North Sea Port District (draft) Work Agenda in support of this cross-border port region cooperation

The North Sea Port District is a Flemish-Dutch cross-border region that seeks collaboration in the wider area around North Sea Port and is looking at how this collaboration can be shaped. Following the cross-border merger of Zeeland Seaports and the Port of Ghent into North Sea Port, the aim is to work with the surrounding municipalities and provinces to see how forces can be pooled. The starting point for the search for this collaboration is the will and belief that the apparent contradiction between the highly dynamic port and the low dynamics of the residential and natural cores can be overcome.

Collaboration is key in the North Sea Port region

This ‘contradiction’ is seen as the important starting point of the District and is a strengthening factor for the region rather than something that works against it. The aim of the first phase of this process is to draw up a working agenda for the area which contains the common tasks and opportunities for collaboration. This is the basis on which further work can be done in the next phase(s).

Architecture Workroom Brussels supervised the process on behalf of the Euregio Scheldemond. The process started in April 2019 with the first phase. Since then, regular meetings were held for consultations and working sessions with the eight partners of North Sea Port: City of Ghent, Municipality of Evergem, Municipality of Zelzate, Municipality of Terneuzen, Municipality of Borsele, Municipality of Vlissingen, Province of Zeeland and Province of East Flanders.

Draft Work Agenda

This publication completes this first phase and presents the draft Work Agenda. The information harvested from the discussions and working sessions on the chances, opportunities, issues, dreams and visions for this area, was translated into four working lines. These working lines combine the collected knowledge and want to show how this can be acted upon by areas where actions can take place.

Next step

However, the process will not stop after this first phase. Through the working sessions, the different partners got to know each other and recognised that continuing such process is important to make a better District together. In a second phase, the draft Work Agenda will be checked off with various stakeholders who will further deepen, refine and concretise the agenda. This should ensure broad support for the implementation of projects and initiatives in the future. For the testing among stakeholders, forces will be joined with North Sea Port, which has to do the same exercise as a result of its own “Port with a future” (“Haven met Toekomst”) project.