Case Studies and Theoretical Approaches in Port Competition and Cooperation

Main factors change the international freight transport alimenting (and being alimented by) the increasing of globalization. In this scenario, the role of ports also changes. The single port cannot compete in the new global economic scenario. The port system arises from the alliance, or merge, of several ports to optimize the resources of the individual ports. The paper is articulated into two main parts. The first one presents the main theoretical approaches to explain how ports could respond to the new requirements imposed by gigantism, carriers’ alliances and land-sea integration. The second one presents a critical analysis of some representative case studies of cooperation among ports, in order to aggregate the observed processes in some macro-classes. The work may be considered a first step of a research, able to open several directions to study the competition and cooperation process among ports with Transport System Models (TSMs). The use of TSMs could allow to extend the consolidated quantitative methods developed in the field of passengers’ mobility and freight distribution on terrestrial transport networks to the field of maritime transport and ports.