On the waterfront. Ciudad sostenible, puerto consumible.

Resumen

A type of generic and standard intervention has transformed former port activity territories into metropolitan leisure containers, destined for the uses linked to local consumerism culture or global tourism, prioritising short-term economic profits and image returns and the functional specialisation of land use. Rather than projects able to generate inclusive dynamics and synergies between the renovated port and the existing city, there is an excess of transformation experiences that are unable to generate multiple uses and transversal relationships. Finally, the predominance of an equalised landscape takes place, characterised at one point by an extremely poor "biodiversity", regarding uses of space or user behaviour, and minimizing the complexity between urban shape and social function. The achievement of cities with sufficient diversity and complexity is a radical condition when thinking about more sustainable urban futures, and in this line, the author highlights two possible intervention strategies. The first one of these would be a contextualisation strategy. This is the configuration of the process of port transformation using physical characteristics, but particularly the social and cultural characteristics of the local context This means a clear prioritisation of public and collective uses of space, encouraging collective identification, the recognition of notion of place and the common temporality experienced by anyone taking possession of urban elements. Secondly, a slowness strategy, in other words, to subject the intervention project to key usage factors detached from the rapid rotation of activities and users. A "slow timing" strategy which expands the possibilities for spatial appropriation, thus multiplying the locations possibilities. In short, we are talking about urban and poetic regeneration of space, both of which are linked in a discourse that contemplates the identity of the location, while simultaneously allowing permeabilities of use, ensuring a complex dynamic evolution of the project with the location and surroundings.