The Spatial and Governance Dilemma of Small and Medium-Sized Italian Ports (SMPs): Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) as a Potential Response

The Italian coast has about 700 ports, which are different in typology, dimension, role, and ownership. Historically, this has led to the significant fragmentation of governance and space and a lack of cooperation that ports and cities still experience today. Among all ports, small and medium-sized ports (SMPs), such as marinas, small...

Sea-Ing Morocco: Architectural Travels to Moroccan Port City Territories

Ports are key nodes in the distribution of goods and people on a global scale. They link diverse territories and impact nearby cities and territories. Understanding the ways in which maritime flows shape territories on sea and land and using them to improve cities and landscapes in the short- and long-term is key to future sustainable...

Mediterranean Imaginaries

Adaptive Strategies in Naples and Beirut: Methodology, Scenario Thinking and Design Fiction

Port cities are places at the edge of sea and land, where flows of goods and people create unique spaces, institutions and cultures, often over long periods of time. History matters when it comes to understanding and designing the future of port cities such as the two ancient Mediterranean cities of Beirut and Naples, where institutions and...

Naples: A city away from water: The role of path dependence in the history of Naples

Over time, a large number of stakeholders have affected the Italian port city of Naples. The millenary history of Naples reveals a port that has been strongly intertwined with the city. Yet, recent history shows a different story. The historical investigation analysed in this article points out a conflict between several different authorities...

Changing Minds: Towards Water-Based Architecture and Public Space for the Future Urban Archipelago

This blog contribution supports the Urban Archipelago expo at Nieuwe Instituut (NI) in Rotterdam, designed to consist of four elements: a map, a view, a model, and a series of films that depicted a future of living with water, as well as a booklet that documented student work. The expo has been part of the Water Cities Rotterdam, which opened...

Designing Post-Blast Beirut: Intersecting Perspectives: Reimagining the Edges between Port and City at a Time of Transition

How provocative can visions about the future be? What is the role that education can play in helping (re)imagining port-city territories at a time of transition? In this contribution we will answer this question through the lens of master’s elective course ‘Adaptive Strategies’ for the 2020/2021 spring quarter run by Carola Hein, Professor...

What Does Building Green Mean in Port Cities?

This article explores the concept of ‘green’ in architecture and urban design through the lens of port cities. Due to global pressures such as climate change, energy transition and soil consumption the planning of port cities requires new scenarios for achieving equilibrium between nature and water systems. Despite the fact that the concept of...

Towards Circular Port–City Territories: Rotterdam and the Port Back to the City

Port and city authorities all over Europe and beyond are striving with finding solutions able to combine sustainability with economic growth. Several global urgencies in fact, such as climate change, energy transition, the exponential changes in the scale of ports and ships and last but not least the economic and health shock related to the...

Land in Limbo: Understanding path dependencies at the intersection of the port and city of Naples

Numerous actors have been involved in the planning of the port and city of Naples. National and local authorities—namely central government, the Region, the Municipality of Naples, and the Port Authority—act upon the port at different scales, according to diverging interest and by using different planning tools. Each entity has different spatial...

Reinventing Wastescapes in port cities: A resilient and regenerative approach to plan Naples at the time of logistics

Port cities and metropolitan port territories are experiencing a profound transition as a consequence of radical spatial and governance changes mainly led by logistics’ dynamics. Contemporary spaces between ports and cities have often become a collage of wastescapes: marginal territories resulting from the current uneven growth of port cities....

The Central Tyrrhenian Sea Port Authority: A critical juncture for the Campania port system?

Since 2016, the reorganization of the Italian port legislation through the decree n.169 has introduced port systems, as a new institutional umbrella helping improving ports efficiency. However, this new entity challenges the goals and interests of local stakeholders, which have their own tradition and have independently developed spatial...

Defending the past by challenging the future: spatial and institutional path dependencies in the Naples port-city region

Historical paths matter in port-city regions. Here, spatial patterns and governance arrangements are path dependent to the point that once certain paths have been established, these become hard to change. This defines a condition of institutional inertia that plays a significant role in preventing any form of spatial change. Naples is an...

Wastescapes in port cities. Naples and Rotterdam: a spatial and institutional comparison on the role of ports as promoters of circular economy

Ports have historically followed a linear model of growth. Formation, expansion,<br/>reallocation, abandonment, and redevelopments are just some of the steps that are followed over time by ports from all over the world. Circularity – a goal that both ports and cities hope to achieve in the near future – is not a new topic anymore. Although the...

Land in Limbo: Understanding Planning Agencies and Spatial Development at the Interface of the Port and City of Naples

Numerous actors have been involved in the planning of the port and city of Naples; actors who have different ideas and goals, different tools, and<br/>even time-frames. The European Union, the Italian nation, the Campania Region, the Municipality of Naples, and the Port Authority act upon the<br/>port at different levels of planning. Each entity...