Port Cities: Dynamic Landscapes and Global Networks

Carola Hein, editor
Routledge, London, 2011
Reviewed in: Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA), Spring 2012, 78(2)
 
Review Excerpt:

In Port Cities: Dynamic Landscapes and Global Networks, Hein and an international group of contributors offer a thought-provoking collection that explores the diverse forces that continue to shape port cities around the world. Each author takes an interdisciplinary approach to his or her subject, combining planning, geography, economics, architecture, migration studies, and history. Together they examine the ports of Europe, the Mediterranean, Turkey, China, the Suez Canal, Dubai, and North America, considering the evolution of city form from 15th-century Spain to 21st-century Hamburg. Hein’s greater purpose with this collection, however, is to illustrate the power of using networked analysis to explore how the transmission of institutions, people, and ideas — all at global, regional, and local levels — creates what she calls “port cityscapes.”

This book will be of interest to planners, geographers, economists, sociologists, and architectural historians, particularly those concerned with waterfront revitalization today. Because it situates the current era in a broader historical context and uses an interdisciplinary approach, Port Cities offers a far richer perspective on the subject of port city development than many other books. Indeed, for those familiar with the large body of literature that covers the fall and rise of the urban waterfront since the advent of the shipping container, this book will come as a breath of fresh air.

— Peter Hendee Brown