Degradation or regeneration? Prospects for developing the port-city interface in Odesa

Seeking an optimum sustainable development strategy is a core objective of municipalities and innovative urban planners around the world. Various viewpoints and interests regarding the interface between ports and cities and the resulting extensive waterfront regeneration in principal seaports render spatial planning projects of this type complex to complete and obtain agreement on. For a modern city, port development is a principal source of influences and benefits related to ecology, society, and transportation. Currently, the world’s largest seaports are moving cargo terminals out of historical city centres. As a result, ports are assuming more advanced functions unrelated to the maritime industry, and thus projects that equitably share port territories will naturally gain momentum. The most significant projects for moving cargo ports out of historical town centres and regenerating port areas are found in European cities. To understand the various approaches, examples from European regeneration projects for port territories in Bilbao, Barcelona, and Oslo are presented, and their experience with various geographical and town-planning conditions is highlighted. This study is devoted to the Ukrainian port city of Odesa. It identifies the most successful strategy for developing the port-city interface under current economic and geopolitical conditions. It combines the ideas and studies of city planners in management, economics, and transport geography along with various policies and sociology aspects to provide new information and understanding aimed at ensuring the sustainable development of coastal cities in developing countries.