Waterfront landscapes of the 21st century. Architectures for travellers along the Water-City threshold.

In the last decades, the cities have gone through huge sea changes that affected the way of living a territory. The fundamental communication codes have changed within the relationship system and the concept of limit has more and more lost its significance, and so the relations between public and private spaces have been modified, the cyberspace replaced the traditional meeting places, radically modifying the socializing mechanisms. The 21st Century complex and stratified city takes the form of open but often undefined configurations, constantly changes itself moulding new shapes, structures and customs to meet the emerging social and cultural phenomena of our times. The cotemporary city can be described like a big patchwork made of relationship systems, ways of use and the coexistence of past and present worlds that cohabit in new ways. The evolution of the urban fabric of this city, more and more often takes place through replacements over, integrations and connections among parts of very diverse characters. Nowadays the city lives on transactions and exchanges of ephemeral and symbolic values, rather than of the production of assets. Its most precious value is in the image and appeal is able to create. The city telling comes before the real city and often influences the way the masses of travelers encounter a city and its portrait, made up of a complex heterogeneous composition of physical and virtual elements.