Shipping Canals in Transition

Urban Planning, vol. 8, pp. 259–262

Abstract

Shipping canals have supported maritime traffic and port development for many centuries. Radical transformations of these shipping landscapes through land reclamation, diking, and canalization were celebrated as Herculean works of progress and modernity. Today, shipping canals are the sites of increasing tension between economic growth and associated infrastructural interventions focused on the quality, sustainability, and resilience of natural systems and spatial settlement patterns. Shifting approaches to land/water relations must now be understood in longer political histories in which pre-existing alliances influence changes in infrastructure planning. On the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the New Waterway (Nieuwe Waterweg), the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus universities PortCityFutures Center hosted an international symposium in October 2022 to explore the past, present, and future of this channel that links Rotterdam to the North Sea. Symposium participants addressed issues of shipping, dredging, and planning within in the Dutch delta, and linked them to contemporary debates on the environmental, spatial, and societal conditions of shipping canals internationally. The thematic issue builds on symposium conversations, and highlights the importance of spatial, economic, and political linkages in port and urban development. These spatial approaches contribute to more dynamic, responsive strategies for shipping canals through water management and planning.

Authors 5

1. Carola Hein

   Delft University of Technology

   Affiliation as printed

   Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

2. Sabine Luning Aachen Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University, The Netherlands

3. Han Meyer

   Delft University of Technology

   Affiliation as printed

   Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

4. Stephen J. Ramos

   University of Georgia

   Affiliation as printed

   College of Environment + Design, University of Georgia, USA

5. Paul van de Laar

   Erasmus University Rotterdam

   Affiliation as printed

   Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands