Author: AIVP
On sale date: Monday, 25 April 2005
Type of document: Report
Location: America : Chili : Valparaiso
Language: English, French, Spanish

The second seminar of the project devoted to the good practices on the city-port interface ended a few days ago in Valparaiso (Chile), a partner city of this project of the European Urb Al Program. The participants particularly enjoyed the excellent reception that was reserved for them in Valparaiso, an emblematic city of the city-port relation.

The project also associated the cities of Bilbao, Montevideo and Rosario; Marseilles had the role of the leader while the IACP was in charge of the scientific coordination. The seminar, which had been widened to the other port cities of the IACP network during this stage of development of the works, gathered nearly 120 participants from 23 port cities of 8 different countries. Almost all the South-American countries were represented in Valparaiso. Combining presentation of experiences, debates and validation of works devoted to the drawing up of a guide on “good practices” as regards the development of the city-port interfaces, this seminar also allowed to broaden the debate on the expectations of ports towards strategies of urban development. A city-port consensus thus emerged on the importance to be given to the economic and port development of these interface spaces, even if at the same time the opening of the city on the sea and the port spaces seems to be a necessity. From then on, the waterfront does no longer have only an urban and playful dimension but becomes also a place of economic production related to the maritime activity. In that sense the seminar in Valparaiso comes within the scope of the continuation of the works of the recent international conference of Lisbon. The works of the projects will end in a few months with the drawing up and the distribution of the guide that will have the ambition to help the decision-makers of the port places to find the reference elements, which will be useful to guide their development decisions and strategic choices.