Es una buena cuestión y muy clásica: Adam Smith estableció la relación entre crecimiento económico, división del trabajo y tamaño del mercado inspirándose en las facilidades ofrecidas por los puertos del Mediterráneo para promover el comercio -gracias a las ventajas de la navegación a vela, frente al transporte de superficie-.

Ya con los pies en la tierra, las relaciones entre puerto y ciudad y sus efectos en la costa, son siempre bipolares. Las enseñanzas de esta investigación para el Mediterráneo pueden ser de mucho interés.

Thanks for your answer.

We can't understand the city , the port and the relations between them without the ecnomic activities. We can't understand, in my opinion, the State of Art about the main keyword of my first question about mediterranean culture, without the studies and researchs of Joan Alemany. The problem, in my opinion, could be this relations is not based on bipolarity, but in "three-polarity". If we review the historical evolution of the relations bettween cities and ports, there were important divorces as two "independent" entities.

The economic activities are undoubtedly important for the development of a country but it is definitely the most important public health. The environment is everyone's heritage and must be defended with all strength. What is the economic development if it is to the detriment of the quality of people's lives?

This is a good and very complex point: to have a good definition of the concept of economic development or, in other words, a compact view of the notion of progress. Mainstream economics works in it, but there are many and controversial approaches. My point of sinthesis is the simple framework pictured, fourty years ago, by F. Thomas Juster and a French national accountant, André Vanoli.

I attach a file with the basics ideas and a recent paper with the current debate in economics.

http://search.oecd.org/officialdocuments/displaydocumentpdf/?cote=std/doc(2010)5&docLanguage=En

The file and the references (ppt).

Good afternoon, and thanks for your opinions. I will try to answer to everybody.

First for Francesca:

You are right. Maybe the complexity of this kind of topics are obliging to us to look for partial views, reducing the respective perspectives, but the complex concept, the complex idea must be always present. I would prefer to talk about quality of life, at the end it can be the most general topic, and really everything must be related to it. The adequate balance among the several perspectives can be translated into a good quality of life. It is common to talk about healthy cities (We can remember last actions into WHO) But only a few scholars are talking about healthy territories.

One hour ago I have been asking in the final exam of my pupils about the relation between Regional Architecture, Architectural Design and Quality of Life. It is the typical question we can ask for myself, at the end, relations,..

Being practical, how do you improve this dialog about city-port relationship form your point of view? Thanks very much

I think the ports are a valuable resource for the territory and the people where there is respect for the land. I think it's right to protect the environment from pollution (closely monitoring pollution sources) not forgetting the environment is a community resource and must be protected, always remembering that the resources are not infinite and looking for the right balance between the interests budget of a few people and the public interest. I like to think of infrastructures that integrate the territory that does not exploit it to ruin it by making life unbearable neighboring towns

For Manuel(specially) but for Francesca too...

Thanks for your participation. really, it is a ity but when we watch the term "economy" always we are thinking in other thimgs, related always... to the same things, to the same people. Thanks for the comments about Vanoli. Propblems are arriiving when the balances are lost, when we are overlapping the limits.

The economy is maybe an important effect based on the most of human activites, if we understand really this term in the way you use it.

Anyway, the idea of this discussion is to open the window and look at the relations between the city and the port with a special attention to the surrounding territories. And talking about it, quality of life will appear when the balance between the production and the consumption are right. Please try to understand it as social production, cultural production, and.... economical production. Just in the same way the consumptions.....

But let us come back ti the origins....

The balance between citiies and ports defines the best parts of the history between both elements. Unbalanced uses from one of these two parts provoked several negative effects. And now we can see it: Too many ancient port spaces blocked and with adequate functions... Too big port areas fr too small cities close to them.The dependence relation between city and port is clear, but I would like to propose some topic for future discussion if you don't mind within the general problem about city/port.

Can you give some proposal?

I am really concerned today about the medium and small scale cities and their ports. Musel-Gijón, or mestre or Trieste,... for example they hace their own dynamics... Problems are for these small urban centers and ports are losing functionality.... Any opinion about it?

Thanks

Quisiera agregar la definición que he podido construir , respecto a la relación puerto-ciudad. Se ubica en las bases teóricas de la economía regional y rebasa las cuestiones de diseño y planificación urbana. Los puertos son enclaves económicos que responden a un "hinterland" y a "externets" ; rutas terrestres y rutas marítimas que forman una red, que condiciona las formas y estructuras urbano regionales. Es el mismo caso de las ciudades fronterizas . Sus procesos físico-espaciales están condicionados por los flujos económicos y la infraestructura de movilidad externas