The article attempts a comparison of two harbor districts, in Gdansk and in Hamburg. In 2013, a multiannual program - IBA Hamburg (International Building Exhibition) - was completed. The IBA, initiated with the a concept of the Leap over the Elbe River, part of the Growing City development agenda, addressed the problem of restructuring the port-nearby zones in Harburg and Wilhelmsburg, which have been recognised as areas of high potential in metropolitan development. The concept of metrozones (intra-peripheries or intra border zones), similarly to the term in-between City (German: Zwischenstadt), describes the current problems associated with the strive for creation of an original, but efficient and compact European city. Restructuring of the harbor districts enables new development of the urbanized, but never planned as urban space, areas. Shaped in accordance with the technological capabilities and with the regulation standards and norms of the second half of the 20th century, nowadays the areas form the resultative landscape, burdened with the image of an unfriendly or even dangerous zones. In the era of high technology, metrozones are becoming valuable intra-city developmental areas, opened to alternative urban programs, avoiding the homogenising global trends. In connection with the above, the article describes the situation of the area organized around Nowy Port in Gdansk.

The Hamburg’s policy, as part of the ‘Leap over the Elbe River’ strategy, is an example of the current direction of the city’s renewal, falling beyond classical revitalization. Improvement of quality and refinement of urban structures require an unconventional approach in the problem areas, both in the phase of setting the target standards and at the stage of solution implementation. The districts located in the fork of the Elbe river, Hamburg’s left-bank post-habor areas, were given the IBA (International Building Exhibition) Hamburg status in 2006-13. The area of Wilhelmsburg has become the place of implementing an innovative urban strategy, under the slogan of a renewable city, which has prepared the Island for a modern policy of compact city model development. The conclusions from the analysis of the renewal process that had been carried out within the framework of the IBA Hamburg, described in this article, have been summarized with regard to the Polish conditions represented by the example of the revitalization process in the Nowy Port district in Gdańsk.