Introducing compatible uses for public access
The connection with the city must be to find spaces where the port is also a city. It is therefore necessary to connect the port infrastructure with social and cultural infrastructure: uses must be created to connect citizens to the docks and the port in a real and symbolic way.
There is a way in which [the embedding of the port in the city] can be monitored or that can be addressed. The Port of Rotterdam does that every time they create a breakwater. In order to create a harbor, in order to expand the port, beaches are created on that side of it. […] So much of it is actually accessible both by cycle, but also by ferries.
Laleh Khalili
Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London
If we want [the port] to be not securitized, then the ships that are coming into port have to be safe. And so you need a much stronger inspection regime for a municipally in order to ensure that the ships that are coming in are in better shape, you need to have [an active participation] in all of the processes of port planning: by the governance of a particular city or by the port management, for civil groups, neighborhood groups to be involved, but also small business groups to be involved in the planning around the ports.
Laleh Khalili
Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London
The transformation and development of the transitional spaces between port and city of the main port cities in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century is characterised by revitalisation processes. These are characterised by changing the use of obsolete port spaces according to private interest, as in most cases capital is needed for their development. This process has led to two models that can be found all over the world.
The first leads to a process of outsourcing with leisure and commercial uses, embodied in the model of festivalisation that characterises interventions such as the Port of Baltimore. The second is a hyperdevelopment process of large architectural projects, with intensive real estate development for residential or office use, such as Docklands in London or Southbank in Melbourne.
Most of the time, when ports are involved in [waterfront] development, they tend to be constructed and governed by private firms, often the port management, which means that they can dictate who can come into the space of the marina or the port and who can not. […] And it ends up being like a shopping mall on the water.
Laleh Khalili
Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London
Large infrastructures can no longer be planned the way they used to be planned. [They need to be] not monolithic, understood from their dynamics, from a multiplicity of functions, for a world that is much less easily predictable than it was a decade ago.
Gabriella Gómez-Mont
Founder, Experimentalista
The challenge, then, is to understand the necessary transformation of port infrastructures as a relationship strategy with the immediate environment, focusing on the general interest and reality of the port as a public good, and its commitment to multifunctionality. In this sense, the port infrastructure must be profoundly diversified to include other functions of the city, recognising its potential to become part of the social and cultural infrastructure of the area in which it is located. This overlapping of functions allows it to be flexible and increase the capacity of interaction between the port and the city, filling spaces while waiting to introduce other logistical, port or new activities resulting from unexpected changes. At the same time, it is a guarantee that the development of the port will be balanced with the improvement of the quality of life in the maritime neighbourhoods.
No one would have ever thought of walking along the waterfront, and people would not have experienced the waterfront as a walkable area because it was seen only as an industrial wasteland with many obsolete piers. But once there was [the Giants ballpark] that attracted so many people from so many different backgrounds to enjoy an American sport, it helped to democratize the waterfront in ways that few other uses could do.
Diane Oshima
Director of Planning & Environment, Port Of San Francisco (2017-2021)
The proposed overlap of compatible public access uses is related to the challenge that dense cities face to improve the efficiency of developed areas and avoid unnecessary expansions. The intensity of activities involved in this overlap also promotes the creation of synergies and innovations within the city-port ecosystem. The key is to promote compatible spatial and functional solutions that maximise public access to the coast through technology and improvements in port security.
[In Stockholm] these massive port areas that used to be the old container port are changing. Some hurdles that had to be overcome were to figure out which functions need to be there today, from a port perspective, and which functions need to be there tomorrow. […] We had to find a mix, for instance building offices to work as noise barriers to build housing behind them.
Fredrik Lindstål
Chairman of the Board of Stockholms Hamn AB – Ports of Stockholm
Key Actions
- Create access points and public spaces along the harbour extension where people can reach the sea.
- Facilitate access to facilities through sustainable mobility mechanisms: more public transport lines and frequencies, better connections for pedestrians and bicycles.
- Design use plans and activities that include criteria for quality public and mixed use. This means creating the possibility for different things to happen, attractively and for all target groups.
- Introduce public facilities and cultural and social uses that bring residents closer to their daily lives.
Experts
Fredrik Lindstål
Chairman of the Board of Stockholms Hamn AB – Ports of Stockholm
Gabriella Gómez-Mont
Founder, Experimentalista
Laleh Khalili
Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London