumption. In the United States, waterfront revitalization has frequently involved the creation of “festival marketplaces,” most notably through the efforts of the Rouse Company, which designed historically themed projects in Boston, Baltimore, New York, New Orleans, and other cities. Although this trend has not been as notable in Brazil, Salvador da Bahia and several coastal cities have promoted similar ventures. South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan and the Estação das Docas in Belém do Pará both feature waterfronts redeveloped as historic theme parks, but this cross-cultural comparison also reveals significant differences of urban design, social space, and defensive enclosure.