The impact of port reforms on port land management: renewal or permanency? – Lessons from the French case

Port authorities face new issues in administering their land resources. They have to address increasing competition for land uses, which hampers the spatial development of port activities. Moreover, their institutional environment has changed: planning and land management have become core missions for port authorities with the port reform movement. They are expected to manage their land resources in a more innovative way than before as regionalisation and port coordination arise as new paradigms among both the scientific and the institutional port communities. In such a context we could expect that practices would evolve quickly as far as port land management is concerned. However research on European and North American ports tend to show that port authorities have difficulties in coping with these new issues they face. This paper analyses why through a focus on three French ports, Le Havre, Rouen and Marseille – Fos