ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies several drivers for the creation of smooth space in global port operations and characterized ports as capitalist spaces, working on a capitalist logic of value creation, migration and destruction. It provides a brief overview of the developments that took place in the global port sector throughout the second half of the 20th century. A lack of analysis of the neoliberalisation of transport provision can be observed in transport geography and even more so in freight and port geography, its global nature reflecting the essence of globalization and neoliberalism more than other transport modes. The chapter explores the nuances at the heart of the social production of space via the smooth space conceptualisation of Gilles Deleuze and F. Guattari. It suggests that the initial smoothing of space by capitalism can lead to a new type of striation due to the convergence and strategy replication of global terminal operators, producing a new homogeneous and striated space of port management.
