Port Area Revitalization Wave and the Shores of the MENA Region

Abstract

Waterfront revitalization began as a wave in North America in the 1960s from Boston, Baltimore and San Francisco, it then spread to European port cities and namely to London in the 1970s and 1980s as well as to Australia and to Japan. Scholars have related this to technological improvements and demands of post-industrial ecological cities, which resulted in moving all industrial activities form city centres. Global transformation of maritime technology from the 1960s required more extensive land and deeper water, thus old ports became unused. Therefore, the idea of revitalizing port areas and their surrounding historical city centres became a prominent approach dealing with their unique architectural elements i.e. warehouses and docks that needed development and revitalization while kee** their identity. The map represented by Bob Smith for the global diffusion of waterfront revitalization, which was also supported by other scholars draws a wave of waterfront revitalization throughout the globe. This map actually poses the research question; “Has this waterfront revitalization wave reached the MENA region and specifically the port areas?” The paper tracks this wave, analyzing why and how it started and the factors that lead to its emergence in different countries and to its spreading in different continents. Then the paper explores port revitalization in the Mena region in search for an answer to the research question.