PortCityFutures contributes to the new LDE strategy by uniting researchers from the humanities, social, and design sciences to address the complex relationships between ports, cities, and regions.
The Rotterdam region and the Province of South Holland illustrate how changes in port work, production, and environmental systems affect wider regional and global networks. Decisions made locally are connected to transformations in other port city regions worldwide. By comparing global examples such as Tokyo, Sekondi-Takoradi, Philadelphia, and Savannah - where PCF members are active - PortCityFutures explores how local communities and urban development are shaped by global socio-spatial processes. These studies reveal how national and global interests intersect and how questions of opportunity, wealth distribution, and sustainability emerge from port activities.
With its integrated, interdisciplinary, and comparative approach, the initiative generates insights relevant for port city regions everywhere while complementing, but not overlapping with, other LDE initiatives.
Ambitions
Mutual Urgencies
Ports and cities face global urgencies, including climate change, sea water level rise, migration, and the energy transition, and local urgencies, such as education and job creation. Many spatial issues intertwine the two scales. How can stakeholders garner broad support for recognizing individual and shared problems, generating solutions, and experimenting with new ways of working?
Collective Ambitions
Mapping ambitions from all stakeholders within a port city region will unveil both conflicting and supporting objectives and motivation. Understanding each other’s contexts, concerns, and hopes, and finding the interdependencies between parties is crucial for developing a future in which city and port remain fruitfully connected.
Collaborative Progress
Port specific research and development affects the city on spatial, cultural, and social levels. A collaborative approach is needed to acknowledge this reality and to facilitate mutual benefits.
Supporting Solutions
Experiences and expertise developed by spatial design researchers and planners in each port-city domain can be shared across port cities around the world through multinational, multidisciplinary exchanges among relevant stakeholders, including academics, port authorities, city governments, and citizens.
Technology Exchange
Technologies developed for specific port or city related challenges – IoT, sensoring, truck platooning – may very well be applicable to the urban and regional context. Exchange of knowledge and technology may improve efficiency and connectedness.
Planning and Design Alliances
Collaborative design and planning processes include various stakeholders’ ambitions and needs, and result in mutual beneficial proposals and results.
