This article discusses the evolution of city/port relations and the challenges imposed by globalization. The worldwide reorganization of production spaces and the appearance of specific commercial dynamics have included changes in port structures throughout the world. Therefore, progress in maritime transportation has always been associated to agility, translated by larger ship capacity, gains in speed, and a significant reduction of freight costs, contributing to the relative shortening of distances for people, merchandise and information. Since 1990, with the intensification of the globalization process, characterized by the growing integration of production, consumption and circulation spheres in all geographic scales, the ports had to answer to new demands. In the case of Brazil, the absence of a national port policy gave a fragmented character to federal and local initiatives. Despite the positive operational results, institutional innovations, more specifically in terms of port governance, are sparse. The creation of a new port culture is a central challenge for defining innovative public policies and transforming ports in development vectors. Theses are the presuppositions of this article, which is a result of thematic surveys on ports and territory.
port; city; territory; globalization
