Circular City Ports - Workbook

02 Process Investigating city ports
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The initial hypothesis is that city ports are of strategic
importance in the transition to circularity. City ports
have the combined fact that they have easy access to
all kinds of flows: the port as a gateway and matchmaker
between producers and traders and the proximity
to the city as market and pool of skills and services,
as well as the city as a mine of residual flows.
The actors who operate in city ports have been historically
and geographically positioned ‘in-between’,
thus more open for new ways of operating and a priori
more willing to embrace transition.
Today, we witness a renewed attention toward the
city port as a place of production and intramodality,
due to the financial crisis and climate change trends.
Many stakeholders and experts envision city ports as
a space where cities and ports can meet and interact
again, reintroducing and reinforcing their commercial
and productive relationships which were present in
the past.
Next to the desktop research, public debates, interviews
and working sessions were a way to interact
with these stakeholders and experts on the subject.