It may surprise many people that five or six ships a day unload cargo at the Port of Providence, unloading more than a million tons a year. Between the port and downtown Providence, however, is a stretch of largely industrial enterprises, not all of them water-related, whose character, in the view of Mayor Cicilline and municipal planning officials, ought to change.

We are pleased that the city’s comprehensive plan, called Providence 2020 and now under review, seeks to protect port-related jobs and, indeed, strengthen the port’s role in the regional economy.

But meanwhile, decades of industrial decline continue to threaten the city’s economic viability. The comprehensive plan seems at least a little bit lacking in enthusiasm for such businesses as remain on Allens Avenue, to which city officials hope instead to attract tourists, residents and related commercial activities. For now, about the only enterprises that fit into that vision are at Conley’s Wharf, where a private club and artist studios have been developed in an old mill near State Pier No. 1, with restaurants and a hotel planned. Across Allens Avenue from Conley’s Wharf, a strip of strip clubs, regarding which the comprehensive plan urges relocation, contributes exotically to the area’s allure.

Many of the gritty businesses on the waterfront along Allens bear little resemblance to the city’s vision, but the city hasn’t now, or for the foreseeable future, the resources to relocate them even as close by as the non-waterfront (western) side of Allens Avenue. These business owners (who are also taxpayers and employers) are understandably concerned that the city intends to squeeze them off of their land by forcing them to operate cheek-by-jowl with incompatible residential, retail and tourist interests that might have more clout in City Hall if push came to shove.

We have no objection to a mixture of uses along that section of the waterfront, and support the city’s desire to promote new or existing industry related to the water, both at and north of the port. It may be that over the next one or two decades, the city’s industrial economy will decline even further — we hope not! — opening the way for more “pleasant” sorts of land uses. But to directly or indirectly assist in the decline of any industrial activity suggests an economic short-sightedness of alarming degree.

Given the unsettled future of the new development land to be freed by the relocation of Route 195, the comprehensive plan’s current wording may reflect a degree of over-optimism regarding the speed of development likely to spread from downtown southward along the Providence River. All comprehensive plans look far down the road, but we hope that the plan will not end up encouraging the city to enact zoning changes that will make things even harder for industry in Providence.

Providence should look at the difference between Portsmouth, N.H., and Newburyport, Mass. Both are very pretty little cities, but Portsmouth has worked hard to preserve its character as a working port, while Newburyport has turned its port into an almost wholly tourism-based waterfront.

We think Portsmouth is the more attractive place, largely because it still has major shipping-related industries. It seems more, well, real, and vibrant, and not a Disneyfied park. Yet, in spite of this — or because of it? — the city’s waterfront restaurants are almost always packed. Providence’s visionaries should take note of that. It needs a diversified economy that includes healthy manufacturing and shipping sectors that can help it survive the fluctuations of the world economy. See Charleston and Savannah!