Port, Public Space and Metropolitan City

Abstract

Two very different questions coexist with difficulty and conflicts in the Port of Naples. Both are still unresolved despite the projects and programmes which have accumulated over the last decade. On the one hand the desirable and requested reappropriation of public space and projection of the city towards the sea, along the 5 kilometres of the linear strip that borders the port area. On the other, the inverse questions that are posed to the city – of a spatial, cultural and sensorial nature and also of the discovery and hospitality related to the different forms and corridors of travel - from the sea routes of the various flows of commuters and cruisers. To this already critical interaction there is added the cumbersome but unavoidable needs of a large and competitive commercial port of the Mediterranean which generate both strong specialisation and compartmentalisation within the port area, and a further boost from the port to the city generated by specialised traffic that is linked to this great intermodal hub. This traffic produces invasive and non-programmed dynamics in the areas behind the port and relies on an inadequate infrastructure, straining the already difficult relationship with the freight terminal of Nola. This difficult coexistence of fluxus and places, which is also the coexistence of public and economic actors that raise many questions, causes different degrees of porosity and reciprocal “resistance” in the relationship between the city and the port, thereby producing differentiated processes of urban osmosis. The choices that have been made over the last decade, from the international competition to redesign the waterfront to the Grand Project “Port integrated system of Naples”, make it clear, in the difficulties encountered in their implementation but especially in their episodic nature, the difficulty there is in expressing a vision that is able to go beyond the port area and to stimulate both the strategic priorities of the future Metropolitan City and the Government’s Urban Agenda.