TRIESTE AND ITS PORT AS PARADIGM OF A RENEWED SEA-ORIENTED VISION?

Abstract

Historically, the identity of the coastal cities is closely linked to the complex relationship with the sea, a primary resource for the origin of the processes of economic growth and territorial transformation, with particular reference to the highly-sensitive border between earth and water, and their dynamics.

Dynamics more and more complex in the light  of the issues related to sustainable development, and to EU policies in the field of multimodal transport.

In particular, the current guidelines and directives of the EU, the geopolitical changes of the past two decades in an enlarged and projected onto the East and the Mediterranean are favorable conditions for the city of Trieste, able to reacquire a new centrality in the context Euro-Mediterranean as port of a broader territorial system, where the waterfront can be an opportunity to promote a new urban quality and revitalize local identities against the risks of uniformity.

These themes must be tackled at the different territorial and institutional levels, in a perspective of governance that implies an increasing participation of different local public and private actors in planning shared scenarios and looking for a delicate equilibrium between local and global dimensions.

The need to include the single projects of transformation in a shared strategic vision, the capacity to elaborate an innovative management of plans, projects and partnerships with a strong local character and the decisive importance of time, as a crucial variable in a rapidly evolving context, must be driving forces behind the development of Trieste, so that it can be projected into the future with a new Euro- Mediterranean role, without forgetting the problems connected to sustainability.