Port Cities and Evaluation: A Literature Review to Explore Their Interplay in Planning

Port cities constitute complex urban systems in which human settlement, production activities, and coastal resource uses intersect. Sustainable planning in these cities is critical due to the intricate relationship and interdependence between environmental phenomena and socio-economic processes. This literature review investigates the role of evaluation in the study of port cities by cross-checking the concepts of “evaluation” and “port cities”. The Scopus database was queried to obtain publication data; then VOSviewer software was used for bibliometric analysis of the results. The analysis of the scientific literature identifies the themes, scale of application, key methodologies and evaluation issues found. Afterwards, the classification of scientific literature is differentiated by scale of application, topic, method, and evaluative problem. The results show how research tends to distinguish and separate the evaluation of the economic performance of the port, seen as transportation and logistics infrastructure, from the assessment of socio-environmental processes, referring to the urban waterfront and coast. This separation is reflected in the identified research gaps and suggests that the application of evaluation to the transformative processes of port cities must therefore promote the integration of the different dimensions involved, aiming for the recognition of the complexity of the values involved and pursuing Sustainable Development Goals.