Since the 1960s, "European ports have seen a rational migration away from their traditional urban cores, to deeper and less regulated waters". The World Gateway was no exception: during the most of the nineteenth and twentieth century, the city of Rotterdam and its port developed a “living-apart-together” type of coexistence, since economic driven transformations led their functions to follow relatively separate development trails. Their relationship started loosening until the port turned its back on the urban core completely switching role from the manually operated heart of the city, into a distant automated wealth propeller. The breakup between the city and its port can be identified in a specific spatial fallout, more precisely in the inner harbour areas left vacant by the port moving northward and the city pushing towards the sky.