Port Waterfront. Space in Transition

Abstract

The port waterfront is an interaction space between urban communities, port infrastructures and water. It isn’t a physical border; it’s, on the contrary, a frontier, an interchange and transition zone with multiple values and meanings as space of protection, safety, wealth, merchandise, territorial integration and social identification.
The port waterfront is also an amazing narrative space. In literature, as well as in filmography, the urban area bordering the port is described as a dynamic space whose emotional value is associated with movement, flow of people and goods.
The waterfront of contemporary city-port has changed scale and quality values due to some interrelated socio-economic dynamics, including those of settlements metropolitanization, ports clusterization and more generally, of restructuring of production system and evolution of transport technologies.
Within the current changing scenarios, the port waterfront is a territorial interface that serves as risk mitation device imposed by the ongoing environmental and climate crisis. The article explores this last research perspective observing the case study of Taranto.
Moreover, the essay underlines the need to innovate mapping and design frameworks, governances and well-establisched decision-making processes to consider the multiple identity of port and its multilevel territorial interrelations. Moreover, the essay describes the contents of an applied research exsperience for the planning city-port interface in the city of Taranto.