Page 14 - Mellinato, Giulio, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime Port Cities: The Northern Adriaticin a Comparative Perspective. Koper: University of Primorska Press.
P. 14
plex Gateways
The idea that the traditional seaports’ arrangement was about to be
replaced by a new one gave birth to a new stream of researches, aiming
at the preservation of the memories and the cultures embedded in the
old seaports’ operational structures (Davis et al. 2000; Beaven, Bell, and
James 2016; Worthington 2017). In this present book, Janine Schemmer
also presents a good example of memory safeguarding.
Very recently, a new topic has imposed itself on the interest of histo-
rians: that of sustainability, both environmental and social (Ng, Monios,
and Jiang 2020; Carpenter and Lozano 2020), along with a more articulat-
ed interest in the historical development of city functions, developed par-
ticularly by urban historians (Wakeman 2020). From our point of view,
this new research trajectory is extremely interesting, because it suggests
a holistic approach to the study of port human-technical-economic func-
tions (Fobbe, Lozano, and Carpenter 2020), and because it tries to over-
come the long standing dichotomy dividing port and city destinies, rec-
ommending the use of a port-city approach, instead of the traditional
port/city one (Van den Berghe and Daamen 2020). Within this book, we
have collected a good number of cases.
We are confident that history will find new perspectives and mate-
rials to work with. In this sense, the North Adriatic port system seems
to be a particularly insightful example, in the sense that it can couple
the perspectives presented by two interesting lines of research: one deal-
ing with the border gateways, and another one analysing the ‘ports in
proximity’.
Ake Andersson, two decades ago, defined a commercial hub as the
point (properly, a node) where the different links of a network encoun-
ter one another, enabling the interconnection of different trade routes;
from his perspective, a gateway is a place where different networks con-
verge, making possible the transshipments between different means of
transport. In historical terms, most of the time a hub corresponds to a
city, but more properly a gateway is an area, as in the case of a big city and
its surroundings, or a region, being a gateway by far more space- and re-
source-demanding than a hub (A. E. Andersson 2000). In this sense, the
North Adriatic area has traditionally covered the role of a gateway region
since the Roman and Venetian times.
Within the gateway-region perspective, in our times public institu-
tions are vested with a pivotal role, in the sense that all the infrastruc-
tures needed for the gateway to be effective are by far too expensive and
14
The idea that the traditional seaports’ arrangement was about to be
replaced by a new one gave birth to a new stream of researches, aiming
at the preservation of the memories and the cultures embedded in the
old seaports’ operational structures (Davis et al. 2000; Beaven, Bell, and
James 2016; Worthington 2017). In this present book, Janine Schemmer
also presents a good example of memory safeguarding.
Very recently, a new topic has imposed itself on the interest of histo-
rians: that of sustainability, both environmental and social (Ng, Monios,
and Jiang 2020; Carpenter and Lozano 2020), along with a more articulat-
ed interest in the historical development of city functions, developed par-
ticularly by urban historians (Wakeman 2020). From our point of view,
this new research trajectory is extremely interesting, because it suggests
a holistic approach to the study of port human-technical-economic func-
tions (Fobbe, Lozano, and Carpenter 2020), and because it tries to over-
come the long standing dichotomy dividing port and city destinies, rec-
ommending the use of a port-city approach, instead of the traditional
port/city one (Van den Berghe and Daamen 2020). Within this book, we
have collected a good number of cases.
We are confident that history will find new perspectives and mate-
rials to work with. In this sense, the North Adriatic port system seems
to be a particularly insightful example, in the sense that it can couple
the perspectives presented by two interesting lines of research: one deal-
ing with the border gateways, and another one analysing the ‘ports in
proximity’.
Ake Andersson, two decades ago, defined a commercial hub as the
point (properly, a node) where the different links of a network encoun-
ter one another, enabling the interconnection of different trade routes;
from his perspective, a gateway is a place where different networks con-
verge, making possible the transshipments between different means of
transport. In historical terms, most of the time a hub corresponds to a
city, but more properly a gateway is an area, as in the case of a big city and
its surroundings, or a region, being a gateway by far more space- and re-
source-demanding than a hub (A. E. Andersson 2000). In this sense, the
North Adriatic area has traditionally covered the role of a gateway region
since the Roman and Venetian times.
Within the gateway-region perspective, in our times public institu-
tions are vested with a pivotal role, in the sense that all the infrastruc-
tures needed for the gateway to be effective are by far too expensive and
14
