Reconsidering Waterfront Regeneration and Cruise Tourism in Hamburg, Germany

Abstract

Written accounts of cultural festivals often deal with the various activities that comprise those types of events. There is a paucity of analyses that discuss how festivals encourage the status quo of consumption practices, while conjuring their hidden costs on society. This paper analyses how the Hamburg Cruise Days Festival attempted to perpetuate the status quo of the cruising industry. The research answers the following question: What would it take to help change the current “cobalt” color promoted by the organizers of the Hamburg’s Waterfront Cruise Days Festival to a “True Blue”, a symbol of the cleanest sky and harbor waters in Germany, and the best example of sustainable Green and Blue Infrastructure in Europe? The research methods comprised in loco fieldwork participant observation in the tradition of participatory action research. It is argued that, from a governance perspective, festival organizers ought to be required to disclaim, in the fashion of “truth in advertising”, the ecological impacts and sponsors’ progress toward reaching existing environmental standards to eradicate costly social and environmental injustices. Said practice will increase our individual and collective awareness of the invaluable richness of the world’s land- and water-based environment before it is irreplaceably exhausted. The article suggests extending events’ emphasis on sustainable tourism to also encompass three additional measures: (i) the socio-ecological performance of the cruise (and shipping) industry; (ii) in the fashion of a Solomonic approach to justice; and (iii) within a formalized Porto of Call Sister Cities Network.

1. Introduction

The silent technical daylight departure of a mega-container ship on the Elbe River in Hamburg on a sunny Saturday afternoon in September 2019 contrasted vividly with the noisy and highly choreographed late evening arrival of a passenger cruise. The former was illuminated by the natural rays of sunlight, and the latter was welcomed by the laser beams reflected on the side of the vessel. The former with rows and piles of containers hermetically sealed revealed no trace of their content—as the ship’s bill of lading surely contained a detailed description of all containers on board [1]—and the latter arrived with timid and curious passengers. The container ship and its cargo were largely a symbol of production, and the cruise ship stood as one of the tallest exponents of leisurely consumption and tourism [2,3,4]. Many ports throughout the world have experienced dramatic transformations in recent decades. New urban port functions have emerged after shipbuilding relocated to other parts of the world [5]; containerization has become the dominant mercantile way of shipping manufactured goods by sea; fishing industry has been impacted by modern catch and industrial processing techniques; and port lands have become increasingly monetized with housing and commercial real estate on the waterfront, iconic buildings such as museums and festival marketplaces, and some public spaces such as riverfront greenways, promenades, and bicycle and pedestrian bridges [6]. The cases of Barcelona, Bilbao, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Baltimore are emblematic [7].

Recently, the port cities of London, Hamburg, and Philadelphia have been examined through the lenses of resilience and path dependence to understand how these ports’ current conditions have been impacted by major physical, socio-economic, institutional, and policy transformations [8]. However, on the softer side, media reports of cultural festivals often mostly identify the various activities that comprise those types of events [9,10]. Within the context of coastal tourism, distinct methods have been developed to understand the creation, motivations, execution, and impacts of festivals on host cities [11,12]. Case studies have also highlighted the challenge of balancing internal community-building goals with the demands of heritage tourism [13]. Rarer, however, are analyses that discuss how festivals tend to encourage the status quo of consumption practices, while imposing hidden costs on society. Examples of some of those impacts include increases in environmental pollution, promotion of unethical consumption behaviors with consequent depletion of non-renewable resources, and a great social separation between those who organize the festivals and those who pay admission to participate in their leisure activities [14]. As such, this study attempts to fill an existing paucity on the role of cruise tourism festivals in consumption practices over environmental values centered on ocean conservation.

It has been documented that Hamburg has employed “urban marketing as glue for the regeneration of Hamburg’s port city identity as well as a boost for implementing the creative city regeneration programs” [15] (p. 198). However, given the gap in the literature identified above and based on in loco fieldwork participant observation methods, this article provides a critical examination of the Hamburg Cruise Days Festival in September 2019. The paper’s objective is to analyze how the Hamburg Cruise Days Festival attempts to perpetuate the status quo of the cruising industry. It questions whether the festival promoted mostly by a major cruise line company attempts to perpetuate the injustices of the cruising industry. Unfortunately, the admonitory finding reveals that its short-term celebration helps to dissipate the host city’s track record of attempts to encourage more sustainable urban practices, such as winning and hosting the “European Green Capital” designation in 2011. This has been referred to as the myth and practice of the “urban sustainability rising tide” [16]. The article is guided by these two key research puzzlements: (i) To what extent do festival goers appear to understand the true impacts of the cruise industry on the host city and on stopping port cities during recurrent cruise visits from such an elaborately choreographed festival? Which is primarily aimed at marketing entertainment and touristic activities to domestic and foreigner visitors?; (ii) What will it take to help change the current “cobalt” (e.g., aluminum-oxide) color promoted by the organizers of the Hamburg’s Waterfront Cruise Days Festival to a “True Blue”, a symbol of the cleanest sky and harbor waters in Germany (Figure 1), and the best example of sustainable Green and Blue infrastructure in Europe?

Based on Marcuse’s [17] (p. 185) three-pronged approach to wicked problems (i.e., “Expose, Propose, and Politicize”) and his ethical stance of revealing not only what is “wrong and needing change, but also what is desirable and needs to be built on and fostered”, it is argued that, from an assessment perspective, festival organizers ought to be required to disclaim, in the fashion of “truth in advertising”, the ecological impacts and sponsors’ progress in reaching existing environmental standards, such as, only to name three: (i) reductions in tons of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide emitted to the atmosphere [18]; (ii) quantity of litter and effluents not dumped at sea but properly collected and treated in harbor facilities [19,20]; and (iii) fair hiring practices and other labor laws [21].

2. Analytical Mechanism: Taking It to the Sea

Waterfronts tend to have locational advantages from urban development and real estate perspectives, which explains the high number of recent urban regeneration interventions on former industrially zoned waterfronts [22]. Their easy access to water bodies has enabled cities to form and economies to flourish. Growing urban populations, not only on the land−water interface but also at the crossroads of other communication channels, tend to demand a rising amount of goods and services, which are increasingly delivered across continents via sea routes. According to Beatley, “some 90 percent of the movement of goods in our global economy happen by ship” [23] (p. 32). This has been facilitated in great measure by the invention of the container box. In fact, it has been argued that the shipping container has revolutionized the economy by making the world smaller and the economy bigger [1]. Container ships move cargo at unprecedented rates [24]. Figure 2 shows the Top 10 EU ports handling containers in 2011, 2020, and 2021.

In terms of blue economy, it has been documented that “approximately fifty-five thousand ships ply the oceans, six thousand of these in the form of extremely large, containerized vessels” [23] (p. 32). As one would expect, this occurs mostly with commercial advantages for businesses and social and environmental costs for all. Examples of negative impacts of our dependence on containerized shipping exchanges include air pollution from the burning of highly dense bunker fuel, water pollution from the discharge of oil, lubricants, and waste, damage to fish stocks and marine life, reliance mostly on truck traffic to move containers to and from ports, and unfair hiring and labor practices. In fact, the same author has also argued that “current approaches to shipping harm both the oceans and the surrounding communities where the shore-based ports are located” [23] (p. 32). From a cruise tourism perspective, cruise ships constitute a variation of shipping vessels, which are utilized to transport people instead of cargo. Contemporary cruises are land-like majestic floating hotels taking passengers to various ports throughout the world [26,27]. In 2017, the largest cruise port in the world, the Port of Miami, received six super post-Panamax vessels per week, with only New York being in the same league [28].

Cruise companies are known to compete amongst themselves and often to impose unreasonable demands on the cities they already visit and intend to visit in the future, which often add to veritable zero-sum game place wars, given the hidden externalities of the industry [29,30]. An example of the former is France’s leading cruise port, Marseille in the Provence region (co-host of the 2024 Summer Olympics), ranked number 4 in the Mediterranean and one of the World’s top 17 and known for its handling of the largest cruise ships and guaranteeing a wide range of destinations and excursions during port calls or pre- or post-cruise stays. The Lisbon’s cruise terminal, launched in 2017, designed by architect Carrilho da Graça is an example of the latter. Cruise ships have many of the same negative impacts as their mercantile counterparts, with additional recent issues such as the direct discharge of wastewater, the generation of garbage and plastics, air pollution, discharge of sewage and oil, the dumping overboard of solid waste, and the use of incinerators [31]. Conservative assessments have revealed that both shipping and the cruise industries have had a dismal track record both in their operations in the high-seas and when moored at port facilities [32,33].

While the above impacts pertain mostly to moving ships, research on the industry’s impacts on the neoliberal regeneration of port areas spans the continuum from the developed to developing countries [34,35]. At the turn of the decade, 155 cruise ports in 34 European countries were surveyed to understand the challenges they had been facing since the pre-pandemic era [36]. That study revealed the significance of a multitude of operational, strategic, societal, and environmental challenges, as well as a hierarchical relationship between ports and cruise lines. Governance models appeared to play an important role in the range of challenges identified [37,38]. On these matters, it has been recently argued that “Green and Blue Infrastructure can provide cost-effective treatments and help the achievement of several Sustainable Development Goals” [39] (p. 1). Green infrastructure is here understood as “the interconnected network of protected land and water that supports native species, maintains natural ecological processes, sustains air and water resources, and contributes to the health and quality of life for communities and people” [40] (p. 486). Other sources have defended, for several decades, the pursuit of land ethical development and conservation and blue urbanism approaches to city life and governance, which encapsulate regulating, and even prohibiting, the activities that do harm not only to people but also to land-based and ocean-based life [23,41].

3. Materials and Methods

The materials and research methods utilized in this article comprised in loco fieldwork participant observation in the tradition of qualitative case study participatory action research [42,43], followed by the study and analysis of primary (direct access to the subject of research) and secondary (second-hand information) sources on waterfront planning, the cruise industry, cultural festivals, green infrastructure, and the blue economy. The in loco specific research methods comprised a combination of these investigative techniques: convenience sampling to obtain baseline data, detailed observations, more than 20 conversational interactions (a.k.a. interviews) with other festival goers, various purchases at food stalls in the festival’s precinct, and walk-alongs [44] through the festival in what has been termed by the late UC Berkeley Mathematics Professor D. Freedman, who expanded upon J. Snow’s (1854) and A. Langmuir’s (1951) urgent urban public health epidemiology work in the field, as opposed to in the laboratory [45] as the “shoe leather” technique, an attempt at acquiring intimate, comprehensive, and meticulous knowledge of the phenomenon under study by literally going places, immersing oneself in the reality under study, talking to other participants, and searching for details and facts in order to reach an undoubtful research design and implementation strategy [46]. “Shoe leather” research represents a significant expenditure of effort (e.g., money, time, human resources, priorities, and commitment) to bring together many different lines of evidence. Although its purpose is not to replace statistical modelling, it is ideal in situations where data are difficult to acquire and interpret through other means [46].

The author’s conversations with other festival attendees took place mostly in the afternoon and evening of 14 September 2019. The questions and answers verbalized by both the researcher and the revelers who candidly ventured to reply in English, as the author did not speak German to them, were debriefed manually with paper and pencils at the end of the day at the temporary place of abode of the former. The face-to-face conversations (or interviews) lasted anywhere from 4 to 5 min with shy people to longer interactions in the order of 15–18 min with talkative ones, depending on where they occurred in the festival’s precinct. The more productive and engaging conversations took place closer to the water’s edge and farther away from the distractions of the live music, trinket booths, and food and ice-cream stalls. The call to end the conversational interactions was made when information saturation was reached and no additional details were uncovered. The conversations were interpreted a posteriori by the article’s sole author to produce the word cloud below. As such, interrater reliability was not a concern because the criteria for soundness were taken much more broadly than the usual emphasis on questions of research validity. Marshall and Rossman advocate that the important constructs at the core of an empowering qualitative research paradigm, of which participatory action research is just one example, underpin some of its advantages in terms of liberating thinking and action beyond the overpowering status quo of unquestioned reality [47].

The conversational tone of the interactions with the other festival goers built upon the work of Rutgers’ scholar Robert Lake who has suggested that when engaging in moral inquiry about justice in hopes of envisioning and moving closer to a socially desired end it is critical “to replace research with conversation” [48] (p. 1403). The verbal interactions resulted in a word cloud map with positive and negative views about the event and the associated shipping and cruising industries as well as different ways to improve the industries. This approach to research entails considering “the subjects of our inquiries as participants in problem solving rather than [simple] objects to be consulted” [48] (p. 1403).

After having conducted research on waterfront revitalization efforts on different continents for more than two decades, the author’s participation in the Workshop Spatial Strategies at the Land-Sea Interface: Rethinking Maritime Spatial Planning at the University of Hamburg (11–13 September) provided the impetus to conduct evaluative in loco research on waterfront transformations in a Northern European city. Once in Hamburg and while walking from the hostel to the university campus and back, the various paths taken were studied according to [49] and [50] (p. 1) under four main evaluation categories of practicability, safety, urbanity, and appeal. Said walking research strategies led the author to discover two major events happening in town that week: (i) the Seatrade Europe—Cruise and River Cruise Convention, a three-day leading specialist fair on all things pertaining to the cruising industry; and (ii) the Blue Light Festival (13–15 September 2019), supposedly the largest public festival of cruises and waterfront events.

Benefiting from a break in the academic workshop, a visit to the dual exhibit (i.e., the Seatrade Europe and the Marine Interiors—Cruise and Ferry Global Expo) at the city’s convention pavilion, located just blocks away from the university campus, emerged as a plausible opportunity to learn more about the subject matter under discussion at the University’s workshop. A complimentary guest pass provided access to all the exhibits and professional panels. The atmosphere inside the pavilions was reminiscent of similar pro-environment trade shows attended earlier elsewhere in Europe, although more glamorous in nature, more global in scale, and with the possibility of “rubbing shoulders” with the “who’s who” of the cruise industry. The two pavilions had slightly different foci. Seatrade Europe comprised stands from national tourism boards, cruise owners and operators, and their respective associations (Table 1), while the Marine Interiors pavilion had ample representation of construction, remodeling, and interior design businesses.

The former had a total of 240 exhibitors with the majority in the port/terminal (48.75%), port services, and tour operator (37.9%) categories, and the latter comprised 91 exhibitors offering services in four main areas: (i) shipyards, outfitting, consultants (38.5%); (ii) galleys, restaurants, equipment (41%); (iii) ship internal equipment (36%); and (iv) ship internal design (67%). The Seatrade Europe was sponsored by Caribbean Village (Barbados), Gibraltar Port Authority and Gibraltar Tourist Board (Gibraltar), Global Ports Holdings Plc (Turkey), Intercruises Shoreside and Port Services (Spain), and Vanilla Islands Organisation (Reunion Island), while the Marine Interiors had only one major sponsor (SMM Hamburg). The Marine Interiors Cruise and Ferry Global Expo focused on interior architectures and furnishings of passenger ships was the first such event to be offered in conjunction with Seatrade Europe. This expo was justified on the basis that the interior furnishings and fittings industry is growing rapidly. According to Aufderheide, there are “more than 130 new ships in the order books for delivery by 2027” [51] (p. 4). Besides the opportunity for innovative suppliers, interior decorators, and architects to showcase present trends and inspirational ideas, this new expo also comprised conference talks on such topics as “how design helps to convey, define or create brand identity”, a place-marketing strategy highly utilized in the rebranding of post-industrial cities in Europe [52]. The fieldwork at the Blue Light Festival took place at the end of the academic workshop on Saturday, 14 September 2019. It involved an eclectic array of participatory action research methods ranging from talking to people, walking and doing a reconnaissance visit to the waterfront district named Johannisbollwerk, during the day and at night, going on a roundtrip public ferry ride to one of the most distant harbor islands, to strolling like most tourists along the boardwalk festival stands, while waiting for the night arrival of the cruise and its celebratory and highly choreographed laser and sound show on the pier [53,54].

Table 1. Exhibitors by products displayed at the Seatrade Europe Cruise and Cruise River Convention [55]. * Some exhibitors showcased more than one product (own calculation).

Exhibitor by Products	% *	Exhibitor by Products	% *
Air conditioning/ventilation	0.41	Interior outfitters	1.25
Architects/designers	0.41	Legal services	0.41
Association/commission	5.41	Life-saving equipment	0.41
Audio visual equipment	1.66	Lighting	0.83
Carpeting/textiles	0.41	Onboard equipment/supplies	2.50
Catering supplies/hotel	2.50	Port agent	13.3
Charterer	0.83	Port services	22.5
Communications	2.91	Port/terminal	48.75
Computer hardware/software	2.50	Port/terminal equipment	4.58
Crewing/training services	1.25	Propulsion systems	0.41
Deck coating	0.41	Restaurant equipment/supplies	2.08
Destination management	15.8	Safety/security equipment	2.08
Electronic equipment	2.0	Ship agent	5.41
Engine room equipment	0.83	Ship manager	0.41
Entertainment/leisure	0.83	Ship building/repair	2.91
Finance/insurance	0.41	Ships equipment/fixtures and fittings	1.66
Fire prevention/fitting	0.83	Shoreside excursions	15.41
Fixtures and fittings	0.41	Steering equipment	0.41
Flooring	0.83	Telecommunications	0.83
Food/beverage	3.30	Tour operator	37.9
Ground handling agent	5.80	Transport	7.50
Hotel/resort	0.41	Travel agent	0.83
Hotel supplies	2.90	Uniforms and protecting clothing	0.83
Information/data systems	3.75	Waste handling	2.50

Table 1. Exhibitors by products displayed at the Seatrade Europe Cruise and Cruise River Convention [55]. * Some exhibitors showcased more than one product (own calculation).

Exhibitor by Products	% *	Exhibitor by Products	% *
Air conditioning/ventilation	0.41	Interior outfitters	1.25
Architects/designers	0.41	Legal services	0.41
Association/commission	5.41	Life-saving equipment	0.41
Audio visual equipment	1.66	Lighting	0.83
Carpeting/textiles	0.41	Onboard equipment/supplies	2.50
Catering supplies/hotel	2.50	Port agent	13.3
Charterer	0.83	Port services	22.5
Communications	2.91	Port/terminal	48.75
Computer hardware/software	2.50	Port/terminal equipment	4.58
Crewing/training services	1.25	Propulsion systems	0.41
Deck coating	0.41	Restaurant equipment/supplies	2.08
Destination management	15.8	Safety/security equipment	2.08
Electronic equipment	2.0	Ship agent	5.41
Engine room equipment	0.83	Ship manager	0.41
Entertainment/leisure	0.83	Ship building/repair	2.91
Finance/insurance	0.41	Ships equipment/fixtures and fittings	1.66
Fire prevention/fitting	0.83	Shoreside excursions	15.41
Fixtures and fittings	0.41	Steering equipment	0.41
Flooring	0.83	Telecommunications	0.83
Food/beverage	3.30	Tour operator	37.9
Ground handling agent	5.80	Transport	7.50
Hotel/resort	0.41	Travel agent	0.83
Hotel supplies	2.90	Uniforms and protecting clothing	0.83
Information/data systems	3.75	Waste handling	2.50

4. Case Study

4.1. Overview

The 2019 Blue Light Festival in Hamburg was unique in terms of its setting, context, and maritime orientation. The Workshop Spatial Strategies at the Land-Sea Interface organized by Dr. Walsh and his students took place at the University of Hamburg, partially to coincide with two major events happening in town that week: (i) the Seatrade Europe—Cruise and River Cruise Convention; and (ii) the Blue Light Festival, 13–15 September 2019, according to its organizers: “the largest public festival of cruises and waterfront events of its kind”.

The Blue Light Festival occurred on the eastern bank of the harbor. Hamburg’s location on the Elbe River’s estuary has given the city its immemorial maritime vocation. The large and wide harbor is on the Jutland peninsula, framed by continental Europe, Scandinavia, and the North and the Baltic Seas. Shipyard and port functions have taken advantage of the natural conditions of ample navigable waterways and flat estuary lands. Judicious entrepreneurship and technological advancements have attracted immigrants from throughout Europe and beyond. The long and wide harbor has facilitated various maritime activities, including shipyards, shipping facilities, storage, and pier terminals for a variety of public and private ferries, touristic boats, yachts, and intercontinental containership carriers.

Many of the traditional maritime activities have, however, migrated to more inland locations, freeing buildings, and public spaces for other activities [56,57]. The riverfront piers on the city side are now occupied with a high concentration of restaurants, bars, souvenir shops, and museums. Right on the waterfront to the north, there is a brand-new postmodern iconic building shaped in the form of a sailing ship [58], together with the traditional fish market, now only open on Sundays. The oldest maritime building complex includes the lookout clocktower and several nautical buildings dedicated to the coordination of all sorts of uses on the harbor.

4.2. Hamburg’s HafenCity and Port Environment

Waterfront locations have traditionally been perceived as possessing special qualities from real estate and tourism perspectives [59]. Some of these privatization tendencies have been challenged by social groups. For instance, a local social movement in Berlin “successfully challenged the city’s currently largest harbor front development project Media Spree” [60]. Hamburg’s port has been critical to Germany’s economy for many centuries. The mid-XIXth Century Generalplan für den Ausbau des Hamburger Hafens (General Plan for Port Enlargement) was aimed at connecting the city’s facility to the railway system and augmenting the port’s strategic role in Northern Europe [15] (p. 190).

Hamburg’s port suffered throwbacks due to World War II and the country’s growing de-industrialization of the economy, to the point that, in recent decades, some of the riverfront lands surrounding the inner harbor have been transformed to more urban uses in a new city district, called HafenCity [61,62,63]. HafenCity’s own set of environmental sustainability standards (i.e., green infrastructure) included “energy performance, benefit to public amenity, health and comfort, mix of use, and ease and efficiency of building maintenance over time” [62] (p. 100). HafenCity is the location of new residential condominiums, several services buildings, including the German Headquarters of Greenpeace, and of Hamburg’s new Opera House, Elbphilharmonie, a building designed by Herzog and De Meuron, which had its opening concert on 11 January 2017.

A high number of tourism operators charting harbor tours as well as many and recurrent public ferries serving nearby places throughout the estuary could be found vigorously operating from the city’s various piers on 14 September 2019. The estuary was a crowded, and at times congested, place given the high number of vessels circulating on the river, accosting the piers, and departing for other stops on their regular routes. Many small islands, partially occupied by shipyard companies in the repair business, showed the interspersed relationship between nature and the buoyancy of the industrial apparatus. Large drydocks reflected the corresponding size of the vessels serviced in Hamburg as well as the historic pre-eminence of Hamburg’s maritime port, along the Rotterdam, Le Havre, Vigo, Leixões North Atlantic string of deep-water seaports [64,65].

The arrival of the cruise ship was preceded by charted boats with private birthday party celebrations enjoying the freedom of good laughter and drinking on the Elbe. The river piers were filled with street vendors, performers, tourism agencies, cruise companies promoting their ships, and hardware and construction companies advertising distinct types of products and innovations for a more convenient and healthier built environment. The name of the festival derives from the blue lights placed not only on the piers but also on the exterior of waterfront buildings. The streets parallel to the riverfront were closed off to traffic, and visitors were free to roam around and walk without being concerned with incoming vehicles. For many visitors, the access to the festival’s precinct was achieved via a subway station conveniently located next to the clocktower maritime buildings. The adjacent riverfront urban fabric is on a hill punctuated on either side of an urban park (i.e., a green wedge infrastructure) by two lodging establishments: the emblematic Hotel Hafen Hamburg dating back to 1858 and the new state-of-the-art Youth Hostel Hamburg “Auf dem Stintfang”.

4.3. The Blue Light Festival

Two hundred and twelve ships carrying nearly 900,000 passengers docked in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg in 2018 [66]. The 2019 festival was attended by an estimated half a million visitors who waited patiently for the high moment of the evening: the arrival of one of the largest cruise ships in the world! The dark skies and the high number of blue lights, live music, stalls selling not only food and beer but also ice-cream, traditional clothes, trinkets, and souvenirs provided a perfect setting to keep one occupied until the big moment. At HafenCity, there was an opportunity to visit a cruise ship cabin while experiencing a deck scene with sun umbrellas, garden tables, and beach chairs. The cruise ship industry also employed a high number of temporary workers to collect market data on visitors with the intent of enticing them to go on tours in the future. The author’s conversations with other festival goers enabled the production of the word cloud map in Figure 3.

The pier festival and entertainment activities contrasted markedly with the intimate and small group-oriented nature of the adjacent city’s restaurant and entertainment districts located about a block away on the slope of the hill. Just across the street from the harbor, there were Portuguese, Brazilian, and Italian restaurants. Several blocks to the north, there is a street with a high concentration of restaurants, bars, fast food outlets, casinos, adult entertainment parlous, banks, and hotels—a place reminiscent of Hamburg’s iconic character as a true port city [67]. A regular street market with food vending trucks takes place twice a week. The hotels on top of the hill overlooking the Elbe River offer breathtaking views of the waterfront and of the maritime activities down below.

The festival was dominated by the arrival of the cruise ship. The multiple entertainment activities culminated with the arrival of the ship and the traditional greeting of the host city by blowing the ship’s horn. A show of lights on the cruise’s side entertained the visitors on the pier and helped make cruise passengers complacent with visiting the various touristic activities waiting for them on the next day when they would be finally temporarily allowed to leave the cruise and roam free through the city of Hamburg. At the end of the celebratory ceremony, when the festival attendees attempted to leave the pier in direction to the subway station and of the adjacent city streets, the crowd, with the author enmeshed in it, advanced at a snail pace crawling towards a rather limited number of exit points, which could be a “recipe for disaster” [68]—potentially at the scale of the tragic 2022 Halloween crowd surge in the Itaewon neighborhood of Seoul, South Korea, where 159 people were killed and 196 others were injured—in case of an uncivilized behavior, a terrorist attack, a riot, or a natural disaster.

Absent from this easily visible and choreographed excitement of greeting the incoming cruise and celebrating the hospitality of the receiving city was the hidden negative environmental externalities created by the cruise industry of burning high polluting diesel fuel [69]. Very few cruises are yet compliant with the more stringent IMO’s 2020 international law regulating the industry, which requires these large vessels to install air filters and scrubs [18,70]. Figure 4 shows SO_x emissions from cruise ships compared to automobiles in selected European port cities.

Table 2. Air pollution from cruise ships in Hamburg and Germany [71].

Indicators	Hamburg	Germany
Number of cruise ships in 2017	42	92
Country’s sailing/port call times in 2017 (hours)	3539	21,692
PM emissions from cruise ships in 2017 (kg)	5612	65,285
NOx emissions from cruise ships in 2017 (kg)	311,088	3,669,861
Proj. SOx emissions from cruise ships in 2020 (kg)	n/a	157,366

shows a set of air pollution indicators, including particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxides (NO_x) emissions from cruise ships and sulfur oxides (SO_x) emissions from cruise ships, specifically for Germany as a whole and the City of Hamburg in particular.

5. Discussion of Findings

5.1. First Criterion: Expose—Port Governance

As stated above, Marcuse’s three-prong criteria for tackling wicked problems comprise the need to Expose, Propose, and Politicize [17]. The blue economy—here understood as the aggregated measure of all socio-economic activities related to the ocean ecosystem including seas and coastal areas utilization, livelihoods, health, regulation, and stewardship—has been defined as a policy tool or means to drive economic growth and create jobs [72]. Within such a type of economy, four competing discourses regarding human−ocean relations have been conceptualized as follows: (i) oceans as a natural capital; (ii) oceans as good business; (iii) oceans as integral to Pacific Small Island Developing States; and (iv) oceans as small-scale fisheries livelihoods [73]. A study has reviewed how the blue economy is likely to accentuate a range of social and environmental injustices [74]. This is a synthesis of that study’s 10 most severe injustices:

• Dispossession, displacement, and ocean grabbing;
• Environmental justice concerns from pollution and waste;
• Environmental degradation and reduction of ecosystem services;
• Livelihood impacts for small-scale fishers;
• Inequitable distribution of economic benefits;
• Social and cultural impacts;
• Marginalization of women;
• Human and indigenous rights abuses;
• Exclusion from governance.

Evaluation studies claim that the exclusion from governance affairs is quite disconcerting; in fact, port-city governance relations can be quite complex and conflictual [24,75]. Usually, port authorities are interested in maintaining jurisdiction over their land and water domains, and city governments tend to seek benefits from redeveloping adjacent waterfront environments not only for real estate purposes but also for public access [60]. Even in various western countries, citizens at large and non-profit environmental organizations have traditionally been neglected or paid lip-service when they raise concerns over social and environmental issues likely to affect the economic bottom-line of maritime industries.

In addition, recently, a set of researchers conducted a major governance study of how ports’ structures and strategies are applied to better accommodate the changing needs of the cruise industry [21]. The researchers identified four distinct governance models mostly related to the port authorities’ management stance: active leader, investor, marketer, and passive. This article argues that based on the research conducted in Hamburg and subsequent study of the literature and policy documents, it is possible to conceptualize an additional model, the “True Blue” urbanism, which should comprise the major non-profit overseers and sponsors of the touristic waterfront festival aimed at not only promoting tourism in the host city but also increasing the cruise industry’s benefits via environmental accountability and performance [76].

5.2. Second Criterion: Propose—Greening the City and the Shipping Industry

The innovations needed to offset the negative impacts identified in the literature review above include two types of solutions: (i) structural; and (ii) design-based. Both are applied to container ships and cruises with different intensities and depend on the vessels’ sizes and purposes. Among these are redesigning vessels for slower speeds, more efficient engines and waste heat recovery systems, fuel-efficient improvements (e.g., biofuels, low emission liquified natural gas (LNG), and renewable energy sources), exhaust scrubbers (i.e., what in a post-COVID 19 era [77] could be thought of as putting masks (i.e., filters) on ships’ chimneys), regulations to prohibit vessels from polluting air and water, especially near ports, utilizing cleaner vehicles (i.e., trucks and lorries for deliveries and electric shuttles for moving passengers), and equipping port terminals with a range of biophilic and mimicry architecture and design strategies, such as green rooftops, smart materials, geothermal heating, water saving plumbing systems, and the use of native landscaping practices [23,78].

Regarding the cruise industry in particular, a pertinent suggestion would be for cruise ships to decrease their air pollution emissions while moored at the port, which could be conducted by simply switching their engines to electricity supplied by the city’s grid instead of running on their regular bunker fuel. Apparently, “two of three cruise terminals in the Hamburg port (…) provide cruise lines with electricity supplies to reduce ship emissions during port waiting periods (…), [however] as long as cruise lines will not be required to use these devices for mitigating [their] environmental impact, the infrastructure [will] continue to remain under-exploited” [15] (p. 193). Since these six major factors appear to influence the adoption of green infrastructure: “Education, Provision of Ecosystem Services, Financial Incentives, Coordination Among Actors, Laws and Policies, and Planning Recommendations” [79] (p. 9), ecological port feebates and rebates (i.e., rewards and fees aimed at encouraging better behaviors and/or compliance) based on a company’s environmental performance could also be introduced to encourage cleaner visits during the cruise ships’ berths [32].

Furthermore, it is also recommended that citizens at large and co-sponsors of similar future events serve as overseers of premium partners to preclude the swindling of the conviviality and cultural capital aspects of this type of event [80]. The global ecological impacts and performance of the prime sponsors at home and elsewhere could be recorded and made available for public scrutiny, in hopes of showcasing “ecological wisdom” and helping to accomplish “real and permanent good” [81]. Moreover, no festival license ought to be granted by the municipality, unless said compliance has been added to the already existing normative disclosures such as hygiene, safety, road closure, and evacuation in case of emergency.

Finally, it has even been argued that it is possible to capitalize on the growing demand for cruise tourism to promote not only a blue economy but a “blue urbanism” [23], a practice which enhances a renewed sense of appreciation for and connection to the ocean as several companies are already doing. These include showing documentary films about ocean ecology and conservation on-board (e.g., Sentinels of the Mediterranean: Acting for Marine Biodiversity, 2022), adhering to certified sustainable seafood programs, and creating partnerships with a myriad of non-profit environmental organizations. All these activities are likely to increase our individual and collective awareness about the invaluable richness of the world’s land- and water-based environment before it is irreplaceably exhausted.

5.3. Third Criterion: Politicize—A Sister Cities Network of Socio-Ecological Justice

If the preceding paragraphs identified mostly solutions to address the Expose and Propose dimensions in Marcuse’s three-part criteria for tackling wicked problems (i.e., “Expose, Propose, and Politicize” [17]), these subsequent three measures shed light on the Politicize aspect of the “truth in advertising” conceptualization applied to the cruise (and shipping) industry. Measure #1: socio-ecological performance—similar to the Nutrition Facts panel displayed on the outside of food product containers in most western countries, the cigarette pack public health warning labels aimed at controlling tobacco consumption globally [82], Environmental Dashboards utilized to provide “ecofeedback” to host communities [83], and the global socio-ecological impacts and performance of the prime sponsors at home and elsewhere could be recorded and made available for public scrutiny.

While the Nutrition Facts panels display nutrition composition, ingredients, and calories, the global socio-ecological impacts and performance record could display a variety of labor, consumption, energy, and environmental performance facts of the cruise (and shipping) industry. In the United States, there is precedent of similar types of initiatives in the broad areas of public health and safety as part of responsive government actions via the promotion of free and open information; the protection of individuals from harm caused by other people or by groups; and taking societal action to protect and promote health [84].

Measure #2: the Solomonic approach to justice—This approach would reveal that the moral responsibility of caring for the oceans (i.e., the lifeblood of the industry) and for the destinations visited and or serviced falls on everybody, with special incidence on those who benefit the most from it. Measure #3: a Port of Call Sister Cities network—a network of cruise port cities similar to either the old Hanseatic League of cities in Northern Europe from the 13th to the 15th century or the contemporary international Sister Cities initiative created and implemented to exchange best practices and to lobby the cruise (and shipping) industry for cleaner and more responsible practices in terms of labor laws, air, water, energy, product consumption, and recycling and safe disposal of solid and liquid waste [85].

6. Conclusions

Festival marketplaces broadly conceptualized are profoundly ambivalent places at the land−water interface. Based on in loco field research, it has been demonstrated that the 2019 Hamburg Cruise Days challenged Germany’s environmental attempts at complying with international climate change targets. The festival also proved that dependence on one major premium partner in the cruise industry is likely to exacerbate environmental damage elsewhere and level-off hard fought for accomplishments by environmental groups at home and abroad [86].

The information obtained through a combination of mostly qualitative research techniques (i.e., convenience sampling, detailed observations, and conversational interactions—interviews of various lengths), subsumed under the typology of on the ground “shoe-leather” active participatory action research fieldwork, proved that festival goers walked away from the event with a rather limited understanding of the total impacts of the cruise industry on the host city and on stopping port cities during recurrent cruise visits, as the highly choreographed festival was mostly aimed at marketing entertainment and touristic activities to visitors and future cruise shipping revelers. Assessed evidence of the mixed impacts of this industry has been documented [32,71,87] and deserves greater scrutiny and public policy action.

In summary, the article began with two different types of ships—the mega-containership carrier and the touristic cruise ship. It was asserted that despite providing similar functions, although moving distinct entities (i.e., goods and commodities vs. people and tourists), they both pollute the air and cause a range of other environmental problems, mostly because very few ships are yet compliant with international laws requirements; for instance, these large vessels are required to install air filters and scrubs. In terms of what it takes to help change the current “cobalt” color promoted by the organizers of the Hamburg’s Waterfront Cruise Days Festival case study to a “True Blue” example of Green and Blue Infrastructure mentality in Europe [88,89], it was argued that, from a waterfront planning governance perspective, festival organizers ought to be required to disclaim, in the perspective of “truth in advertising”, the ecological impacts and sponsors’ progress in reaching existing environmental standards in order to eradicate cruise ship costly social and environmental injustices [90].

Likely, a good starting point to test the political realm’s three measures of the “truth in advertising” approach synthesized in the Section 5 above would be for the cities already engaged in responsible and sustainable cruise tourism management [91] to extend their emphasis on sustainable tourism to also encompass socio-ecological performance of the cruise (and shipping) industry (measure #1) in the fashion of a Solomonic approach to justice (measure #2), and within a formalized Porto of Call Sister Cities Network (measure #3).

While potential research limitations may still exist in the areas of management governance, collaborative planning, collective learning, and accountability, future studies on this topic ought to minimize any unintentional selection of biased samples. Examples of potential unintentional selection biases could be conversing with festival goers, independently of their age, gender, marital and residence statuses, profession, income and educational levels, environmental proclivities, etc., and not having similar auscultations with other inhabitants of Hamburg elsewhere in the city. The author believes that this “True Blue” urbanism model is a timely and tailor-made, yet scalable, response to the call for “Reframing Sustainability in the Emergent Age” [92]. The lessons learned, as well as the implications put forward above, exemplify attempts at reassessing strategies for achieving sustainability and preserving the vitality of nature in a context of prudent and responsible innovations [93]. Furthermore, they could also help to integrate the responsive individual behavior of waterfront stakeholders with the collective good, while bringing all interests together on the vast land–water interface of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.