Global trends and local and regional factors in the requalification of port-industrial areas. A critical view on the case of Porto Marghera, Venice

Global trends and local and regional factors in the requalification of port-industrial areas. A critical view on the case of Porto Marghera, Venice. - Port and industrial areas are experiencing dramatic processes of functional and spatial restructuring. The increasing qualification of commercial ports as logistic nodes, the restructuring and greening of traditional industrial activities, and the urban transformation of the most attractive derelict and redundant sites, are all factors that have undermined the role they used to play as gateway of industrial metabolism of national economies. However, the definition of a new role is, in many cases, a very complex process. The post-industrial transition, in fact, is nourished by a difficult political and economic synthesis between global dynamics and territorial factors, at local and regional scales. The case of Porto Marghera, Venice, confirms the complexity and difficulty of this process. A contradictory planning framework, the difficulties the local system experiences in implementing an effective environmental reclamation strategy as well as in promoting the greening of the industrial structure, conflicts about the vision of the area's future development, and the difficult regional integration of the port-industrial pole, are the most important factors that still hamper the post-industrial transition. This case confirms the increasingly important role that territorial policy, at local and regional scales plays in the evolution of the triptych city-port-industry; and the increasing difficulty to represent this evolution by means of general models.