Summary - TST 23
TRANSPORTES, SERVICIOS Y TELECOMUNICACIONES
Bruno Marnot
L’irréversibilité dans l’équipement des grands ports de commerce occidentaux au XIXe siècle: les bifurcations d’une trajectoire d’innovation.
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Key Words:
Ports, Maritime transport, Infrastructures.
[ Abstract ]
This article addresses the global innovation path of great commercial ports in France and within the occidental world during a large XIXth Century. It focuses on the challenge of irreversibility for this harbor dynamics of modernization, which led to the continuous spatial expansion of port equipments despite several bottlenecks. It first examines the question of uncertainty regarding harbor equipment works; then it addresses the technical choices adopted by engineers, linked to an evident strategy of anticipation; at last it studies the effects of irreversibility process on port dynamics exposed to quick changes of the economic environment. Ports were permanent works in progress during the XIXth Century; continuous stages of works were supposed to deal with the threats of traffic congestion linked to the general trend of expansion of maritime economy. At the same time this multiform dynamics of technical innovation led to a continuous extension of the port territory, dissociating thus the industrial-harbor complex from his agglomeration and historical process of urbanization.
[ Abstract ]
This article addresses the global innovation path of great commercial ports in France and within the occidental world during a large XIXth Century. It focuses on the challenge of irreversibility for this harbor dynamics of modernization, which led to the continuous spatial expansion of port equipments despite several bottlenecks. It first examines the question of uncertainty regarding harbor equipment works; then it addresses the technical choices adopted by engineers, linked to an evident strategy of anticipation; at last it studies the effects of irreversibility process on port dynamics exposed to quick changes of the economic environment. Ports were permanent works in progress during the XIXth Century; continuous stages of works were supposed to deal with the threats of traffic congestion linked to the general trend of expansion of maritime economy. At the same time this multiform dynamics of technical innovation led to a continuous extension of the port territory, dissociating thus the industrial-harbor complex from his agglomeration and historical process of urbanization.