Aligning Facility Mix with User Demographics in Former Industrial Waterfront Piers: An Exploratory Comparison of Four North American Cases with Implications for Busan North Port

Abstract As maritime industries decline, many waterfront piers have become underutilized. Existing scholarship addresses spatial configuration, governance, and sustainability but says little about how the demographic characteristics of surrounding populations should inform facility programming in revitalized piers. This paper examines that relationship through an exploratory comparison of four former industrial piers: Pier 17 and Pier 57 (New York), Pier 57 (Seattle), and Pier 39 (San Francisco). For each case, a 15-minute pedestrian catchment — the census tracts within 1.2 km of the pier entrance — was profiled from American Community Survey 2019–2023 tract estimates by age, household income, and occupation, and the facility mix was measured as shares of programmable floor area across table-service dining, counter-service dining, retail, and recreation. Facility mix corresponds less with income — all four catchments are affluent, and the two most affluent have the most and the least dining-led programs — than with age structure and visitor orientation: older, multi-generational catchments coincide with larger recreational and public-space shares, young working-age catchments with dining-led programs, and a tourist-dominated visitor base with substantial retail. Where a catchment is polarized, as at Pier 17, programming follows the dominant spending segment and under-serves adjoining lower-income residents. Because each pier also holds a distinctive landmark asset, these are exploratory patterns, translated here into planning implications for Busan North Port, Korea, whose adjoining districts are among the oldest and lowest-income in the city, pointing toward a balanced mix with explicit provision for existing residents rather than a premium dining-led one.