Governance Patterns on the Urban-Port Threshold. The Emergence of the City of the Cluster

Ports are sophisticated infrastructures that have contributed to disrupting the original state of places according to a mechanism that leads from alterations to project. Port cities generate in their environments a liminal condition which usually characterizes the urban-port area that, located along and across the common administrative border, can be recognized as an urban-port threshold. This threshold generates a liminal space which is configured as a third state with respect to the city or the port properly understood. It is a system of linear convergence/divergence that marks the beginning and the end of the capabilities of the Port Authority. This threshold does not have a standard configuration but is shaped into different geometries and constituted by a constellation of artefacts and architectures belonging to both sides and in different state of abandonment/disposal/disuse. The geometries of the urban-port thresholds generate different governance patterns which, in the current framework, are particularly influenced by evolving global phenomena. Among these, the port clustering (effective in many Europeans cases but introduced in Italy only in 2016) produces a complex polycentric conurbation, a City of the Cluster. Composed by several ports and cities, this new urban-port reality emerges to be responsible for new relational opportunities in the decades to come.