What's the best way to create a waterside scheme in a city? Emma Cullinan left the WaterfrontExpo in Amsterdam with the words 'master plan' buzzing in her ears.

The world's most beautiful waterside cities were developed over time, house by house, shop by shop, yet now former dockland areas are on fast-track development schedules. So how do you create a beautiful waterside scheme from scratch?

International architects and developers involved in such schemes, including the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, visited aqueous Amsterdam last month to share their experiences.

The lectures at the WaterfrontExpo ranged from a description of a smallish development by the canal in London's Camden Town, through developing tourism on the water, building marinas, to huge schemes such as those in Shanghai, Amsterdam and Cape Town.

The buzzword was "master plan" which all large waterside developments need, although designer Xiao Ping Zheng from China admitted that, while they did draw up master plans, these were frequently ignored by the authorities concerned.

It seems that there's often a conflict between the creation of buildings of an appropriate scale and the need to make a profit.

And while delegates spoke proudly of their achievements, it's evident that many architects and urban planners are still seeking an appropriate language with which to address the water.

Historically, the most successful waterside developments have had variety, such as Venice's mix of buildings, some reaching down into the water, and Amsterdam's jumble of tall houses banked beside the canals.

The redevelopment of the Borneo district in Amsterdam became renowned for its smaller, more intricate scale created by a mix of designers. Now that the city is expanding its centre, from the central station out towards Renzo Piano's science museum that sits on the water, Amsterdam has taken a similar approach. The ODE project comprises six separate plots on which 12 different architects are working, under a master plan. The height is restricted to the level of nearby historic buildings.

Dear old Blackpool, in England, however, is taking an extraordinary path. The British government's relaxation of casino rules has caused illuminations in the minds of those in charge of Blackpool who have seen fit to create a Las Vegas of northern England.

Reg Haslam, who works for Blackpool Council, spoke about how the town is in steady decline. While it is the third most visited attraction in Europe after Disneyland Paris and the Vatican, the visitors tend to just come in the summer. He spoke about the appalling levels of employment and the poor qualifications of those living in the town before handing over to William Hanway, of US company EDAW, which has a track record in urban regeneration projects.

The Blackpool plans are huge, with the revamping and linking of neighbourhoods, the construction of buildings that address the water, the creation of sheltered outdoor spaces, and the introduction of those casinos. This will hopefully work, although one wonders why they don't inject the money more directly, such as by investing in education.

Some speakers, as ever, said all of the right things about planning and design but their slides told a different story. One company, for instance, had built the most appalling, plasticised monoliths that looked like buildings from a computer game.

The more enlightening talks were from those who had addressed the water and concentrated on the human scale in both theory and practise.

As Venice-based Marta Moretti, deputy director of International Cities on Water, said, waterside developments need to preserve the identity of, and be compatible with, the dignity of the site.

The question is just what sort of designs are appropriate beside water? Should one copy the vernacular warehouses or build on a huge scale, as in Manhattan, knowing that waterside buildings are often viewed from afar?

John Thompson and Partners opted for an oceanic design for a mixed office/apartment development in Camden Town, London, which took inspiration from the history of canals and architecture.

London's canals were built after the city was constructed and its buildings don't tend to address the water. In this case, the development faces the canal and takes its cue from the type of 1930s ocean liner architecture reminiscent of Modernists such as Le Corbusier and Eileen Gray, and it comes complete with portholes.

The Camden Town site already had planning permission but Eric Holding, project architect, said that the firm isn't keen on "draping the towel of architecture over massing studies". Instead they created buildings that stepped down and had a gap between to accommodate two existing cottages.

This creation of gaps between buildings was also important to Kjell Hoey-Petersen of Niels Torp Architects who designed a new inner city harbour beside a fjord in Oslo. "Public spaces are as important to the urban fabric as the buildings are," he said.

As with Marta Moretti and Eric Holding, he looks at the history of sites before he begins his designs and showed a slide of a beautiful red-roofed Mediterranean town.

While urban master plans tend to be symmetrical and uniform, he talked of the joy of being in an extremely narrow street in a mediaeval town. Switching to a picture of a huge office building beside the water he announced: "I could never fall in love there."

Internal streets and smaller scale buildings help to create a microclimate (along with planting). Large buildings set apart from each other can create wind tunnels and downdrafts in what are always exposed sites.

Using the building Niels Torp Architects designed for British Airways at Heathrow as an illustration, Hoey-Petersen talked of how a building is a town, and a city is a building. The scheme is divided into six office blocks, to avoid a great mass of building. These flank a glazed-over street with side streets to simulate a traditional town, with a central meeting place.

The architects' attractive harbour scheme in Oslo is also designed as a "living city", with its four buildings "talking to each other" across streets, narrow passages and public spaces. From internal courtyards it's possible to see the water through passageways beneath the buildings, which run to the water's edge.

This contact with the water's edge has been denied to Dublin Docklands on its north side where the busy road cuts through the site, although the Port Tunnel should reduce the volume of traffic.

While Dublin is a smaller city than many of those featured at the WaterfrontExpo, its site size is comparable because developments in larger cities are taking place in small pockets. Peter Coyne, chief executive of the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, held the audience in thrall as he explained all about creating welcoming public spaces.

He discussed how the IFSC area used to be dead during the evening and how they are working to turn the area into an 18-hour-day location. The Stack A development, with its proposed Conran restaurant, will encourage more evening life; and the National College of Ireland was given its site for free to encourage students into the area. Developers are asked to create retail spaces on the ground floors of buildings to add to the public realm, warehouses have been knocked down to enable views of the Liffey, and the two proposed bridges will encourage more people in.

"At the moment the area is a cul-de-sac, and people don't like entering these," he said. The authority has also bought the river banks - in what is known as its public realm strategy - to control that space and introduce cafés and art displays.

He's thrilled to have international architects Daniel Libeskind and Santiago Calatrava on board: "You've got to have those designers," he quipped, adding that not all buildings need to be landmarks. "Humans use buildings and the design has to carry this. You don't necessarily need icons on every corner but they are important, as Bilbao shows."

The authority is working closely with Libeskind on the design of his arts centre so that it fits in with the Docklands' vision: for instance, there are to be no "dead frontages" on the building.

Hearing Peter Coyne speak is heartening because there's a dedication to making the Dublin Docklands a people magnet. There are beautiful buildings here, such as the award-winning Clarion Quay by Urban Projects and the new Hanover Quay building by O'Mahony Pike architects which combines retail, offices and both social and private housing, as requested by the Docklands authority.

But it's also possible to detect the hand of commercialism. The buildings are huge, especially the Spencer Dock scheme, which risks being a repetitive sprawl.

The Docklands area is on a fast-track building programme facilitated by special planning in which developers have to follow planning guidelines approved by the minister, but don't have to go through the normal planning channels.

The authority has had to take risks to encourage developers to build in the Docklands. For instance, they bought the former gasworks site at Grand Canal Basin and decontaminated it at a cost of €50 million before offering plots to developers. It's an investment in the future, says Mr Coyne.

He is evidently aware of how to create a successful Docklands area, in a plan that not only includes buildings, but a special boat to take people up the Liffey, a new marina and visitor attractions on and beside the water.

Let's hope that aesthetics, human scale and pleasure comes before the demands of big business in Ireland's waterside schemes.