LAND VALUES AND LAND CONVERSION
IN CITY PORT INTERFACES:
THE CASE OF BARCELONA

ABSTRACT

 

City-Port interfaces have become a battlefield where success is measured by the capacity to keep or extend your property limits on the other’s side. Thereby, the fence dividing ownership limits plays the role of line of defence between systems.

Nevertheless, city-port collaboration is emerging from land conversion processes since ports like Barcelona have founded the profitability of trading with urban goods further than the tight and historically assumed industrial-logistic requirement.

 

In this scenario, new land conversions are likely. On the one hand future port developments are not neglected, facilitating future land supply for traditional maritime activities since public-administrative awareness for port expansion is not considered a
constraining economic burden within the Barcelona Port Authority.

 

On the other hand, the land market study carried out demonstrates that the port urban activities as the highest and best use, taking into consideration results by surface unit. At the same time, land extension costs reveal lower than what the market is willing to pay by surface unit at both sides of the interface. Thus, while port land activities in general are higher than urban activities on average, specific premium urban activities located inside the port contribute to improving port economic results.

 

Moreover, the high urban demand for land in Barcelona as a consequence of its
physical constraints for expansion, confers the Port Authority with a key role in city management.

​

Download the article