Socio-economic and Geo-political Transitions in the Mediterranean Basin and Its Impact on Urban Forms of Port Cities

Abstract

In the last decades, the Mediterranean region is experiencing economic, social, and spatial changes in its structures. Today, cities are experiencing an increasing number of complex problems regarding internal and external connections, reflecting on the city structural realm. The physical transformation of territories in general and cities in particular are associated with external trends, such as migration, post-colonization affects, social changes, economic, and political activities. The paper concludes how coastlines act as an interface between internal and external transitions of the Mediterranean region, and highlights those territories as important defensive lines which could embrace the Mediterranean challenges. The attitude of coastlines as a system basis of cities can find a compelling rationale as well as a cohesive meaning of recovering its major role in embracing complex external and internal relations, which result in the formation of a strong and coherent urban system to cope with constant transitions of the region.

Using Local Materials to Optimize the Eco-design of a Resilient Urban Environment in Sustainable Urban Project Process

“…We recall that urban areas were home to more than half of the world's inhabitants at the beginning of the third millennium [47].…”

Exploring Port–City Relationships: A Bibliometric and Content Analysis

“…The geographical location of a port city [9,17,88,91,97,124,137], concerning its surrounding areas and the general topography of the region, is critical in increasing the flow of commodities through the port [122] and improving the port's function at the regional level [9]. Beyond their own development, port cities can significantly influence the formation and structure of extensive cooperative urban networks.…”

“…The development and construction of new ports and docks [37,41,45,48,52,61,66,73,75,76,83,88,90,94,95,97,99,100,102,[105][106][107]123,124,[134][135][136][137] has always been associated with customs clearance [95,133] and has played a significant role in strengthening the relationship between cities and ports. With the development of port activities [107,136], port performance (cargo loading and unloading volume) rises as well [17,46,50,65,77,84,85,91,99,107,121,122]. When a port is adequately developed, the variety of port services develops according to the port's cargo handling capacity [33,34,47,...…”

A New System for Evaluating a Siberian City: Evaluation Methodology

“…Also, a block of works concerning the socio-cultural, economic and political factors that can influence the typology of the historical cities development is of interest. A detailed consideration of such patterns is presented in the work "Socio-economic and Geo-political Transitions in the Mediterranean Basin and Its Impact on Urban Forms of Port Cities" [18].…”