Shipping bemoans its invisibility, yet it does everything it can to avoid attention. It's a decades-old complaint - especially in post-industrial countries where the older generation remembers a maritime heritage which, all too often, existed only in the imagination, while the younger generation has never been curious enough to ask where food and consumer goods come from. Last week we heard that ultra-large container ships were the chief cause of a disconnect between cities and their ports. However, there's a more worrying cause that is slowly eating into all of us. I'll come to that later. Speaking at a lecture titled 'Shipping, Cities, and their Inter-dependencies' in Singapore, Olaf Merk, administrator for ports and shipping at the International Transport Forum, observed that mega-ships need mega-ports.
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