Ports and logistics: resilience, sustainability and new centrality in the post-pandemic perspective for Italy and EU Med ports

Abstract

<abstract> <p>This article is part of the Economic Geography studies and deals with aspects related to intermodal logistics with particular reference to maritime transport of containers. Ports are historically one of the key infrastructures for the Italian economy. In recent decades, along with many industrial sectors that were once driving forces for the national economy, due to the lack of adequate strategic planning, it has failed to keep pace with the rapid changes imposed on all sectors involved in the process of globalization of the economic world, losing ground and competitiveness with respect to many competing realities, both in Northern Europe and in the Mediterranean basin itself <sup>[<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b1">1</xref>]</sup>. Most of the other states of Mediterranean Europe are in similar conditions, but Italy is probably the one that has lost the most ground. In this situation of strong economic and social imbalance, the covid-19 epidemic has hit Italy before and dramatically and if it had not turned into a pandemic, hitting the rest of Europe and the planet and forcing the European institutions to launch, for the first time, concrete support measures for all, would probably have represented a fatal shock for the Italian economy. By elaborating the information on statistical data and projections available in numerous international publications on the transport economy and more specifically on logistics, taking into account the reasons for the successes and failures of similar realities to the Italian one, the study offers food for thought on what to do immediately and in the future, taking advantage of the unique and unrepeatable opportunity constituted by the economic initiatives for the post-pandemic recovery, to remedy the lost ground by returning an adequate role to our world of maritime and port transport which can also be a driving force for the territory behind, avoiding ending up on the edge of the evolved world.</p> </abstract>