Port Cities
The whole nature of maritime transport has changed dramatically during recent decades and this could not fail to impact on port cities.
Many ports have experienced declining fortunes through loss of freight throughput, shrinking national fishing fleets, even the effects of budget air travel and high speed rail links on passenger ferry activity, etc. However new trends in sea traffic (bulk fuel carriers, containerisation, short sea routes, growth in cruise tourism) have steadily given the sector—which thrives on logistical cooperation but is also a source of intense competition (Rotterdam–Antwerp, Marseilles-Genoa...)—a new momentum. Yet EU ports today are not the same as those of the post-war period fuelled by “local” industrial production and extended markets, and in most cases the relationship between port and city has undergone major transformation. Delocalisation of port activity to deep water, greenfield sites outside the city or simple decline in traffic left many coastal towns facing huge areas of derelict land, abandoned buildings and infrastructure at the former heart of the city. Functional relationships and transport networks lost significance, port-city animation ceased to exist. Furthermore changes in status of port authorities have often fundamentally altered management systems traditionally dealing with the city-port interface, necessitating development of, or benefiting from, new partnership structures.
Today these modifications and handicaps are becoming more and more regarded as opportunities exemplified by cities seeking to diversify central port activities, to actively plan for delocalisation (Helsinki...), to exploit land availability to develop new and attractive waterfront “prime sites” (Genoa), to reuse port heritage and infrastructure in innovative ways (Belfast, etc.).
The main questions that motivated the interest in this sub theme are related to how these evolutions are contributing to, or perhaps inhibiting, wider urban sustainability in port cities. How shall such cities continue to deal with the major and for them specific challenges of migration, globalisation and climate change? And what could be the impact of global economic downturn on new port revival trends? The only network addressing the port city issue directly is CTUR, and this from the specific perspective of the effects of cruise traffic on integrated and sustainable port city development. By employing CTUR as an entry point, it is the intention to use the experiences of the wider URBACT partner cities to examine the particular obstacles and opportunities influencing the sustainable development process within the port city context.
To find out more about the aims, methods, events and outputs being planned by these networks read the synthesis of their baseline studies.