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...

Port city symbiosis: introduction to the special issue

Port cities and their neighbouring areas, located at the confines between sea and land, are key hubs in the transportation of goods and people. Ports serve global transport needs, while they are embedded in local geographies, topographies, political, economic and historical settlements. People have always been attracted to human settlements...

Virtual Roundtable “Beirut Urban Declaration: Which Future for Beirut Port?”

Imponderabilia: The Agency of the Border between Land and Sea

The globalization that we are facing completely transformed the world as we knew it fifty years ago. The historical era we live in today is cha- racterized by the use of technology, which is one of the factors that made globalization possible. While some time ago it was possible to define and identify the “center” of powers, of cities, it became...

Shanghai’s Regenerated Industrial Waterfronts: Urban Lab for Sustainability Transitions?

In China, Shanghai often serves as a place to introduce and try out new ideas. This is certainly the case with experimental urban planning and design solutions and sustainability transitions. This article identifies and evaluates the role of pilot projects and demonstration zones along the Huangpu River. These clusters and zones are supposed to...

Straddling the Fence: Land Use Patterns in and around Ports as Hidden Designers

Ports are clearly demarcated structures on land and water. They are fenced in, easily recognizable on satellite and orthophoto images, and they have specific functions. This apparent clarity of ports, their function and outline, in relation to nearby urban and rural areas, becomes more complex when explored through the lens of land use, that is...

Industry or Housing: Clash or Match?: A qualitative study into residents' experience of living close to industry and how this affects their perception of nuisance and satisfaction.

Due to both geographical and functional separation of port and city, urban planning of port cities has become a rather slow, costly and sometimes conflictual process. To work towards a more collaborative way of planning and to enhance the competitive edge of port cities, mixed-use developments that include both city -and industrial orientated...

Sharing Is Caring, but Is the Shore Cared for? The Sharing Paradox of the French Coast

Coastlines have long attracted industrial activities, services, housing, and tourism. At select geographic locations, harbors host port facilities and provide local economic growth opportunities. As such, these areas also concentrate populations around the world. In the north of France, where the unemployment rate is high, port industries are...

Using Heritage to Develop Sustainable Port-City Relationships: Lisbon’s shift from Object-based to Landscape Approaches

Port cities face enormous sustainability challenges. In this chapter, we propose a relational view of these challenges and explore how different models of governance connect the three pillars of sustainable development: Economy, environment, and society. We also address the contradictions inherent to new port plans or waterfront projects,...

From Planning the Port/City to Planning the Port-City: Exploring the Economic Interface in European Port Cities

In last three decades, planning agencies of most ports have institutionally evolved into a (semi-) independent port authority. The rationale behind this process is that port authorities are able to react more quickly to changing logistical and spatial preferences of maritime firms, hence increasing the competitiveness of ports. Although these...

Economic Development and Environmental Protection: the planning of China’s National Strategic Petroleum Reserves in port cities

Since 2004, the Chinese government has been planning and building enormous petroleum reserves in China’s highly industrialized port cities, located along an environmentally fragile coastline. The construction of these national oil reserves should have complied with the principle of sustainability proposed by the Chinese Communist Party in the...

Anchoring the Warmoezier: a life-cycle market in a port-city

The relationship between industry and market, in the Netherlands of the 17th century, was based on a sustainable model. It linked small scale producers with consumers through a system of canal boats, maritime technology and agricultural innovations.<br/>This marketproduction connection was carried out by farmers known as ‘warmoeziers’. In 21th...