Port-city Interface Research Articles

Sustainable gains from inland waterway investments at port-city interface

The objective of this research is to identify and quantify the sustainable impacts resulting from transportation investments at the port-city interface. These investments encompass two main components: 1) restoring the local inland waterway fairway for navigation, and 2) constructing a new railway bridge that traverses the primary waterway at the entrance of the seaport. The study is centered on the local transportation system in the northwestern region of Poland. Sustainability is assessed using an analytical tool derived from societal cost-benefit analysis and simulation in the relevant market transport performance in options with and without investment. Economic effects are evaluated in terms of savings in generalized transportation costs, which include transport operating expenses and travel durations. Environmental considerations encompass transport-related air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and well-to-tank emissions. Social aspects focus on issues like transport congestion, traffic noise, and transport-related accidents. Each type of investment yields distinct sustainable gains and distributes them among stakeholders differently. Additionally, the enhanced capacity of the rail bridge reveals the potential for a modal shift in the local passenger transport system, wherein passengers may transition from buses/cars to a fast railway. Tangible gains expressed in monetary terms allow for a sustainable assessment of transport investments. The elaborated research scheme can be employed to assess the sustainable ramifications arising from investments in intermodal transport at any port-city interface. It provides decision-makers with comprehensive insights into the economic, environmental, and social implications of various transport policies and interventions.

Research on the Interactive Relationship of Spatial Expansion between Estuarine and Coastal Port Cities

In both developed and developing countries, port-city relationships have always attracted much attention. However, in the port–city interface, views differ as to whether the port drives the city or vice versa. The combination of remote sensing data and geospatial big data (point of interest) has provided a favorable solution. Taking the typical estuarine and coastal port cities in China’s coastal zone as an example, this study examines the following contents based on the port–city interface: the formation age of urban built-up areas and port areas on both sides of the port–city boundary; interaction between port and urban built-up areas; and the distribution of urban functional areas outside the port. Results show that the degree of spatial integration in estuarine port cities is higher than that of coastal port cities and that in the past 30 years, the expansion of ports has led to the expansion of cities. This expansion is port- and sea-oriented, and the expansion direction of the port city is consistent. On the port–city interface, the estuarine and coastal port cities form different urban regional structure modes. Aside from enriching literature on the port–city relationship, this study provides a reference for the spatial planning and transformation of ports and cities in the future.

Constructing a Theoretical Framework of the Urban Transformation Processes of the Port City Interface towards Resilient Egyptian Port Cities

Throughout history, Egyptian port cities had been formed together as an indissoluble twin in function and space. However, over the last century, most Egyptian ports have been transformed into a complex multi-layer entity with a continuous conflict between port and city actors, and hence, they have become increasingly separated from their cities in physical terms. This separation reflects how the port-city interface is shaped and governed. However, the Egyptian port cities did not receive enough studies to identify the urban transformation processes that shape the port-city interface. To help fill this gap, the research develops a conceptual-theoretical framework to understand urban transformation processes of the port-city interface and the forces that shape those transformations. This framework acts as a first step to form an assisting tool to understand and reframe the nature of the Egyptian case and how to move forward. To build this framework, the research critically reviews the normative literature available on urban planning/design, geography, politics, economy, and urban management of port cities worldwide. It follows the recent conceptualizations of the port city interface that focuses on the actors and societal relationships shaping the port city interface, rather than focusing only on its physical boundaries, dealing with the port city interface as a process, not only as a product. Furthermore, the research presents six European case studies as a manifestation of how governance and social integration influence the formation of the port-city interface. The research finds that understanding the port-city relationship through the lens of profiling urban transformation processes worldwide provides physical, governance and societal integration guidelines, that could help understand the Egyptian port-city relationship on one hand and plan/govern the relationship towards a resilient port city on the other.

Long-term analysis of traffic flows in European inland ports: implications for the port–city interface

Long-term analysis of traffic flows in European inland ports: implications for the port–city interface

When “port-out – city-in” becomes a strategy: is the port–city interface conflict in Amsterdam an observation or a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Within the majority of port city literature, the evolution of port cities is still explained as an inevitable or ‘logical’ process whereby maritime land-uses gradually migrate from city centres towards waterfront zones with deep water access. Between the 1950s and 2000s, obsolete port areas around the world have surely become waterfront redevelopment sites, often with high-end urban property development, signified by iconic architectural projects. As observed and described in the port city of Amsterdam, the financial-economic success of this ‘port-out, city-in’ process has led to land-use conflict, observed also in other port cities around the world. This paper questions, however, whether the land-use conflict in Amsterdam, observed ten years ago, is just an observation, or part of a self-fulfilling prophecy. To answer this question, we engage in a meta-discussion about the port–city interface model itself. By performing an in-depth case study in the 2018–2019 period, we reconstructed the evolution of a fierce land-use conflict in the port–city interface of Amsterdam. We conclude that the key causal mechanism was context-specific, but also that generic ‘port-out, city-in’ discourse has been an important contingent condition.

Enhanced port-city interface through infrastructure investment: evidence from Buenos Aires

Enhanced port-city interface through infrastructure investment: evidence from Buenos Aires

Materiality in the Seam Space: Sketches for a Transitional Port City Dome District

Biomass material volatility generates new opportunities for port-city relationships. Alternative energy markets require specialized port facilities to handle new bulk commodities like biomass. Wood pellets, a type of biomass, present warehousing challenges due to combustion danger. The industrial response to this risk has generated new storage forms for port regions. The return to bulk cargo reintroduces materiality as a focus for port city research, which had generally been regarded as a peripheral concern since the advent of the shipping container. The container had come to represent a borderless, ‘fast capitalism’ throughput model, but research on port ‘accidents’ has complicated this reductive globalization narrative. The programmatic dynamism of wood pellet dome structures suggests new spatially-porous possibilities for an interstitial border space at the port-city interface with material commonalities and hybrid potentials for resilient logistics and civic facilities. In contrast to container cargo unitization, the dome signifies the standardization of the coastal/riparian port environment. Dome structures can help ports plan for the complex challenges of cargo material behaviors and increasing extreme weather events. The article begins with wood pellet materiality to then explore programmatic possibilities that industrial construction technology generates. Conceptually, this joins the proposal of port as ‘seam space’ with port-city resilience planning and the porosity celebrated in recent urbanism literature. Scaling up from wood pellet materiality to an interstitial port-city district, the article contributes to calls for increased attention to materiality as a means to envision new urban agendas.

Morphological Evolution of the Port‐City Interface of Algiers (16th Century to the Present)

This article traces the centuries-long morphological development of Algiers’ port-city interface across four historically relevant time periods that together span from the dawn of the 16th century up until today. Through a diachronic and geo-historical approach, we identify and analyse the origins of Algiers’ persistent port-city divide. In doing so, the notion of the interface is interpreted as a spatial threshold between city and port, which nevertheless supports the material flows of both entities. As a multi-purpose area, the interface holds the potential to weave the disparate entities of a port city back together. To further complement this conceptual angle, we provide investigations of porosity that determine the differing degrees of connectivity between the city and port of Algiers. This is combined with a spatial-functional analysis of Algiers’ current port-city interface, which is ultimately characterised as a non-homogeneous entity composed of four distinct sequences. These results contribute to a better orientation of imminent plans for waterfront revitalisations in Algiers. Whereas the interface was long considered as some kind of no man’s land in the past, port and municipal authorities nowadays aim to turn the interface into a tool of reconciliation, and can do so by acting upon its potential porosity. Finally, this article’s critical examination of the previously neglected case of Algiers can and should also be considered as an applicable model for the continuing study of southern Mediterranean and African port metropolises in general, which share a particular evolution in the relations between city and port.

Tangible and Intangible Boundaries: The Case of Baoshan Port-City Interface in Shanghai

Instead of stressing that port cities are characterised by institutional fragmentations with many resulting conflicts, we claim that port cities might be highly constructive in terms of changing tangible and intangible boundaries. To capture this quality, we use the concept of ‘penumbral,’ a combination of perceptional aspects as well as tangible and intangible spatial constellations. This perspective is applied in the case of the Shanghai Baoshan port-city interface through the investigation of the changing tangible and intangible boundaries, and how planning relates to boundary changes in a context of spatial, industrial, and institutional multi-layered structures. Tangible refers to physical boundaries between the port and urban structure or district, while intangible refers to immaterial boundaries created by actors’ views on ports. Based on planning documents, direct observations, and 17 in-depth semi-structured interviews with local governments, port authority, planning departments, and companies, we find that one can indeed speak of penumbral boundaries, based on port-related values and ideas, and particularly on perceptions of the port and port businesses. Those perceptions are the initial power of changing and, following the idea of penumbral boundaries, blurring tangible and intangible boundaries. Finally, we suggest that, following the idea of penumbral boundaries, planning can play a stronger role in connecting the port and the city by first investigating how actors view the port and port businesses carefully, paying full attention to the specific relational context before formulating plans in the usual manner.

Framework and Methodology for Establishing Port-City Policies Based on Real-Time Composite Indicators and IoT: A Practical Use-Case.

During the past few decades, the combination of flourishing maritime commerce and urban population increases has made port-cities face several challenges. Smart Port-Cities of the future will take advantage of the newest IoT technologies to tackle those challenges in a joint fashion from both the city and port side. A specific matter of interest in this work is how to obtain reliable, measurable indicators to establish port-city policies for mutual benefit. This paper proposes an IoT-based software framework, accompanied with a methodology for defining, calculating, and predicting composite indicators that represent real-world phenomena in the context of a Smart Port-City. This paper envisions, develops, and deploys the framework on a real use-case as a practice experiment. The experiment consists of deploying a composite index for monitoring traffic congestion at the port-city interface in Thessaloniki (Greece). Results were aligned with the expectations, validated through nine scenarios, concluding with delivery of a useful tool for interested actors at Smart Port-Cities to work over and build policies upon.

Degradation or regeneration? Prospects for developing the port-city interface in Odesa

Seeking an optimum sustainable development strategy is a core objective of municipalities and innovative urban planners around the world. Various viewpoints and interests regarding the interface between ports and cities and the resulting extensive waterfront regeneration in principal seaports render spatial planning projects of this type complex to complete and obtain agreement on. For a modern city, port development is a principal source of influences and benefits related to ecology, society, and transportation. Currently, the world’s largest seaports are moving cargo terminals out of historical city centres. As a result, ports are assuming more advanced functions unrelated to the maritime industry, and thus projects that equitably share port territories will naturally gain momentum. The most significant projects for moving cargo ports out of historical town centres and regenerating port areas are found in European cities. To understand the various approaches, examples from European regeneration projects for port territories in Bilbao, Barcelona, and Oslo are presented, and their experience with various geographical and town-planning conditions is highlighted. This study is devoted to the Ukrainian port city of Odesa. It identifies the most successful strategy for developing the port-city interface under current economic and geopolitical conditions. It combines the ideas and studies of city planners in management, economics, and transport geography along with various policies and sociology aspects to provide new information and understanding aimed at ensuring the sustainable development of coastal cities in developing countries.

Living on the edge: Identifying challenges of port expansion for local communities in developing countries, the case of Jakarta, Indonesia

A port–city interface can be characterized as an area of conflicts between port development and city land-uses. Unfortunately, most research is limited to a technical and managerial perspective on port development and focuses less on the impacts on the communities in the area. This paper offers a new direction to acknowledge the impacts of port development on the community by borrowing from literature on rural–urban fringes, as there are similarities between the port–city interface and the rural–urban fringe as areas with conflicting interests. The port community is divided into the community of interest and the community of place. Based on this, a set of implications arising from how the community might experience the impacts of port development is presented. These implications are operationalized in a case study of the expansion of Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta, Indonesia. The findings are differentiated for the four most prominent communities that are vulnerable to the impacts, namely fishermen, port workers, seafood processors, and industrial and other types of workers. They are likely to experience two indirect effects of the port development, namely resettlement and loss of livelihoods. This shows how vulnerable the communities living on the edge of the new development are, mainly due to their livelihoods’ dependency on the blurry boundaries between port and city.

Durban’s Back of Port Project: a Local Spatial Knowledge Production Process Framed by Urban Entrepreneurialism

Cities position themselves to compete in the global economy using large-scale entrepreneurial interventions, which have the potential to significantly alter urban landscapes (Harvey 1989). Within this broad urban entrepreneurial approach, it is useful to reflect on localised knowledge production processes and the actors and power embedded in them, which result in particular urban development outcomes in cities. This paper analyses a spatial planning exercise, the Back of Port (BoP) Project, initiated in Durban in 2007 by its administrative entity eThekwini Municipality, and produced by local consultants, which reflects a particular form of urban entrepreneurialism. The BoP Project aimed to increase the competitiveness of the Durban port through improving city infrastructure, addressing congestion at the port-city interface and ensuring economic growth in the city, in a highly contested and political space. The resultant knowledge production process and the spatial framework that was produced, were shaped by global urban policy and the politics and practices of local government, civil society organisations and the knowledge fields of specialist consultants. The BoP spatial planning exercise reveals how urban policy is unfolding in a city in the South, in response to global processes of urban economic development, national imperatives and local challenges. The research reveals that knowledges associated with an economic and functional discourse-coalition became hegemonic, whilst counter-hegemonic knowledges around social and environmental justice struggled to frame the spatial plan.

Conflicts and Reconciliation at the Port-City Interface in Contemporary European Cities

Since ports were first created in coastal and riverbank cities, they have remained an integral part of many cities. As maritime trade developed and required more space and infrastructure, ports have gradually become more specialized for maritime purposes. Since the more recent advent of containerization and globalization, port-city relations have become increasingly complex. Therefore, it is important to investigate methods to resolve the conflicts in port-city interfaces. This paper demonstrates an in-depth research study of the approaches taken by major European ports to reconcile port-city conflicts and provides insight and guidance for port authorities on this issue.

The battle over the commons in port cities

ABSTRACTThe zone of intersection between land and sea within an urban context has long been viewed as a special type of urban commons. The well-researched port-city interface, however, tells a rather tragic story about the use and management of this valuable resource. This study asks how four major regulatory-institutional issues in the interface – land ownership, activities allowed in port area, planning autonomy, and public access – affect the ability of ports and cities to preserve elements of “commons” in urban coasts? Furthermore, it assesses if and how Elinor Ostrom’s principles for overcoming commons-related tensions, could contribute to the management of port-city conflicts over land-uses in the Mediterranean urban coastline and the various questions that may derive from such an application. For these purposes the study combines a comprehensive literature review with the analysis of planning regulation and in-depth, semi-structured interviews of key-stakeholders in seven port cities across three Mediterranean countries. The common experience in these different cases suggests that through a strategy involving scaling-down spatial decisions or governance, and built-in mechanisms for spatial cooperation, ports and the cities that host them can find a new joint path, which will strengthen local synergies and the quality of urban, public space.

The relational geometry of the port-city interface: Case studies of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Ghent, Belgium

The aim of this paper is to operationalize a relational approach to the study of port-city interfaces. A relational approach allows for the analysis of how actors are connected, transact, and assign meaning and value to regional development. Much of the literature on port-city interfaces has primarily focussed on late 20th-century transformation processes at the urban waterfront. This fails to appreciate the often-continued presence of port activity within cities and falls short in understanding how the development agendas of port cities are relationally constituted. In this paper, first we argue that the port-city interface is a relational geometry through which heterogeneous flows of actors, assets, and structures are coupled. Second, we present an analytical framework capable of operationalizing such relational approach. The contemporary relational geometries in the bio-based sectors within the port cities of Amsterdam and Ghent are taken as starting points. Analysing these reveal how different coupling mechanisms result in particular development trajectories of the port city, setting the scene for future coupling mechanisms. This paper concludes with a discussion on the value of a relational approach to the study of port-city interfaces.

Facilitating start-ups in port-city innovation ecosystems: A case study of Montreal and Rotterdam

Facilitating start-ups located in the port-city interface is one of the current policy strategies of municipalities in many port-cities worldwide to encourage innovations in constantly evolving port areas. This could help the re-development of vacant ex-port land, while also offering new economic orientations for the city and the port. The aim of the paper is therefore to explore what conditions are needed to facilitate and encourage start-ups in innovation ecosystems in the port-city interface. The analysis is based on two in-depth case studies of the port-cities of Montreal (Canada) and Rotterdam (the Netherlands). The results indicate that government initiatives to actively facilitate start-ups in formerly industrialized port areas are quite successful. However, the functional linkages between start-ups and port activities remains rather limited, if not entirely absent, and the impact on the functioning of the innovation ecosystem at large is not substantial. Other factors such as capital, collaboration and proximity are valued more than the physical location of the start-up. In this, other actors in the ecosystem besides the municipality and the port authority also play a key role. Furthermore, start-ups often feel limited in their innovative capacity because of stringent regulations and institutional rigidness. Governments and port authorities could facilitate in this respect by working more demand-driven in terms of unburdening and creating more institutional support, instead of imposing top-down rules and regulations to try to govern the ecosystem, which in itself can be considered a contradiction in terms.

Analysis of Functional Layout of Architectural Space of Port and City Interface

Port and city interface space refers to the geographical dividing line between the port land and urban land, or the port land conversion to urban land area, as access to the port and the city's core area, which has abundant resources, frequent human activities, and it is the important nodes and growing point of interaction between city and port. The design of architectural space of Port City is very important to its formation and development of spatial morphology. Because of the limited land resources of the city's port area, the architectural space form appears the particularity of the waterfront, which makes building and site conditions symbiosis, and maintains a close interaction with the urban space. In this paper, it wants to summer effective design method of architectural space layout in specific port city interface through analysis to the architectural space layout of port city interface.

Development dynamics of port-cities interface in the Arab Middle Eastern world - The case of Dubai global hub port-city

Many scholars in the field of architecture, urban planning, transportation, geography, economics and sociology have studied port-cities from different perspectives. Yet, the majority of literature on this topic is concerned about the Developed Western and East Asian World. With the aim to contribute to the existing studies and to fill this gap in the literature, this paper makes an attempt to study an example in the fast-developing Arab States in the Middle East, which has recently drawn a particular attention among the scholars. Dubai provides an interesting case study, as it currently hosts the major transhipment hubport of the region. Centred on a single case-study approach, a four-phase model is hypothesized as a tool to investigate the changing spatial and functional dynamics at the port-city interface from the 1900s to the 2010s. The argument is based on a reciprocal relationship between the port and the city, since the advent of a free port. Historically the port has been the economic backbone. Consequently the Creek dredging and newly constructed ports integrated with ancillary infrastructures (such as FTZs) have played an important role in boosting the growth. Some concluding remarks underline the main trends in Dubai's port-city development, compared to the existing European and Asian models. This dynamic evolution is influenced by internal factors, such as oil revenues and governmental strategies, as well as external ones, like the regional and global forces. Despite sharing common features with the Asian consolidation model, this study suggests that Dubai may demonstrate a particular pattern of port-city development.

항만도시 인터페이스 공간특성에 의한 항만배후단지 활용방안

The spaces of port and urban in a Port City have different space characteristics substantially, but those are required to be developed interdependently. Degradation and loss of the sense of place in the existing spaces caused by decline of natural function have an adverse effect on the revival of local economy as well as make worse image of the entire city. In some developed countries, therefore, many researches on the port spaces lagging behind the times due to changes of the characteristics and function of port spaces have been conducted continuously for a long time. This study aims at seeking a device how the domestic hinterland could be utilized as efficient spaces having the characteristics of outskirts space and port city interface through the application of characteristics of the interface space of port city, capable of playing a role as buffer zone between the port space and the city space.