ABSTRACT
The contention underpinning this chapter is that, while the pressures of globalisation naturally encourage research into the reaction of entire port systems, this should not be at the expense of investigations at the locality level. Moreover, these investigations should go beyond the consideration of the development of individual ports, narrowly defined. There is instead a need to inject more assessment into port studies and to apply this assessment-based approach to the whole agglomeration of activities generated by the port. How are they performing in the changed economic environment created by continuing globalisation? Achieving this goal, it is argued, can be achieved by introducing the cluster concept to port studies.
