Giving new meaning to coastal ideas
We are building a history of the future that connects us as a city to the port and the sea and honours the memory and identity of seafarers.
Some ports end up becoming really important destination ports and some become transit ports. [...] Hubs of transit, they do not necessarily generate sets of social relations that bind the ports very intimately to their own hinterlands, to their own cities, to their own regions. What they end up doing is actually, because they are outward looking, they act as a kind of a hub between different countries, between different [often] transnational spaces.
Laleh Khalili
Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London
Major commercial ports have prioritised transnational dynamics and the servicing of international trade networks, jeopardising society’s support for these infrastructures. This rupture of a collective narrative that no longer sees the port as an asset serving the territory is a weakness that threatens societal consent and the public investment needed to sustain port activities.
The process of territorialisation and connectivity of the port infrastructure must be accompanied by the construction of a new history and social recognition to ensure its continuity in the future. In this sense, it is important to recognise the links between the fundamental symbols of the port’s history: the port as an element of exchange between one’s hometown and other worlds, and the link between land and sea. This cultural heritage needs to be understood in a dynamic way so that it can be redefined for the future. The proximity to water is a very powerful symbol that can tell broader stories that make it easier for new ideas to take root in an increasingly diverse society.
The moment we have the possibility to activate an important symbol for the city, the more there is a multiplicity of possibilities to belong to this symbol, to use this space. How do we come back to the need for these infrastructures to be antimonolithic, and somehow break the path dependency in forms that are also civic, participatory and so on?
Gabriella Gómez-Mont
Founder, Experimentalista
This aspiration is directly related to opening up and maximising public access to the harbour infrastructure, as activating the space and allowing it to be used by a greater number of people will facilitate the appropriation and resignification of the space both individually and collectively. Opening up provides the opportunity to develop the waterfront and harbour infrastructure as an educational environment that is transparent, accessible and dependent on the other parts of the ecosystem. In short, it is about nurturing everyday relationships in port infrastructures and rooting them in the social and community fabric that surrounds them.
People like to do things, they like to eat things, they like to play. And that's what holds them in public access places - not just walking through and passively sitting. We have a beautiful vista [in San Francisco Bay], you can sit there, enjoy and take in the views. How you enrich the public's use and experience of those public access spaces is something that every community needs to figure out.
Diane Oshima
Director of Planning & Environment, Port Of San Francisco (2017-2021)
Public access doesn't have to be continual, there can be breaks in places where you don't have access to the shoreline, and you can still have a wonderful waterfront experience. It's what you do with those public access spaces that will really make that experience.
Diane Oshima
Director of Planning & Environment, Port Of San Francisco (2017-2021)
Key Actions
- Restore and enhance the maritime and port identity of the surrounding towns and districts through the memory of work and daily life.
- Integrate collective and popular celebrations in the city-port spaces, such as parties or regular events that can add symbolic value to the space shared by the community.
- Refer to broad cross-cutting themes that can combine the contemporary with the traditional – such as gastronomy or music – and work to incorporate diversity in creative and active ways.
Experts
Diane Oshima
Director of Planning & Environment, Port Of San Francisco (2017-2021)
Gabriella Gómez-Mont
Founder, Experimentalista
Laleh Khalili
Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London