1 Port City – an Exceptional Conjunction
The confluence of sea and city has left its mark on urban design, art, and literature. When we talk about port cities, we usually imply urban units defined by a special physical, technical, and cultural relationship with the sea, made possible by port infrastructure. In fact, the functionality of port cities has changed over time, and they have, at various points, been considered safe havens and defence posts.
Although port cities may play many roles, keeping the port operating usually has taken precedence over any other endeavours. However, many contemporary cities that began as ports have gradually been overtaken by manufacturing, financial, or service activities and, for many, port city heritage has become an iconic landmark. Port cities are not just about logistics, but also about a particular kind of culture.
In principle, a port is the part of a port city where the relationship between sea and city is staged. But in recent years, harbour zones have been pushed outside the city centre to the outskirts, where they are surrounded by high fences and controlled by special institutions (Hein, 2019). Restricted access to quays, ships, and seafarers has led to the decline of ‘sailortowns’, which once bustled with taverns while maritime tales and exoticism built an attractive myth of the port city.
Even if the port functions of port cities are hidden, port and city remain mutually interdependent. Harbour districts provide a good example of the nexus formed by a city, water, and port wharf; the essence of a port city’s atmosphere is based there. Many historic settlements and contemporary World Heritage properties were built around maritime trade and remain vibrant port cities today. The atmosphere of the port city is still noticeable in the material and immaterial remnants of maritime human activities in public spaces. It can also be depicted in the city dweller’s imagination, which is filled with myths, legends, port tales, shanties, and memories of old harbour places. Figures and objects in urban space or on waterway routes such as old cranes, bollards, piles, anchors, and sailing marks can strengthen shared mindsets and
Together they create a port cityscape that goes far beyond the port’s demarcated borders into neighbouring streets, waterfronts, housing, and leisure facilities, a porous space crossed by diverse flows (Hein 2011; 2021). Every city is a treasure trove of memories, traditions, and cultural heritage. It is true that many ports have undergone a transformation which has meant the withdrawal of the port from the life of the city to its outskirts or even the loss of a port’s function.
The influence of port and sea does not always involve romantic port tales or nostalgia for the port’s former splendour. The industrial impact of a working port – with its air, water, soil, and noise pollution – may be considered highly undesirable by actual or potential residents. This has been recognized in the AIVP Agenda 2030, which translates the global governance Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations in the 2030 Agenda into the context of port cities. The conclusion to be drawn from these strategic documents is that port cities are at the front line of sustainable development challenges. What is more, coastal regions will suffer some of the worst consequences of climate change. However, port cities are also frontrunners in testing innovative solutions to various problems including those related to energy transition, innovative industries, mobility, and cultural development. Among measures taken to build the capital to maintain the competitiveness of the port city, decision makers, planners and researchers should pay particular attention to the relationship between port, city, and city dwellers. To prepare port cities for sustainable development challenges we need to create collaborative spaces for experimentation. We need to encourage communication and interaction based on the collective identity of the port city. That may include developing public spaces and recreational or cultural amenities in port city interface zones to promote a better understanding of the port and public acceptance of logistic activities.
Regardless of whether and how a port prospers in the global transshipment market, port cities still matter. City residents, local authorities, and port stakeholders need each other today, some to maintain their imaginations and others their expectations, and they need to work together to gain an advantage over other ports by attracting young talent to the maritime transshipment industry. There is a new hustle and bustle in port cities that deserves to be discovered.
2 Hustle and Bustle
The phrase ‘hustle and bustle’ is a useful way to describe what characterizes port cities. One of the main research questions that accompanies the proposed
Hustle and bustle is not only descriptive, but an analytical judgement. It suggests a lively and attractive environment, but also one filled with chaos, danger, and noise. A bustling, crowded street can be an indicator of the success of urban planning and the quality of urban public spaces (as a place where ‘something is always happening’). But it can also be an indicator of overcrowding and a space that is too noisy and busy. This concept encompasses both quantitative (physical parameters, quantifiable multiplicity, social diversity indicators) and qualitative characteristics (cultural images, metaphors, meanings).
The hustle and bustle of a port city is not just an experience of sound and images nor is it a metaphor – it is also a temporal, social, and spatial reality. A port city, like an organism, generates noises, movements, and images related to its urban metabolism. It seems to have a life of its own. Consider the most significant antonym of hustle and bustle: silence. In urban studies, this term also is Janus-faced. On the one hand, silence is a threatening sign of a cataclysm yet to come; it points to empty, extinct, or simply sterile spaces. From this perspective, as long as there is hustle and bustle, the city is alive. When the city begins to decline, to depopulate, to disintegrate, it begins to quiet down. Hustle and bustle can be understood as a sign of power and urban vitality, generated by group activity. But there is also another understanding of urban silence: as something valued by those tired of the noises of the city. After all, a feature of well-selling apartments for people seeking stability and respite is ‘peace and quiet’. Isolation from car traffic, from the crowd, becomes a requirement of rest and a sought-after treasure – because it is extremely difficult to find in the urban space of a metropolis. But in the end, one of the attractions of an urban way of life is being among people, where something is going on.
Clearly, in the sense proposed here we go beyond the physical study of the urban audiosphere – we are much more interested in the conventions of reading and generating the sounds of the city in the so-called soundscape (Schafer, 1994; Malaspina, 2018; Axelsson, 2020). We derive the hustle-and-bustle concept from associations with modern metropolises, whose centres ‘never sleep’, referring to images of urban spaces in which there is an intense flow of crowds and an increased activity of institutions, people, machines, and nature. Images of the vibrant port city have been and are sustained in a variety of narratives: literary, pop culture, marketing, and tourism (Kowalewski, 2021). We find references to the mobility and noise of port facilities, but also to the bustle of the
The culture of a port city can also be an attraction, especially in the context of the economic collapse of the maritime and shipping industry. Cultural revitalisation projects related to waterfront development are a good example of attempts to make port cities attractive to new residents and sources of income. The renewal of waterfront spaces has created new meanings and functionalities in the public sphere. The synergy of past and present makes them attractive places to live or locate a business. Culture and creativity have become a kind of capital in the syncretic space of old and new. They give character to the space, which becomes an important element of the image of the port city. It gives a sense of shared identity, as if people have implicitly agreed on how the city should be understood.
The contributions to this volume consider the perspectives of various scientific disciplines and methodological approaches to capture different layers of the port city’s hustle and bustle. They engage with movements and sounds generated by water, machines, ships, cranes, animals, and people – what we have in mind is not only the physical parameters of hearing, but the social practice of listening and interpreting.
The port – if it is accessible and visible – offers a feast of colour and sound, interpenetrating with the ordinary (not related to the port) urban structure. It can present as a complex threat, not only in the criminal sphere, but also in the sphere of organism overload, of light and noise pollution. The multi-sensory experience of vibrant port cities has its own pattern of stimulus reception, as Georg Simmel (1902) has written about. Perhaps the cultural framework that rationalizes the need to endure contact with the port is the romanticization through which the port district gets its magical glow, and the port sex quarters, hiding structures of human and drug trafficking, become a tourist attraction.
Stereotypes of frenetic port districts with stark contrasts, both bright-neon lit and dark and crime-ridden, recur in narratives of city governments that attempt to attract tourists by appealing to the promise of vibrant, liveable spaces of entertainment and their integrative/innovative function (‘pleasurescapes’ (Baptist, 2020)). They are both part of a maritime mindset and port city culture that have long characterized port cities and that merit rediscovery in
The sites are designed to attract tourists for whom the iconic imagery of the port city space, presence of ships, and colourful port districts provide the setting and promise of a satisfying experience. Again, we find a port city duality: some residents look forward to the events in which the port city will shine, while others, overwhelmed by the noise and influx of tourists, escape from the city or contest its policies. Sustainable development and environmental protection have become increasingly important. We need to understand that the port city will not grow indefinitely and that the effects of its development, such as water, soil, and air pollution, are becoming a problem. Planning for the future and prosperity of port cities must take this complexity into account.
The hustle and bustle of port cities has its own dynamics over the long term. Port spaces intermingle with other urban structures; there is an alternating ‘quieting’ and intensification of the turmoil. However, the experience of the micro-geography of the hustle and bustle space is related to the imaginary, the narrative of the vibrant culture of the port city. Literature, film, television series, tourist brochures, travel guides, postcards, Instagram photos – each of these constructs a port city mindset. With sufficient skill, stories can be used to manage the image of a vibrant, living city: to hide the flaws and weaknesses of port areas, but also to identify strategic goals for urban transformation.
The double face of the hustle and bustle of the port city also applies to the post-capitalist production of space. The structures of the patriarchal and post-colonial world, subordinated to the logic of profit, and the spaces of human trafficking are hidden behind the veil of the bustling port and colourful port district. When we think of cities as points of migration flows, of their role as nodes of multiple languages, cultures, and religions (Körs, 2019), we also remember that they have served as places where slaves were deported (Oostindie, 2021) and for refugees have been sites of forced displacement (Diaz, 2019).
The port city is created not only by narratives but also by spatial practices. Movement, trade, transportation operations, and port traffic are subordinated to daily cycles, but change over longer periods of time – years, decades, and centuries. The historical and political perspective is key to the rethinking of port city culture. We need to consider how relevant the memory of the golden age of the port city is: the years of prosperity, when ships announced their arrival with a loud siren, and the port and the city remained in strong symbiosis (van de Laar, 2016).
The complexity addressed here, the multiplicity of economic actors operating in a port city, are unique parameters for conducting large-scale commercial activities. The port city is an environment that, through its highly educated and
The multiculturalism of ports is also a complexity of their heritage, whose remnants can be seen across the city in diverted architectural genealogies and varied layers of urban planning. Former garrisons, brownfields, technical solutions, and traces of mixed urban cultures (especially in cities over which different nation-states took control over centuries) make up this composition, a polyphony of identities.
One of the historically shaped characteristics of the port city is the complexity of the networks of social bodies: guilds, associations, trading companies, maritime leagues with their ambitions and objectives that go beyond the local level. The management centres of transnational networks are concentrated in the port city and the relationships between them are unique. The competition between the actors mentioned here (and the competition between ports) makes some of these relationships conflictual in nature. The role of ports in international politics is particular – it is also revealed in micro-geographies and local practices, with perhaps the most notable case being the Boston Tea Party. The arrest of a foreign ship, the refusal to serve a ship of a hostile power, cargo and customs embargoes, the involvement of ships in political subversion – these are cases that show that a port can appear as an important setting in international politics and that it can be seen as a place of contention.
Phrases such as ‘turmoil’ or ‘melting pot’ apply not only to the role of ports in international political processes, but also to domestic politics, as evidenced by numerous studies of protests in port cities (Tan, 2007; Mottiar & Bond, 2012). An important example can be found in the research on the political climate of Polish coastal cities in the 1970s and 1980s, which emphasizes the important role in protest campaigns played by port cities (Bloom, 2006; Lorens & Bugalski, 2021), with their relatively easier contact with the outside world and open-minded and politically brave spirit.
The hustle and bustle of activities in and around the port are central to the ambiguity of opinions regarding port cities. Port cities have been portrayed as places where fantasies of wealth, freedom, and exotic and dangerous journeys are combined with down-to-earth passions, exploitation, demoralisation, human hubris, and rebelliousness. Cognitive dualism provides a universal interpretative framework for port cities. The hustle and bustle of the market, the harbour, and the quays made port cities strong centres of economic and cultural life. On the other hand, port cities have been notorious for difficulties in maintaining public order as well as for the moral decay, noise, and poor social conditions that have accompanied intensive port and commercial activities (Braudel, 1992a; 1992b). This is exemplified by the work of Lewis Mumford (1961), for whom the port city provided a negative example, similar to the noisy Greek polis and vast Roman megalopolis. Port cities were said to lack an organic relationship between the city and its landscape, daily life, and work. In Mumford’s view, the story of the development of port cities up to the Second World War was one of progressive degradation of the quality of urban life crammed into docks and quays through impassable streets, crowded residential quarters, brothels, taverns, and a lack of basic public services.
The discourse on the hustle and bustle in a port city is intrinsically linked to the interactions between ports and their urban counterparts. Reflecting on the port-city interface concept (Hayuth, 1982), the hustle and bustle of a port city emerges from the interplay between port functions and urban activities. As Brian S. Hoyle (1989) points out, the port-city interface can be seen not only as a physical boundary, but also as a complex economic system. Historically, a city’s prosperity was deeply intertwined with its port’s fortune, leading to either mutual growth or decline. The hustle and bustle of former port cities was
The incoherence of the image of port cities and the fragmented nature of their spaces and urban identities are their defining features (Mah, 2014). Port cities were divided into various ‘special’ districts carrying out different kinds of functions related not only to transshipment, warehousing, and merchandising but also to daily life outside the work of the dockworker, seafarer, merchant, banker, speculator, or tax collector. While waiting for transshipment to be completed, for favourable weather conditions for shipping, or simply for permission to trade, people had to pass the time. The port districts were hidden places of otherness and exoticism, as diasporas close to each other in language, culture, or religious background were concentrated there. This otherness both attracted and repelled; hence port districts were considered ‘dangerous’ and ‘amoral’, especially as attitudes of proselytising by newcomers or colonial patterns of exploitation of the local population were not uncommon. Admiration and interest in strangers were coupled with fear and suspicion (Schubert, 2008). City authorities were largely concerned with maintaining control over the hustle and bustle of the city, which challenged social order, the safety of locals, and the enforcement of customs regulations, in the face of tensions and rivalries between newcomers and locals over influence and privilege. Thus,
David Grazian (2008) has argued that anonymity is the driving force behind urban hustle and bustle; along the same lines it can be argued that this is one way that port cities have always distinguished themselves from inland cities. The hustlers of port cities were not only the people of the sea and port, traders and bankers, but also the insiders responsible for welcoming and serving customers. These included not only the owners of taverns and entertainment venues, but also bartenders, waiters, doormen, bouncers, secret intermediaries, guides, society ladies, recruiters, solicitors, crimps, and press gangers. These support-staff members, who played working-class professional roles, constituted a network of secondary producers of the hustle and bustle of the city (Becker, 2008). At night the port city had its hustlers, understood as primary and secondary performers, responsible for spreading an aura of enthusiasm for doing business during the day. After all, a port city’s entertainment is not just about nightlife. Trading houses, merchant guilds, and stock exchanges required a service base for the great exchange game in international trade and transport. Serving this hustle and bustle involved a daily balance – as Peter Bearman (2005) puts it – between direct human interaction and enormous social distancing. The subtle hustlers of the port cities were clerks, customs officials, tax collectors, informers, confidants, and denunciators who prowled the port, warehouses, and taverns identifying those who might have goods for the sale. The city guards monitored all the hustle and bustle of the port city to ensure it did not spiral out of control.
In contemporary port cities, everyday life occasionally assumes a maritime character, particularly during cultural events, large-scale urban festivities, historical reenactments, and the revitalisation of former port areas for tourism, business ventures, exhibitions, and museums. The advanced technological orchestration of port infrastructure enables the application of an interpretative framework (Goffman, 1974) to the port city in the context of cultural performance and the creation of spaces for performative practices. Presently,
The occasional nature of experiencing a city’s port character and its accompanying tumult and clamour supports the notion that in modern port cities, this port essence might not be perceptible in daily life. It does not form an all-encompassing, everyday reality but rather serves as one of the numerous interpretative frames through which one can experience the vibrancy and commotion of a port city at distinct times and spaces. The port aspect of the city becomes apparent to its users during extraordinary events such as ceremonies, festivals, or other interactive rituals. The noise and excitement of the port city represent an ephemeral interactive reality, collaboratively constructed either from above by the authorities or from below by a multitude of hustlers and performers. They conjure up a scenario that is absent in ordinary life, or at least not available to those who are not directly or indirectly involved in port performances. The proposed hypothesis draws upon the works of Alfred Schütz and Erving Goffman, who perceive everyday life as a relationship between the cultural repository of ‘frames’ and the procedural ‘enactment’ of framed performances. The port city is a composite multiperformance (McKenzie, 2001), as equally meta-communicative as it is actual; it is simulated through various socio-technical systems employing the interpretive frame in diverse contexts
This observation elucidates why the selected case studies pertaining to the hustle and bustle of the port city predominantly occur in areas adjacent to or within the post-port space, namely segments of urban spaces and wharves, rather than encompassing the entire city. Revitalised docks, renovated buildings of former port institutions, and open-air museums of port districts serve as venues for rituals transitioning from the city’s everyday life to the vibrancy and commotion of the port city. The maritime essence of the city can be interpreted as a framework that, contingent upon the context, facilitates the construction of meta-communicative narratives aimed at collectively redefining the situation. In other words, this pertains to the liminal experience (Turner, 1967) oscillating between the daily routine of the port city and the festive experience of its hustle and bustle, whether imagined, constructed, or reconstructed. This stems from the detachment of the port from the city, which erects a divide between the city’s users and the port. In response to the unavailability of the port’s infrastructural technological integration and the related professional enactments in the urban space, city authorities, in conjunction with the port city’s hustlers and performers, have recreated, based on the port city’s framework, unique spaces, narratives, and events. These allow for an experiential engagement with the city’s port character and its dynamic atmosphere that is, in a sense, independent of the actual port – not as it exists, but as it is envisioned and desired by the participants.
3 About This Volume
We propose that the phrase ‘hustle and bustle’ helps to define the phenomenon of maritime culture and port city urban planning, as well as to capture the dynamic process of altering the boundaries of city and port, creating new ‘in-between’ areas. The multiple approaches we have presented here make it easier to understand the phenomenon of the port city. ‘Hustle and bustle’ is a way to represent the urban assemblage (Bartłomiejski & Kowalewski, 2022), a complex network of meanings and interactions, which may have a universal (global) character. For the moment, in this volume, we focus mostly on European cities (and Cairns, Australia). We are aware of this limitation; however,
We pose a question here about the possibility of using this concept not only in urban studies but also in urban planning, city marketing, and urban policies. One of the main challenges that accompanies the proposed concept is as follows: in what sense is the hustle and bustle a choice, and in what sense is it an inherent (but also invariable) feature of a port city? The intensity of the flow of people and goods, the accompanying sounds, and light and sound stimuli can generate local conflicts or at least provoke discussions on topics such as hyper-tourism, gentrification, and protection of the urban environment. As we admire the cultural phenomenon of port cities, we must recognize the inequalities and social costs that can arise: housing projects, with nice views of the ports, close to the pleasurescape districts, may be reserved only for the privileged. Furthermore, the operation of ports and urban surroundings causes light and noise pollution.
As port cities have been the main beneficiaries of global growth, our joint reflection on the specifics of their hustle and bustle will begin with an ethical question: What sort of port city do we want to leave for future generations? It is a question of the values we would like to be guided by when thinking about port city development in uncertain times. Adaptation to climate change is one of the main challenges faced by port cities. Coastal regions and port cities are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Therefore, it is reasonable to pose ethical questions to define what economic and social gains of port-city regions should be maintained or sacrificed. In the opening chapter, Nick Osbaldiston claims that we should start with an ethics of responsibility in line with the precautionary principle, an epistemological approach that focuses on caution before implementing innovations, because those of us alive today will not bear the consequences of our choices – future generations will. If the hustle and bustle of port cities is a derivative of their key functionalities for economic gain and social well-being, the accompanying environmental costs should not lead to a radical change in the cities themselves. Proposals that involve a toning down of the intensity of port cities’ bustle should not be rejected, even if this is at the expense of their existing functionality.
In the second chapter, Ewa Rewers characterizes the sounds experienced in port cities. The hustle and bustle of port cities is a crucible for confrontation between the culture of noise and the culture of silence. The very way in which
The hustle and bustle of port cities is driven by the daily rhythm of their stakeholders, but can also be stimulated externally or internally through events that artificially generate it. As Enrico Tommarchi notes in his chapter, port cities are frequent hosts of large-scale mass events that demonstrate the openness and creativity of their inhabitants, the organizational agility of their authority, and their attractiveness from the point of view of investment location. To maintain this image, port city authorities, together with a multitude of city stakeholders, organize cultural and artistic events on the waterfronts. The hustle and bustle of port cities accompanying such events enlivens post-port areas, demonstrates the attractiveness of these locations for business, and is a strategy for disseminating the city’s unique image to residents and tourists.
In the following chapter, Dirk Schubert presents the hustle and bustle of a port city in an era of intensive industrialization and urbanization using Hamburg as an example. In the context of success propaganda, Hamburg was portrayed as a cosmopolitan metropolis serving as a global gateway. The promoted image of the city was at odds with the characteristics of a port district full of crime, smuggling, and prostitution; at the turn of the 20th century, port cities like Hamburg struggled with dockworker strikes and epidemics driven by poor labour, housing, and living conditions. Notorious port districts caused conflicts between residents seeking peace and security and newcomers hungry for entertainment, adventure, and the exotic. What was once a source of conflict today invites nostalgia and curiosity. Spaces that were once infamous – such as St. Pauli in Hamburg – are now listed by UNESCO as sites of intangible heritage.
Vincent Baptist and Paul van de Laar continue to characterize the hustle and bustle of the port city in the 20th century using three districts of Rotterdam as examples: Zandstraatbuurt, Schiedamsedijk, and Katendrecht. They show how the quintessential spaces of the modern port city shifted from bustling harbour quays to quiet waterfronts. This process, inspired by urban
The redevelopment of spaces with historic port use in cities is the art of choice. If the aim is to completely repurpose the land for new uses, the situation is simple. The dilemma arises when the redevelopment plan aims to preserve the heritage of the port district while implementing new functionalities. Tianchen Dai and Carola Hein present two cases: Liverpool’s ‘Maritime Mercantile City’ and Quanzhou’s ‘Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan China’. The first was delisted as a World Heritage property in 2021 by UNESCO and in the same year the second was listed. It appears that the close relationship between the sea and maritime trade that links the two cities is not enough to consider their heritage equally worthy of protection. The hustle and bustle of a port city is not valued in the same way by its stakeholders. Liverpool’s strategy was to transform the historic waterfront into the city’s commercial business district, disintegrating heritage conservation from urban planning and city development. The Quanzhou authorities chose not to physically transform the ancient city but to create new urban centres, away from the historic ones, in order to preserve the authenticity and integrity of the heritage properties.
The maritime culture and historical heritage of port cities is an ideological setting and justification for economic and urbanization processes. According to Robert Bartłomiejski and Maciej Kowalewski, port cities need ‘carnivalesque’ reinforcements in the form of festivals with maritime and port connotations. Recreation of the historical hustle and bustle of a port is a response to the city’s demaritimisation and remaritimisation. The example of Sea Days, a festival held in Szczecin, reveals the role of the festivalization of port cities. Such festivals fulfil the function of a prosthesis satisfying the need for an imagined port city. The sailing ships, which are the festival’s main attraction, are a kind of symbol, allowing the residents and tourists to recreate in their imaginations what Szczecin was like in the past with quays full of people and ships.
In the example of two fish markets, one in Genoa and one in Naples, Beatrice Moretti draws attention to the marketplaces as characteristic of landmarks in port cities linked to their mercantile utility. Although no longer used for the same purposes, these spaces conceal imagined tales of the rhythm of the port, repetitive sounds that accompany transshipment and trade. Sites of this type, if they have resisted redevelopment plans, reveal their past through architecture; often they are vacant buildings or degraded spaces, taken over by the homeless
Christoph Strupp examines the hustle and bustle of Germany’s largest seaport, Hamburg, and the neighbouring entertainment district of St. Pauli in the German crime TV series Port Police (Hafenpolizei). He claims that the fictional image of the city shapes the collective imagination of the audience and therefore constitutes valuable research material that reveals its hustle and bustle. In the early 1960s, Hamburg was on the eve of the containerization era, with a declining share of port facilities in the city centre. The series portrays Hamburg with a stereotypical image of the St. Pauli area, highlighting its hustle and bustle, emphasizing crime and a tight link between port and urban space. This is an example of how the media play an important role reinforcing the image of port cities, often ignoring or modifying its reality.
An important element of the imagined port city is prostitution, which in port cities is an element of the pleasurescape. Urszula Kozłowska and Karolina Izdebska characterize prostitution in the communist port city as a complex web of relationships between the various stakeholders that make up the hidden sex industry. In light of archival material from the 1950s and the 1960s pertaining to prostitution in the major Polish port cities of Gdansk, Gdynia, and Szczecin, it is clear that prostitution powered the hustle in these cities.
There is no single model image of a port city; rather, we are dealing with a multitude of themes or topics set in the context of the times. Recalling literary works from the 1960s about Szczecin by residents, workers, and seafarers, Sławomir Iwasiów reconstructs the image of the hustle and bustle of the city: the constant mobility of people, goods, and services.
The future development of port cities depends on technological economic development, innovation, logistics, and new infrastructure. However, the development potential of port cities is also in the hands of the city’s residents, who need jobs, decent wages, attractive land rents, a high-quality environment, and public services. Manuel Pacheco Coelho seeks a model equilibrium for the spatial planning of port cities. He finds that Lisbon’s land use model demonstrates that rents and distances from the centre are among the main elements determining the hustle and bustle potential of port cities. The last chapter illuminates the relationship of the concentration of services of entities with spatial planning, the dynamics of tourism, the development of night shift economies, and the degradation of space.
Answering the question of whether the hustle and bustle of a port city is a matter of choice or whether it is an intrinsic (but also invariable) feature of a port city is not straightforward. On the one hand, every city generates some
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