Cultural Challenge for Port-City Ecosystem Re-Designing

Ports are fundamental touchstones for territorial economic development, as they impact significantly on the city: both by influencing well-being and quality of life and by creating spatial, social, and environmental conflicts. Their importance implies the need to review the relationship between port and urban functions in order to make their operational activities sustainable from an environmental and social point of view but also in order to identify new services that can increase the integrated performance of the port and the development of the city. The paper investigates the port-city relationship and sketches out how it could be shaped in a sustainable way, such as by integrating cultural and creative activities into port planning, with the ultimate aim of casting ports as the link between maritime and urban culture. In this perspective, the paper analyses some practices, specifically in Barcelona and Rotterdam, which have strengthened the relationship between port-city and redesigned the areas of interaction. In these contexts, ports are found to preserve their function as logistical infrastructures but also, by activating processes of urban regeneration, to expand their sphere of action and become "cultural and creative infrastructures".