Mediterranean public spaces from ancient genomes to new paradigms

The Mediterranean coasts possess an accumulation of exceptional urban places that are uniquely rich, layered and complex, and whose physical and geographical features have enabled them to play a fundamental role in the development of civilisations. The port cities around the Mediterranean are highly sophisticated artefacts of major heritage value and are the outcome of a process dating back to the beginning of time but also expressing the varied, many-sided present day as well as looking forward to the future. But the complex connotations of this urban fabric cannot simply be explained as a consequence or a product of the interaction between the morphology of the Mediterranean territory, the evolution of a single civilisation, or the result of applying different rules. More interestingly, they are the end product of contaminations and cross-fertilisations that were mainly spontaneous and peaceful and that came about thanks to the contacts, exchanges and interchanges between the various populations and cultures of the basin. Because of these processes, which took place over time and across cultures, each Mediterranean port city developed its own identity and each one is completely different from the others, whilst at the same time being undeniably and indissolubly connected to them as an inextricable part of a whole system. On the other hand, whilst Fevre points out that historically, in the process of defining a system of connexions built on flexible and alternative systemic considerations, the difference between port-cities and other urban fabrics lies in the fact that they developed through reinterpretation by osmosis rather than through antagonistic comparison between different civilisations, from the various critical geographic features that describe and define the Mediterranean basin it is evident that, faced with this new ‘advanced’ dimension of the territories, which has been pushed to an extreme at their interfaces and in their relationships with the global network, the recognisable, particular nature of the Mediterranean port cities is being expressed and maintained on the basis of a double logical transversality: on the one hand, an evolving network that is spatial-systemic and genomic in nature is interacting and interweaving and is being defined by the set of connections each port city possesses, whilst it remains rooted in its own history and its own subsequent evolvution; on the other hand, each port city is proposing and reinterpreting its own series of connotative/connotating and dynamic signatures and relationships in terms of its space and layout, by causing configurative models from the past to intersect with the new stimuli and vocations that are being proposed, and imposed, by current needs.