, ports and port regions increasingly compete to serve distant hinterlands. In a European context, many researchers refer to … the agglomeration of economic activity in the Rhine-Ruhr area and the ‘blue banana' to explain the concentration of port … activity in the Hamburg-Le Havre port range. Besides this, the incorporation of new member states in the European market has …

multi-port gateway system integrated within the broader context of an already well-established traditional maritime region … as a gateway to the Iberian Peninsula and Western Europe. In fact, Portuguese range ports, located at the extreme of rail … freight corridor n°4, could greatly benefit from 'port regionalization' into bordering regions of Spain, the Madrid Community …