Workshop on “Regeneration of Port Cities and Port Areas”, 16 May 2017, Brussels

05 June 2017

On 16 May, the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) and the Maltese Presidency of the Council of the EU jointly organised a workshop on "Regeneration of Port Cities and Port Areas", in collaboration with EFIP, ESPO, FEPORT, AIVP and ECSA. Over 65 representatives from the industry, cities/regions and European institutions were present and exchanged ideas on the key question of the event: ‘How to strengthen city-port relations’?

For years already ESPO has put the city-port relationship high on its agenda. During the workshop ESPO had the opportunity to present the three initiatives developed since 2009: 

  • Code of Practice on Societal Integration of Ports (2010), outlining ten recommendations around around three major themes (General Public Support and image, Education and labour market, Port-city relationship).
  • ESPO Award: since 2009 it is given each year to a port project that is enhancing the port city relationship in an innovative way. More than 150 ports have been participating in this competition over the years.
  • Code of Practice for Cruise and Ferry ports (2015): enhancing the port-city relationship is an important challenge addressed in this code of good practices for cruise and ferry ports.

Isabelle Ryckbost (picture) referred finally  to some relevant  data gathered through the Portopia project:  81% of the port authorities establish cohabitation with local communities in and around the port area on the one hand  and 80% make society experience and understand the port90% of the European ports are “urban ports”, while 33% are municipality owned.

The audience also got the opportunity to listen to the winner of the ESPO award 2016 who presented the winning project :  “The Luneplate project”, from bremenPorts.

Many other interesting presentations from high-quality speakers were presented on the day. Please feel free to have a look at them by following this link on the official website of the event: http://cor.europa.eu/en/events/Pages/port-cities.aspx

The workshop was concluded with the statement that economically, culturally and socially ports and cities are indisputably linked to each other and there is more and more mutual understanding of both interests and spillover effects. But continuous interaction supported by a long-term, sustainable vision and integrated management approach is needed.


Related documents


No attachments.