Urb AL project : intermediary seminar
Author: AIVPOn sale date: Tuesday, 09 November 2004Type of document: ReportType of activity: International MeetingsLocation: Language: English, French, Spanish In the framework of the Urb AL project dedicated to the strategies of transformation of abandoned port sites, the city of Marseilles, the project leader, welcomed the delegates of the other participating port cities from the 12th to 15th October last. Hugo Gilmet, Urban planning Manager of Montevideo, his counterparts Ruben Palumbo (City of Rosario) and Manuel Asua (City of Bilbao), as well as Gabriel Aldoney, Chairman of the port of Valparaiso, were thus able to confront their city-port strategies with those of the stakeholders in Marseilles. To guide them in this approach, IACP, scientific partner in the programme, called on the competencies of two experts, members of their network : Joan Alemany, the Barcelona economist specialised in city - port relationships, and Roberto Converti, the Argentinean urban planner and architect. The two experts of IACP had previously travelled to each of the partner port communities in the project, so as to carry out an audit of the city-port relationship and the projects. The programme proposed to the delegates in Marseilles had the objective of initiating a first exchange of experiences between the players intervening on the various sites. The two IACP experts, on their side, had the mission of identifying the "good practices" but also the specific difficulties encountered by the stakeholders of these various port-cities in the context of drawing up their city-port strategies. The groups of delegates were also able to profit from a detailed presentation of the Marseilles projects orchestrated by Jean Canton, General Manager of Urban planning for the City of Marseilles, with the collaboration of the local public or private actors concerned.
 From this first confrontation of port-city projects and strategies, at first sight fairly dissimilar as much by the size of their ports (annual traffics from 3 to 90 million tonnes) as by their social, political and institutional environments, particularly rich exchanges were nevertheless born. A consensus was fairly rapidly reached on the necessity to engage in redevelopment strategies of a "win-win" type both for the city and for the port. This idea was particularly well illustrated by the example of Bilbao where the work on the industrial-port wastelands of the Ria associated at the same time: high quality urban programmes, boosted by the Guggenheim Museum, a complete reorganisation of competitive port functions, and in-depth work on the organisation and management of transport flows in the regional area. Against this, the analysis of the case of Montevideo showed that the evident qualities of the site and its situation and its exceptional geographic opportunities did not yet suffice to bring to the surface a jointly drawn up strategic vision of the port community. The project of the city and that of the port neutralised each other through a lack of being able to come together. In this respect, the Marseilles experience in the setting up of the public organisation "Euromeditérranée" as a structure federating the interests of city and port and capable of playing a strong role as an accelerator of projects was observed with the greatest interest by the South-American members of the programme.
-> http://www.mairie-marseille.fr
-> http://www.bilbao.net
-> http://www.montevideo.gub.uy
-> http://www.rosario.gov.ar
-> http://www.portvalparaiso.cl
-> http://www.municipalidaddevalparaiso.cl
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