PROVIDENCE — A group of nine Rhode Island School of Design students who have spent the last several months comparing the Providence waterfront with coastal stretches around the world last night faced a test perhaps harder than any written exam: they had to present their findings to the people who occupy the waterfront itself.

That audience is particularly tough, because it believes it is now in a fight for its life, as proposed zoning changes for the northern Allens Avenue stretch could lead to an influx of residential development. If that happens, the industrial businesses think they will be forced out.

The waterfront zone changes will be debated at a charette tentatively scheduled to begin Feb. 26, but waterfront business owners worried publicly earlier this week that this presentation could begin that debate early, and they were concerned that the RISD presentation might contain conclusions, not just comparisons.

But the students got a passing mark, if you go by the comments of Joel Cohen, a co-owner of Promet shipyard and one of the leaders of the Working Waterfront Alliance, a group organized to oppose the zone changes.

“I think they presented it in a fair way. It’s a good academic exercise. I personally don’t think they made apt comparisons,” Cohen said, quibbling with the cities selected for comparison.

For the presentation at Save the Bay headquarters at Fields Point last night, the RISD contingent — a mix of undergraduates and graduate students — selected 16 cities around the world, and sought to find comparisons for eight specific sections of the Providence waterfront.

And while Cohen might complain that the comparisons weren’t apt, he couldn’t say they were boring.

They compared the lower Allens Avenue areas with Charleston, S.C., and Vancouver, British Columbia; the area near the South Street Power Station to Hamburg, Germany; the Upper Allens Avenue stretch to Toronto and Buenos Aires; and the Richmond Square area to Stockholm, Sweden, among others stretching from the Fields Point area all the way up to the parkland fronting the Seekonk River.

“One thing we realized is that the issues are almost identical in every place we looked,” said Enrique Martinez, one of the two architecture faculty leading the group.

In their comparisons, they strived not to draw conclusions, and instead aimed to simply provide examples of what other cities have done when confronted with similar stretches of waterfront.

“What we have not asked them to do is offer specific development proposals for the city of Providence,” said Bonnie Nickerson, director of long-term planning for the city.

Stilll, they did come up with four lessons common to the success of all the development projects, whether they were in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, or Kyoto, Japan.

They were: systems of change are better than singular plans; public-private partnerships are crucial; healthy skepticism leads to public support; and open-ended planning allows for adaptation.

The proposed zone changes, the upcoming charette, and the RISD program are part of the city’s Comprehensive Plan process, a complete updating of the city’s zoning and planning guidelines and maps.

The RISD students will be involved in some elements of planning for the charette, and Planning Director Thomas E. Deller said last night that an economic impact study assessing the waterfront area may be conducted be

dbarbari@projo.com