Port Cities. Models of Governance, Port and Local Planning and Sub-areas of City-Port Interaction. The Case of Livorno and Valencia

Port cities have always been characterized by their dichotomic, constant balance between the difficulty of logistics management and the need for morphological integration between port infrastructure and urban structure. At the same time, they are configured as places of opportunity in the complex scenario of global challenges linked to the perspective of ecological transition for the revitalization of contemporary cities and territories. In this context, the contribution proposes a comparative analysis of two port cities belonging to the same governance model, Livorno (Port System Authority of the Northern Tyrrhenian Sea) for the national context and Valencia (Autoridad Portuaria del Valencia) for the international context. The two-case studies experiment, within the port town planning instrumentation, an interesting and innovative subdivision of the port into “sub-environments of city-port interaction”, portions of the territory in which the urban grafts and overlooks aimed at connecting the urban fabric with the port area are included. The contribution aims to highlight two aspects: the effectiveness of this sub-categorization and the need for policymakers to incentivize and provide innovative solutions within the urban planning instrumentation capable of taking on the dialogue between the port and the city as a new challenge.