Water, Ports, and Culture in Cities and Landscapes

The goal is to better understand the paradigms and interconnected spatial and social conditions at the intersection of water and land with a focus on port cities. We aim to provide new methodological directions and tools that can serve as a knowledge-sharing platform. We argue that we need a “cultural” turn for the spatial sciences and a “spatial” turn for the social sciences and the humanities to help them coalesce and take on the predominant current (modernist) focus on technology and economy needs to be balanced with a stronger spatial, social and cultural approach, to generate awareness and to co-create methodologies and practices of addressing the challenges of contemporary and future water-related transitions. To do that the workshop will focus on three methodological and conceptual approaches.