An embankment along the East Providence shoreline is viewed by planners and environmentalists during a harbor tour yesterday.

The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

In Newport, the waterfront is so desirable that the city issues more than 1,000 building permits a year, but only a handful are for new houses. Most are for rebuilding or renovating second homes and condos. The city can scarcely keep up with the development pressure and little of it is open to the public.

In East Providence, the city expects construction of some 3,000 new apartments and condominiums along seven miles of its waterfront that used to be covered with heavy industry. The city is encouraging the new building and it is ensuring that miles of waterfront will welcome the public.

In Pawtucket, the city has identified stretches of its waterfront that it offers to developers. But few are coming.

A boat tour of three urban, Rhode Island waterfronts yesterday revealed sharp contrasts — more dramatic because they are in such a small state.

Local planners, coastal regulators, scientists and developers took part in the survey to prepare for a symposium today and tomorrow at the University of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay campus that will focus on creating vibrant waterfronts in Rhode Island.

One of the goals, organizers said, is to incorporate science into waterfront planning — to make sure that future development anticipates climate change, sea-level rise and potential hurricanes.

“Each of these cities has a real history. All are in a different stage of redevelopment,” said Jen McCann, a tour organizer with Rhode Island Sea Grant. She said one thing the planners learned in May, when they focused on the Providence waterfront, was the importance of communities being aware of what’s going on elsewhere on the Bay and in the region when planning their futures.

“In the past, we could say the future is a continuation of the present. But you can’t say that anymore,” said Stephen Olsen, director of URI’s Coastal Resources Center, which also hosted the tour. “We’re entering a period of extraordinary and unprecedented change with climate change, sea-level rise and more storms. They create all kinds of implications that we’re just dimly aware of.”

More than a billion dollars is expected to be spent in the next decade on waterfront development in Rhode Island. The challenges in each city differ dramatically.

Newport looks like it is fully developed. But during yesterday’s tour on the Gansett, a meticulously restored offshore lobster boat, city planner Paige Bronk pointed to construction workers all over a major condominium project at Brown & Howard Wharf, where he said units sell from $2.5 million to $4 million.

The city has 26,000 residents, but 3 million people visit each year.

“The harbor is world renowned,” he said. But city officials are worried that so much of its “working waterfront” has been replaced by condos and restaurants. And many, Bronk said, are built right on the water’s edge so they are especially susceptible to storm waves.

The city also lacks the resources to enforce local regulations, he said, pointing to one pier that was built without permits.

The city is struggling to make its waterfront more accessible to the public. One proposal is to create as many as 12 stops around the harbor for a beefed-up water-taxi service that would let people get around without driving.

The city is also trying to find $2 million to renovate the armory on Thames Street and provide amenities and an extended pier for transient boaters.

Bronk was showing the group the piers and open space at Perrotti Park when the harbormaster shooed him to make way for launches from the 205-foot Black Watch, a cruise ship anchored just west of Goat Island.

City officials pointed out one missed opportunity: Newport is home to more 12-meter yachts than any other port in the world. They generate great revenues when corporate groups rent them. But there is no one place to showcase them. Most are out at moorings and the public scarcely gets a glance.

“Very little of the waterfront is in public ownership,” Bronk said. “So it’s difficult now to go back and add a harbor walk.”

In Massachusetts, developers are required by law to provide public access when they build or renovate on the water, several officials said. In Rhode Island, regulators can negotiate public access, but not mandate it.

Just north of the Pell Bridge, a Navy security boat approached as Bronk pointed out the unused hospital at the Navy base.

Bronk said the city assumes the Navy will release the property at some time and when it does, the city wants to buy it. It would create a park along the shoreline and possibly a marina.

At the end of the tour, John Bullard, a former mayor of New Bedford who now runs the Sea Education Association, was more upbeat than some of the Newport officials.

“People wondered if Newport would survive losing the Navy. And it did. Then they worried about losing the America’s Cup. It was fine. You have issues here. But they are good issues. You have tremendous energy here. You’ve got a flame going here. It’s much tougher when you have no flame. The question is, is it serving the 26,000 people of Newport? It’s certainly serving the 3 million visitors.”

Kip Bergstrom of the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council, said he thought Newport should try to preserve its working waterfront and work to keep housing off the waterfront.

“Sailing is part of Newport’s heritage,” Bergstrom said. “Don’t lose the distinction of being the sailing center of the world.”

In the afternoon, the group sailed from Providence Piers, the waterfront complex battling with its neighbors, many of whom are heavy industries such as shipyards and oil terminals.

For more than a decade, Providence has touted plans to redevelop the area with hotels and restaurants. Austin Becker, a coastal planner at Sea Grant, said other heavy industries have wanted to come to Providence, but decided not to because of the city’s plans.

Along the East Providence shoreline, City Planner Jeanne Boyle said the city was left with a lot of vacant waterfront after oil terminals and other industries left a few decades ago. Much of it is contaminated, so it’s expensive to redevelop. But the city is moving ahead and it has large tracts to work with.

Some of the industrial landowners had never allowed their properties to be redeveloped for residential uses, Boyle said, so the city had to push hard.

But it has a series of developers planning to build thousands of housing units, and all will provide contiguous shoreline access, Boyle said.

In Pawtucket, Michael Cassidy, the city’s development director, said much of the city’s shoreline was cleaned up by urban renewal in the 1970s. The city recently marketed a property next to Route 95 for a hotel. But there hasn’t been much more success, he said.

“We have the land, we have the space, but we don’t have anyone interested in doing anything,” Cassidy said.

The city also wants to develop improved greenways at State Pier and the city’s Public Landing, he said.

plord@projo.com