PORTUALITÀ XXI: I CLUSTER PORTUALI COME PAESAGGI LOGISTICI COSTIERI, Strategie di coesistenza e progetti di confine tra porto e città

Cities and ports have always had a complex relationship that, from the mid-twentieth century on, has turned into real conflict often causing a divide due to their divergent functions creating a delicate issue of any development. Despite this, ports continue to be the primary economic resource and a decisive source of employment in Europe. In today’s port expansion and development, the awareness of a need for new strategies is taking hold: it is no longer enough to investigate ways of regaining urban spaces abandoned by port activities, rather it has become necessary to explore the variety of design approaches through which a port survives and coexists with the city. New trends confirm that port areas, facing global and local challenges, are experimenting with shared use of land and resources, and realizing the potential of the “port-city-territory.” In this sense it’s possible conceive port systems as logistical landscapes within which concepts such as the development of positive industrial ecologies, the increase of intermodal infrastructure, and the integration of dynamic port logistics provide fundamentals to realize the ideal of “planning the city with the port.”