Blue Papers was set up to connect academic and practical analysis of water, culture, heritage and sustainable development and provide concepts, methodologies and case studies to guide policymakers in developing value-based decisions and strategies. The first five issues of the journal brought together over 130 authors from academia, practice, private sector, major public institutions and NGOs. Their insights from multiple sectors and scientific fields – including policymaking, governance, water management, biology, urban planning, heritage and history – shed light on global and local dynamics, challenges and approaches to contemporary urgencies in the water sector and their impact on space, society and culture. The 85 articles so far published in Blue Papers have explored examples from 31 countries, highlighting positive and negative aspects of governance, historical processes and socio-cultural practices related to water.@en

Flows of petroleum have shaped buildings, cities and landscape around the world on sea and land. This paper shows how industrially drilled petroleum and its refined products have played a major role in transforming the built environment over the last century and a half, in ways that are often not visible or recognized. Understanding the multiple links between refineries, gas stations, headquarters or cities around the world, and acknowledging the path dependencies that these flows have created, provides a concrete example for extended urbanization and its role in fueling ways of life and visions of progress, modernity, and disaster. Through detailed international case studies the paper considers petroleum’s role in the development of the built environment and the imagination. It explores how petroleum and its infrastructure have served in shaping extended urbanization as a source of military conflict and political and economic power, inspiring efforts to create territories and reshape geographies and national boundaries. The paper explores ruptures and continuities between colonial and postcolonial frameworks through diverse case studies with diverse functions from around the world, including heritage sites. By revealing petroleum’s role in organizing and imagining space globally, this paper takes up a key task in imagining the possibilities of a post-oil future. It explores diverse contributions made by students in courses at Delft University of Technology to show visualize them.@en

Green Shipping Corridors, initiated in 2021, demonstrate a growing awareness among port and shipping stakeholders that the oceans and seas are more than blank spaces for industrial processes that don’t find a place on land (Couling & Hein, 2018). Monitoring websites, like windy.com, visualize open access data, including on NO2 and SO2 air pollution. They highlight the continuity of air pollution along sea and land corridors, and reveal the densification of pollution in and around ports and along coasts. Green Shipping Corridors are thus a much-needed attempt to address maritime pollution and to create more sustainable transportation methods, both on land and at sea. Control of landside pollution is a task for national, regional and more local governance, but greening the seaside is much more difficult because of the mix at play of national jurisdiction zones and large areas under international law. Green Shipping Corridors and other practices for improving ocean health raise questions about how to embed these initiatives in meaningful international governance, controllable policies, and spatial planning that includes the sea. With the horizon of 2050, we need to clearly establish goals, timelines and impact indicators. What governance structures, tools, competitive incentives and control mechanisms do we need to green the sea? How will we assess the impact of these green corridors? […]@en

Taking an integrated approach to problems involving water, culture, heritage, and sustainable development can be especially complicated depending on the water body at stake. Oceans, lakes, rivers and canals all require specific approaches. This issue of Blue Papers takes particular interest in rivers as agents of interaction between water and land, culture and nature, and as carriers and connectors of multiple, often very different challenges.@en

Heritage buildings are valuable assets that represent national cultural identity. Proper building maintenance is a major issue for preservation, as building monitoring aspects and preventive measures are often only taken after physical damage happens. In the context of Indonesian heritage buildings, high levels of humidity which may cause condensation and soil dampness are often overlooked. Early detection methods are urgently required to effectively detect potential risks of condensation. This study aims to investigate condensation risk for heritage building surfaces by calculating thermal properties (i.e., emissivity, albedo) and Blinn–Phong BRDF values through the integration of thermal imaging and 3D scanning techniques. This approach supports architects and conservators in making informed decisions to protect and maintain cultural heritage structures. The study also highlights gaps in current Indonesian regulations regarding moisture presence and condensation risk detection in heritage buildings.@en

Port cities are places at the edge of sea and land, where flows of goods and people create unique spaces, institutions and cultures, often over long periods of time. History matters when it comes to understanding and designing the future of port cities such as the two ancient Mediterranean cities of Beirut and Naples, where institutions and spaces are the result of longue durée histories. Long-standing spatial and institutional frameworks in these cities have influenced recent plans. In the Italian city of Naples, historic spaces and practices have impeded transformation, because port and city authorities are pursuing divergent and historically established goals while many industrial sites, including areas used by oil industry, await redevelopment. In Beirut, reconstruction following the tragic explosion of 2020, which significantly damaged both port and city, shaping and perhaps limiting the present and future of the city. This article analyses the historic development and the opportunities for future planning of Naples and Beirut through the lens of the Adaptive Strategies course, a master-level course coordinated by Carola Hein and co-taught with Paolo De Martino and John Hanna at TU Delft in 2022. Students, through imaginative methods, rethought the relationship between land and water, port and city, questioning current planning models and imagining new resilient and adaptive processes.@en

The concept of values has become increasingly important in many fields, including water management, heritage preservation and design. Politicians, economists, water managers, heritage specialists and designers often consider values as guiding principles for their interventions. While water management has traditionally focused on technological and economic values, in recent decades there has been growing recognition of the significance of socio-cultural aspects. This shift is evident in initiatives like the United Nation’s Valuing Water Initiative, which recognized five “Valuing Water Principles” as guidelines for incorporating the values associated with water in decision-making. However, how to define and implement these values in particular contexts has not yet been clearly established, with approaches varying across disciplines and fields. Understanding the complex interdependencies and values characterizing each water system can help develop a strategy for integrated management of water with the goal of sustainable development with a long-term perspective and a design focus.@en

To date, the preservation techniques of heritage buildings in Indonesia are still limited to physical measurement, most of which are based on manual records. Consequently, lack of accuracy, cost and time consumption often lead to misinterpretation of crucial information during the decision-making process. This part includes physical amage (i.e., mold growth, flaking paint, water leaks), caused by condensation due to high relative humidity. Thanks to the development of advanced laser scanning technology, high-precision point cloud datasets can be obtained to conduct surface performance analysis. Furthermore, this study proposes an integrated computational method for detecting condensation risks in heritage buildings by making use of optical and thermal properties calculated from point cloud data. The proposed method specifically employs Blinn-Phong Bidirectional Reflectance Function (BRDF) model to calculate the distributed reflectance in a material based on the angle of incidence and material reflectance. Along with it, the point cloud measurement is also coupled with FLIR One Pro IR camera and HOBO data logger to analyze the thermal performances of the building surface. Ultimately, this study will provide architects with a better understanding regarding potential risks of condensation in the heritage building surface so that they can perform early detection tasks.@en

Europe is a continent surrounded by water on three sides, with major seaports and metropolises along its coastlines. Each of these waters is different in terms of depth, water quality or role in global shipping, and their unique characteristics have influenced the planning of coastal and port city developments on their edges. Looking at Europe from the water allows us to study how people have adapted the spatial configuration of their port city territories to the characteristics of their neighbouring waters, and to identify similarities and differences in the development of port city territories on a single sea, across seas, rivers or river networks. We argue that such a historical perspective on planning offers decision-makers new insights into the complex territories at the water/land interface and the challenges for future planning in Europe and beyond. Mapping can help us overcome the limitations of historical boundaries and institutions that shape planning and act as a ‘gap finder’, identifying spatial, institutional or functional opportunities and challenges and where planning can be beneficial. In the context of Europe, we argue that the internal focus on nation states, national borders and European unification has distracted policy makers and stakeholders from a multi-scale and maritime perspective of the continent. Crossing borders, exploring territories from sea to land, highlights the unique role of seaports in shaping Europe, past, present and future. By exploring the conceptual and methodological underpinnings of the Port City Atlas, this presentation provides an insight into the role of mapping in planning history.@en

Many European cities are in crisis since most of them are struggling to socially and culturally move forward from the historic and recreational values that made them of interest to the global visitor. In 2011, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) started assessing new forms of placemaking in the historic city through the UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape Approach. The same year, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) highlighted the importance of developing innovative and transversal approaches to examine cultural development in historic human settlements. Within this context, this chapter analyses placemaking in four European historic cities. Transversal approaches on how relational dynamics impact on the historic context will be scrutinized from the realm of the site-specific arts in the city of Belgrade (Serbia), for archaeology the case of analysis is in Bucharest (Romania), for architecture the context is Ávila (Spain) and for urban planning it is Hamburg (Germany). This transversal approach involves using different disciplines to comprehend placemaking from a polyhedral point of view. Therefore, it brings together complementary forms of heritage appropriation – including the construction of the heritage concept over time – methods and strategies that help integrate cultural expressions, practices and products as potential relational dynamics. To do so, we will define stakeholders such as minorities, communities and powerful entities and target groups. Methodologically, approaches will deepen the understanding of phenomenological, dynamic-relational and contextual notions of placemaking that help clarify how historic cities, tools and communities are all interconnected. The discussion will establish parallelisms between the experiences to clarify the implications of placemaking according to the field of approach and the prospects for those places. Cultural expressions and heritage regulation can provide new forms of appropriation and integration in permanent scenarios of the past. Accordingly, contemporary mutable relationships between places and society are at stake in the context of urban planning and the UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape Approach and in defining the future of historic cities. In conclusion, we point towards (1) imagining how placemaking and cultural heritage serve to delineate new forms of heritage-making in the historic city, and (2) to what extent this requires defining ethical forms of culture-based placemaking practices.@en

Ports are key nodes in the distribution of goods and people on a global scale. They link diverse territories and impact nearby cities and territories. Understanding the ways in which maritime flows shape territories on sea and land and using them to improve cities and landscapes in the short- and long-term is key to future sustainable development. Architects, planners and landscape designers can play a key role in this process; to do that, they first have to understand the role ports play in space, society and everyday life. Developing sustainable port city territories (Hein, 2023) requires keen awareness of intricate relationships regarding space and governance. In line with this premise, the Master Course Adaptive Strategies: Designing Scenarios for Port Cities, coordinated by Carola Hein and run by teachers Paolo De Martino and John Hanna at Delft University of Technology, focuses on educating architects, planners and landscape designers to understand the specific conditions of port city territories, including long-term developments and path dependencies.@en

This blog contribution supports the Urban Archipelago expo at Nieuwe Instituut (NI) in Rotterdam, designed to consist of four elements: a map, a view, a model, and a series of films that depicted a future of living with water, as well as a booklet that documented student work. The expo has been part of the Water Cities Rotterdam, which opened with the work of Kunlé Adeyemi (NLÉ) on 13 May 2023. @en

Tokyo is a resilient metropolis that has reinvented itself after multiple disasters. The city's spatial pattern, institutions and governance, and its urban culture have sustained the growth and rebuilding of a densely built city with an extensive public transportation network, which can serve as a model for cities around the world. This chapter explores key transitional moments in the history of the city, focusing on the particular character of urban development and planning decisions. As the capital of the new Meiji government in the mid-19th century, Tokyo transformed rapidly. Public and private leaders introduced new industries and infrastructures and set up new government districts, effectively reinventing the city and ultimately turning it into one of the largest cities in the world and a global player. Twice destroyed in the 20th century by a major earthquake and the Second World War, the city's history and development in response to multiple disasters and challenges hold lessons for cities in Asia and worldwide in terms of employing adaptive strategies to nurture resilience and sustainable development.@en

In March 2023, thousands of people from various disciplines came together in New York for the United Nations 2023 Water Conference. The attendees included policymakers, activists, professionals and academics, all with an interest in the water sector. The conference provided a platform to share knowledge and exchange ideas about water-related challenges. Through a combination of in-house and side events, participants were provided with the opportunity to voice their concerns, engage in crucial discussions and exchange novel insights, despite the predominantly scripted nature of the event as a forum tailored for politicians and policymakers. The Water Conference identified risks ensuing from the number of short-term commitments, unclear funding and the lack of quantifiable measurements (President of the General Assembly 2023). The Water Conference also saw the adoption of the Water Action Agenda (United Nations 2023), consisting of voluntary commitments in line with UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and focusing on water. Crafting these commitments posed a challenge, highlighting the complex nature of the United Nations’ efforts in fostering collaboration among people representing diverse backgrounds, interests, cultures and histories.@en

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.@en

Although often seen as periperal, ports have long played a key role in important transitions. Technological innovation, economic transformation, epidemics and social change have travelled through global networks and have left their imprint on ports and nearby cities and territories. Ports are spaces where solutions and answers to transitions have been developed and implemented first. Exploring transitions and their key actors in the past, present and future can illuminate contemporary challenges and offer approaches to capacity building that are much needed to facilitate contemporary change in and around ports. The four articles in this issue tackle the theme of transitions in port city territories over time.@en

Teaching design requires a conscious understanding of time and temporality. The passing of time is central to design as a creative process, which is mainly focused on initiating change and creating a transformation between two states. Whether this transformation is driven by a societal need or an individual need for self-actualization, the creative initiative works in relation to the past (reproducing or challenging traditional knowledge), present (moment of action), and future (the final outcome and its life span). Design also requires awareness of temporalities, that is the difference between natural times (seasons, day-night rhythms), or the times created by modern lifestyles (working hours, traffic jams). In this reading, time in all its tenses shapes and intersects with the process of design. The pedagogical practice of teaching design thus requires a concrete attention to this intersection.@en

In the spring of 2021, professors and teachers from around the world taught studio courses and seminars that focused on the destruction and rebuilding of Beirut following the massive explosion that took place in the port on August 4, 2020. Some of these courses were taught collaboratively, others started as an independent project, but students and faculty attended each other’s presentations. Each studio was largely taught online due to the coronavirus crisis, which allowed for easier exchange among the groups. But it also prevented the studios from traveling to the field and closely surveying it. Faculty and students relied on presentations and input by colleagues from Beirut, material that could be found online, and documents that were available, mainly in English/French, which to a certain extent limited perspectives. Mutual interest in one another’s work led to some intriguing observations, including about pedagogical approaches and conceptual foundations. Each studio focused on specific premises, as the teachers chose diverse analytical viewpoints to address the rebuilding. At Delft University of Technology, teachers emphasized Beirut’s status as a port city and on the sea-land continuum as the analytical starting point for the design, and they collaborated with Yale University’s Alan Plattus ran a parallel seminar on the history of port cities. At the American University of Beirut (AUB), the instructors focused on the role of visionary planning for post-disaster rebuilding. In the University of Miami, neighborhood-level interventions inspired the teaching in Jean-François Lejeune upper-level spring studio. Similarly, in the German University in Cairo, Holger Gladys’s design studio focused on interventions at the neighborhood-level, namely the Karantina neighborhood, and its up-scalability to city and regional scales. At Tsinghua University, the design studio of Jian Liu and Yang Tang explored the multiple possibilities of rebuilding Beirut’s port and regenerating the city of Beirut on different scales by way of comprehensive urban design.@en

Port cities and their neighbouring areas, located at the confines between sea and land, are key hubs in the transportation of goods and people. Ports serve global transport needs, while they are embedded in local geographies, topographies, political, economic and historical settlements. People have always been attracted to human settlements at the interface of water and land. These settlements have evolved into large population centres and metropolitan areas. Major cities, economic hubs and trade centres are engines of key importance for expansive territories and the ports in their vicinity, but they are also places at the forefront of many contemporary threats, including sea level rise as a consequence of climate change. Today, according to the United Nations Development Programme, 55% of humans worldwide live in cities and 40% live within 100 kms off the coast, thus in the vicinity of water-related threats. Maritime and logistic flows cross ports and densely built territories, creating additional environmental and other challenges. The war in Ukraine, long periods of drought and excessive water levels due to heavy rainfall in Pakistan are only the latest examples of both the need for and the danger of port activities for cities and landscapes. Nonetheless, a comprehensive understanding of the relationships between ports, cities and their territories is missing. This special issue argues that we need to embrace a holistic, inclusive approach to port city development, based on ecosystems values, embedded in various layers of capital: natural, cultural, social, human, industrial and creative. To achieve a port city symbiosis and avoid parasitism—defined here as a relationship where one partner benefits at the expense of another-, new port governance frameworks will have to answer to what knowledge needs to be shared to make multiple value creation in the port city ecosystem happen. For transitions to happen, port city territories will have to nurture ecosystem values to unlock this capital. New governance constellations will have to be based on shared mindsets, deeper understanding of the interests of local communities, and a set of collaborative principles. What exactly the relationships are between port, city and territory, how maritime flows relate to them, and whether or to what degree these connections are symbiotic or parasitic is subject for further exploration. Exploring the concept of symbiosis in port city ecosystems is fundamental for human activities, including economic ones, to sustain themselves in healthy, clean, green, liveable port cities and coastal communities. In this introduction we reflect on contributions by authors who examine port city symbiosis in various seaports in the Netherlands, Chile, United States, Portugal, as well as inland ports in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany.

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