Port heritage enhancement for sustainable development: the case of Naples, Salerno and Castellamare port cities

Maritime culture and urban texture of port cities represent key realities for the economic development of territories by impacting on the well-being and quality of life of citizens. This implies the need to review the relationship between port and urban functions by making their operational activities environmentally and socially sustainable but also by identifying new services able of increasing the port's performance and the city's development in an integrated way. In the international debate, cultural heritage enhancement has a key role in the definition of new trajectories of sustainable urban development (European Commission 2017; 2018; KEA European Affairs, 2017). In Europe, within port-city interaction areas (e.g. Rotterdam, Barcelona, Liverpool etc.) some cultural assets have been transformed into laboratories of experimentation (Barcelona Tech City, 2020; Liverpool Baltic Triangle, 2020; RDM Rotterdam, 2020) for the sustainable management of cultural heritage and the urban quality of public spaces. Starting from these studies and practices, the research developed a “Port Heritage Enhancement” approach to assess and plan cultural and sustainable transformations of historical-architectural buildings, industrial archaeology, and symbolic urban spaces within the port-city interaction areas (Daldanise & Clemente 2022; Ettorre, Daldanise, Giovene di Girasole & Clemente, 2023).