The Transformation of Port Cities: Local Culture and the Post-Industrial Maritime City

Abstract

Regardless of size or location, port cities were strongly affected by industrial decline and forced to reinvent themselves. The port city we once knew was coined by a particular identity and culture, but now a new type of maritime city emerges with high-tech production, research institutions, tourism, leisure and other services. So, the port city in western countries underwent serious changes in its historic development path. In this process of transformation, one of the most important challenges was and is to change thinking and mentalities. The more distinctive the port city, the more exclusive and specialised its profile, culture and character-products of a historic legacy of maritime trading, seafaring, shipbuilding and all their related productive and service capacities-the greater the difficulty of responding to these challenges. Nonetheless, the changing patterns of local structures reflect essential elements and expressions of a typical local culture. The following reflections will argue that (1) "local culture" forms a third factor besides the socioeconomic structures and the institutional system, which strongly determines the local development; (2) this "local culture" is more or less a common characteristic of port cities all over Europe and in the western industrialised parts of the world, which have their roots in the European history (i.e. in USA or Australia) and (3) even today the typical maritime "local culture" plays an important role for the development of the postmodern port city, in spite of the strong forces of globalisation. Local culture affects the process of transformation by various functions. Hence, the typical development paths of port cities are not just pure adaptations to global dynamics. They are more an expression of a certain cultural autonomy reproducing the individuality and the diversity of port cities as well as their differences to the territorial, inland towns.

Dumai Port Area Development and Economics Approach

“…The validation process in the dynamic system is done in two respects, i.e. structure validation test and model performance/output validation test (Warsewa, 2017).…”

“…Indonesia is an archipelago country with the fourth number worldwide population number with of 255.5 million of total population. This country has Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of US $859.0 (Warsewa, 2017). According to the Central Statistics Agency, the Indonesia's economic growth is 4.67% on the third quarter of 2015 (Jansen et al, 2018).…”

Traces of the Spice Route in the Architecture and City of Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan, Indonesia

“…In the framework of this research, the complexity of city formation is focused on aspects related to the spice trade, making the motive for city formation more dominant due to trade relationships. European port cities generally transformed the industrialization era, starting as traditional port cities formed by past trade relationships between Europe and Asia (Warsewa, 2017). Port cities are located in coastal areas and the banks of large rivers are traversed by trade routes, producing port cities, especially in Asian regions (Yassin, 2010).…”

Emotional scapes in Mediterranean port cities: Walking Barcelona, Marseille and Genova

“…Numerous studies articulate their interconnected industrial trade networks, cosmopolitanism and post-industrial development as sites of urban renewal, gentrification and tourism (Hein, 2021; Mah, 2014). As these studies point out, since the 1960s, many port cities have become entangled with deindustrialisation and the flight of manufacturing to Asia, facilitated by container shipping (Mah, 2014: 29; see also Warsewa, 2017). For Mediterranean port cities, the Mediterranean Sea itself is a critical presence.…”

“…Scholarly studies suggest that ‘urban villages, place-making strategies and public art may well improve the visual appeal of places, attract tourists, lead to rises in private property values’ (Barnes et al, 2006: 338) and thus ultimately fuel gentrification (Smith, 2002). Warsewa (2017) goes as far as stating that the port city has today become ‘an exhibited city’ as a result of its ‘maritime tools’ that generate ‘the inevitable maritime museum, historic workshops, maritime heritage trails, open shipyards’ and so on (p. 152). To this end, the port city’s maritime past is commodified as a way of branding the urban space (Kowalewski, 2018; Tommarchi, 2021).…”