ContestedPort · Contested port cities: a global geography of community conflicts

Contested port cities: a global geography of community conflicts

This research focused on the making of global ports as an urgent societal issue. Port cities, as well as being distinctive political economic nodes for international networks, are paradigmatic examples of the co-existence between people and multiscalar infrastructure. Inhabitants of port cities live alongside infrastructure serving a global system, which determines the modes of production and types of extraction from local territories. Here, the discrepancy between the localised concentration of costs to inhabitants and the spillover benefits gained by the oligopoly that controls the globalised maritime trade and related infrastructure becomes starkly visible. The inexorable growth of global ports is producing multidimensional frictions.. The expansion of port-related infrastructure requires more material resources including space, water and air, potentially producing deterritorialising dynamics1. Going beyond the scalar conception of “global logistics versus local territories”, such frictions can be understood as forces that emerge from the motion of different metabolisms and systems of values. The many emergent social mobilizations contesting port expansion in cities and regions around the world are questioning the ongoing socio-economic paradigm that has governed port cities over the last half century, which justifies the infinite growth of such infrastructure, and its environmental costs and benefits. They imagine other territorial models for reformulating co-existence with ports. This is turning the port city into relevant ground for renovated epistemological debates on transitions towards healthier and more sustainable territories. The paradigmatic changes affecting port-city regions are unprecedented, with increasing risks associated to climate change, including sea level rise, combined with the economic reorganisation of global shipping taking over ports, creating new territorial (im)balances. This new situation requires the formulation of a critical approach, which considers the experience of local communities in the formulation of responses for resilient futures. The main objective of this project was to articulate an original approach to port-city conflicts as sprawling but interconnected phenomena, developing a theoretical discussion from the angle of social science. Specific objectives were: 1. To articulate a theoretical framework for analysing port conflicts in social sciences, relevant especially to geographers, sociologists, urban planners and anthropologists. 2. To develop a methodology for identifying contested practices in projects of port expansion and impacts on local communities, preparing the base for the ethnographic work. 3. Testing the methodology conducting empirical research. 4. Disseminating results through academic articles and communications at international conferences, as well as the creation of an online platform.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз