ABSTRACT
All seaport cities have structural similarities and peculiarities. At the interface between sea and land, they are constantly adapting to the challenges of international and ultimately global traffic. Topographic preconditions, technical capabilities, network links with the hinterland, particular actors and stakeholders, and regulatory regimes all shape port city expansion, restructuring, and redevelopment. The interface between the requirements of sea transport and land transport, the docks, and the port, had to be planned and organized in a way that enabled adaptation to the ever-changing transportation. Port and city were a functional and spatial unit until the beginning of the 19th century; later, in several phases, they spatially separated and assumed different institutional responsibilities, mirrored by disciplinary distinctions between planners and engineers. In the 1960s, deindustrialization and containerization drove ports away from cities, leaving areas along the old waterfront as a challenge to planners.
