Global city regions and the location of logistics activity

The aim of this paper is to extend and develop research surrounding the links between transport and urban regions. An understanding of transport activity has long involved the use of spatial frameworks, seen in the idea of a gateway city (with its surrounding hinterland) and in the identification of hubs or nodes. The particular framework used here is the global city region, a build-out from the much researched global city, and acknowledged as the most prominent feature of spatial development in the global economy. As these areas can accommodate important sea and airport infrastructure, the global city region can be expected to play a significant role in global logistics. Whether that significance extends just from the physical realm, as reflected in the infrastructure, or whether it is embedded in the scale and complexity of the advanced business services sector within the global city, is the issue that lies at the heart of the research. The research has set out to answer the question: “How important are these regions in logistics activity?”. The question has relevance in the context of transport geography as it provides an urban structure perspective on what is commonly seen as separate port or airport activity. Its relevance is enhanced as its answer relies upon a simultaneous analysis of both sea and air freight activity. Results show these regions counted for a substantial and growing share of sea and air freight between 1996 and 2006. In accounting for that outcome the research explores the particular effect of infrastructure (showing that global city regions with multiple seaport and airports play a special role) and also isolates the links with global city functions. The paper concludes with some insight on the special challenge these places create for strategic urban planning policy.     

Industrial space demand and freight transportation activity: exploring the connection

There has been continuing interest among transportation planners, economic development specialists, and private industry about the relationship between the demand for industrial space and the level of freight transportation activity. With the growing importance of logistics and supply chain economics for many industrial and business activities, firms organizing their industrial activities and locating their warehousing and operational centers increasingly must consider the availability, quality, and cost of a range of transportation services, particularly in connection with essential intermodal activities. Accordingly, development of major logistics parks in conjunction with major intermodal hubs has become an important element in the overall industrial economy, predicated on the notion that robust freight activity is a good indicator of demand for industrial space. In this study, using regression techniques, we examine the relationship between freight transportation activity and industrial space demand at the metropolitan area level. The results confirm this relationship, reflecting significant statistical association between higher levels of freight traffic and higher levels of industrial space demand. This relationship is more pronounced in inland versus port markets. In addition, the data reveal that there was a shock to industrial space demand in 2001, thereby altering the structural relationship between demand and the drivers of demand.     

Going West? Spatial polarization of the North Korean port system

This paper analyzes North Korean ports in light of existing models of port system evolution. It reviews the economic and political factors shaping port concentration in developed, developing, and socialist countries. A database on vessel movements allows for the analysis of individual North Korean port traffic by total capacity circulated, cargo type, fleet nationality, immediate origin and destination, and berthing time. While ideological factors and military control hamper port modernization and trade openness, traffic concentration at the Pyongyang–Nampo gateway highlights the spatial polarization in the capital region at the expense of Eastern ports for which inland transport limitations and industrial decline have become major issues. The North Korean case only partly fits general models because traffic concentration occurs due to geopolitical isolation and internal limitations rather than economic and trade growth.     

Urban spatial structure,employment subcenters,and freight travel

Metropolitan areas in the U.S. have become increasingly polycentric. Large employment subcenters have emerged outside of central cities, competing against the traditional city center for labor and businesses. The existing literature on land use and transportation focuses on passenger travel, providing little insight into the impact of polycentric metropolitan development patterns on freight activity. In this study, we use the Los Angeles region as a case study to examine the relationship between urban spatial development patterns and freight travel. Using the National Employment Time Series (NETS) data, we identify employment subcenters in metropolitan Los Angeles. We characterize freight activities associated with the subcenters using data from the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). We develop a regression model that estimates freight activity as a function of geographic characteristics, such as whether a location is in an employment subcenter, measures of nearby employment, access to the highway network, and proximity to intermodal freight facilities. The results indicate that employment is an important driver of freight activity; however, employment subcenters have an independent effect on freight activity. The results of this study suggest that further research on urban spatial structure and freight activity should assess the effects of employment subcenters and how their particular employment composition and characteristics are associated with freight activities at the metropolitan level. Such an approach would lead to more precise policy recommendations for urban goods movement.     

Preliminary investigation of waterfront redevelopment in Chinese coastal port cities: the case of the eastern Dalian port areas

Since the turn of the millennium, waterfront redevelopment has been a new phenomenon in the coastal port cities of China and has become an important component of a global wave. In the context of urbanisation and globalisation, waterfront redevelopment provides not only various opportunities but also unprecedented challenges for the Chinese port cities. From a sustainability perspective, addressing the challenges requires thoroughly analysing the factors driving waterfront redevelopment and discovering the issues facing those coastal port cities. After reviewing the historical process of port development, based on the case of the eastern Dalian port areas, this paper attempts to explore the key factors behind the redevelopment and to discover the main issues facing Dalian cityport. The results show that forces at the global, national and local levels jointly drive redevelopment activities and that some national factors, such as aggressive real estate development in the past decade, play a remarkable role in this phenomenon. Consequently, timing on redevelopment, historic building conservation, reconnection of the waterfront to the city, and building a democratic decision-making process together challenge the sustainable future of redeveloped waterfronts in Dalian cityport and in other historic port cities in China.     

Correlation analysis of day-to-day origin-destination flows and traffic volumes in urban networks

The trip patterns on an urban network can be represented by two main variables: origin-destination flows (OD flows), defined as the number of trips between two locations over a given time period, and traffic volumes, defined as the number of vehicles that cross a street over a given time interval. Past research on the dynamic of traffic assignment and OD estimation suggested that the traveler's decisions vary on a day-to-day basis and that their most recent decisions may affect their current travel decisions. Based on these assumptions, this study analyzed the autocorrelation of a set of day-to-day series of traffic volumes and OD flows generated from a large collection of traffic sensors, identifying the data's correlation structure over different locations and OD pairs in an urban network. To this end, a method for data treatment of the 2017 dataset from the traffic monitoring system of Fortaleza, Brazil, was employed, which consisted in the following major steps: data cleaning due to equipment failure, definition of traffic profiles for typical and atypical months, definition of daily traffic periods, selection of suitable devices to obtain OD flows, and detection of outliers in the time series. The traffic profiles and the daily traffic periods were defined by applying clustering techniques. The analysis of autocorrelation was performed after controlling for seasonal effects in the data by applying regression analysis. This study contributes to understand how the dynamic of trip patterns varies over space due to the spatial distribution of the city's activities and the network's spatial centrality. The analysis of 144 sets of traffic volumes throughout 2017 suggests that the autocorrelation of traffic volumes should be higher in congested central areas where multiple options of route are available. It seems that, for large congested networks, which present many uncertain factors (e.g., accidents, variable weather, multiple paths, etc.), part of the users do not have complete knowledge of the network's performance, and must rely on experience and habit to decide their routes, especially at more centralized locations of the network. The analysis of serial correlation in the series of sample OD flows between regions showed that the city's central area, where more commercial and service-related activities take place, seems to influence the dynamic of OD flows, probably due to the occurrence of more non-commuting trips to the central area of the city.     

Mapping accessibility in Belgium: a tool for land-use and transport planning?

This paper compares the spatial structure of car accessibility to towns and to railway stations during peak and off-peak hours in Belgium for the country’s 2616 municipalities. A clustering method is applied. It is shown that in a highly urbanised country, the situation is far from being spatially equitable in terms of accessibility, and some areas are more favoured than others. Congestion increases spatial inequalities, differently according to absolute or relative measures of change. By means of examples, this paper shows that even simple accessibility indicators could be useful to support decisions taken by planners and politicians (e.g. as regards the development of residential, industrial and business park areas). Maps indicate the spatial inequalities in terms of accessibility to urban centres and transport nodes, and the impact of congestion on these inequalities. The absolute and relative time losses due to congestion affect different areas in different ways. The location of new developments further increases the congestion problem and the spatial disparities. This paper also insists on the caution that should be adopted when measuring and interpreting “accessibility”, its measurements, its inputs, its temporal changes in absolute and relative terms as well as the need for spatially disaggregated data.     

Socio-occupational and geographical determinants of the frequency of long-distance business travel in France

Business travel, and long-distance business travel in particular, has received much less attention in research than home-to-work travel. This article explores some determinants of the frequency of long-distance business travel. It focuses on the influence of two parameters that have been little studied: the individual’s socio-occupational group and the workplace location. The data used were provided by the 2008 French National Transport and Travel Survey. Following a review of the literature, a Poisson regression is performed on the frequency of long-distance business trips. The most significant determinants are socio-occupational category, income, gender and the urban or rural nature and size in terms of the number of inhabitants of the area of location. In particular long-distance business trip frequency is lower in the Paris urban area than in all the categories of urban areas as well as rural areas because of the highly centralised organisation of economic activity and the transport network in France.     

Changing port-city relations at Amsterdam: A new phase at the interface?

In this paper, we investigate whether a new phase in port-city development is emerging. We have done this by analysing the scientific literature on present and future spatial developments of the port of Amsterdam in the Netherlands in terms of the spatial and environmental policies and the viewpoints of port firms. It appears that in the Port of Amsterdam, but also in other ports, the expansion pace of the port area is slowing down, while at the same time the city is expanding in the direction of the port at an increasing speed. In the beginning, this conflict was rather passive, in the sense that the conflict was about how the redevelopment should take place. However, the conflict has evolved further to questioning whether any redevelopment should take place. This implies that a new phase in the development of the port-city interface has emerged.     

Spatial inequality of bus transit dependence on urban streets and its relationships with socioeconomic intensities: A tale of two megacities in China

The dependence of urban bus transit on their covered streets is expected to be significant and heterogeneous in megacities. Using a bipartite network approach, we develop several weighted centrality-based connectivities to quantify the degree of dependencies of urban bus transit on streets. Two megacities with different road patterns, i.e., Beijing and Shanghai in China are taken as examples to depict comparatively spatial inequalities of the centrality-based dependencies at both local and global scales. Then, a series of spatial cross-section regression models are introduced to explore the colocation relationships between the dependencies of bus transit and urban socioeconomic intensities. The methodology of kernel density estimation (KDE) is used to convert all data with different scales into the same unit of measurement. Results indicate that there are significant statistical and spatial inequalities of the centrality-based dependencies of bus transit on urban streets. These inequalities with evident hierarchies, variances and clusters were validated by statistical analysis including power-law function, rank-size distribution, multiple variance indices, together with Global Moran's I. Besides, a majority of bus transit rely heavily on minor streets concentrating on circumferential expressways in central urban areas and radial highways oriented to outer suburbs under industrial or residential suburbanization. The unequal distribution is found to be strongly related to population, nighttime light intensity, transport-related services, and commercial and leisure services by the spatial regression models. A good spatial matching between bus routes' dependencies and socioeconomic activities intensities is found both in these two megacities.     

The associations of newly launched high-speed rail stations with industrial gentrification

Industrial gentrification occurs when lower-skill or lower-wage industries are displaced by higher-skill or higher-wage industries caused by various driving forces. This research explored the associations of newly launched high-speed rail (HSR) stations with industrial gentrification. Sample data were obtained from business registration records from 2010 to 2018 for areas surrounding the Hangzhou East Railway Station (a new HSR station in newly developing areas) and Hangzhou Railway Station (a pre-existing rail station in developed areas) in China. Cox proportional hazard regressions were applied to analyze the survival risks of businesses. Empirical results suggest that the newly launched HSR services have induced industrial gentrification in the developed station area. Except for the displacement of agricultural production activities, HSR-induced industrial gentrification has not yet been manifested in the newly developed station area. The latter phenomenon is because of the sufficiently available lands and floor spaces for industrial development and the lower-skill or lower-wage industries and higher-skill or higher-wage industries that benefit from HSR services in the form of revenues.     

Building a bridge between port and city: Improving the urban competitiveness of port cities

Historically, ports have been an important location factor for cities, enabling international trade and investment and facilitating urbanization processes. However, the traditionally strong relationship between ports and port cities has gradually weakened due to the emerging negative externalities of ports. Therefore, port-city municipalities need to better understand the relationship between port activities, urban competitiveness, and the attraction of investment. This paper uses the Quadratic Assignment Procedure (QAP) and related regression models to test this relationship as well as identify the determinants of urban competitiveness. The results show that despite the positive relationship between port and urban networks, port cities currently exhibit no significant advantages over non-port cities in attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI); in addition, port-city competitiveness depends more on urban characteristics than on port factors. Based on these results, we propose various strategies for port-city developments.     

Accessibility and proximity effects of bus rapid transit on housing prices: Heterogeneity across price quantiles and space

Bus rapid transit (BRT) systems have mushroomed worldwide in the last few decades. An enriched understanding of BRT capitalization effects is essential. Although the BRT accessibility effect on housing prices has been extensively explored, the effect of proximity to the BRT corridor (which may be related to unattractive landscape and noise pollution) has been little scrutinized. More importantly, whether and how the two effects vary across price levels and space have yet to be sufficiently studied. To this end, we estimate the effect of BRT accessibility and proximity on housing prices by applying a battery of econometric methods (including hedonic pricing models, spatial regression models, quantile regression models, and a geographically weighted regression model) to 5185 observations in the housing market in Xiamen Island, China. The results of this study are: (1) BRT accessibility premiums and proximity penalties simultaneously exist in the housing market; (2) buyers of high-priced housing have a greater willingness to pay for avoiding the nuisances attributed to proximity to the BRT corridor; (3) the effect of BRT on housing prices is spatially heterogeneous; (4) the BRT accessibility effect is larger in suburban areas than in urban areas; and (5) housing prices are more predictable near the city centers than outside the area, which may be because a greater proportion of the price of a house near the city centers is derived from the location (rather than the building structure). Finally, policy implications (e.g., building acoustic barriers and planting vegetation along the BRT corridor and improving the transit service in suburban areas) are discussed.     

城市客运交通系统结构研究

在解析城市客运交通系统合理结构的基础上,根据居民出行方式选择随距离和综合交通条件而变化的内在规律,以居民出行距离分布特征为基础,论证常规公交与城市轨道交通出行全过程广义效用值边际效应,综合构建城市客运交通方式出行选择模型。以某中心城市为例,计算结果表明:以出行距离分布特征为基础,考虑城市综合交通条件,结合未来客运结构辨识而建立的城市出行方式选择模型具有较好的拟合特征和适用性。     

The effect of urban growth on commuting patterns in Christchurch,New Zealand

The rising demand for residential development in the urban fringe of Christchurch, New Zealand, has led to an increase in car use and lengthening journeys, both of which have serious environmental implications. In light of this, the relationship between urban form and transport was investigated in Christchurch through the analysis of journey to work data from 1991 and 2001. Low density suburban areas were found to generate and receive the highest percentages of car trips in both 1991 and 2001. It was also found that the majority of work-trips involved suburb-to-suburb commuting, rather than to the centre of the city. Average trip length did not increase substantially over this period, although increases were apparent in separate modes. Multivariate regression analysis established that the key variable determining modal split and trip length was the distance the residence was located from the central business district. Results were similar when compared to larger cities elsewhere.     

A spatio-temporal modelling approach for the study of the connectivity and accessibility of the Guangzhou metropolitan network

The urban growth of large cities in China is at a critical stage with the booming of the economy and impressive increase of the population and traffic demand. This paper studies and qualifies the growth and accessibility of a rapid rail transit network, and characterizes the relations with urban development using a spatio-temporal modelling approach. Several measures of the network topological structure, i.e., beta index (β), cyclomatic number (μ), alpha index (α) and gamma index (γ), are selected in order to examine and quantify the overall metro network growth of the city of Guangzhou in China. The results show that the current spatial connectivity of the Guangzhou’s metro network is relatively low, this stressing the need to augment the reliability of the connections between the network nodes, and to increase the number of circuits in the network. A travel-time matrix is modelled and evaluates the nodes accessibility and characterizes the spatio-temporal evolution of the metro network. The spatial interaction between the different nodes of the network, as well as nodes accessibility are analyzed and derived from a potential-based model. The extension of the metro network clearly shows a dramatic tendency of positive accessibility evolution but with regional differences. In particular, the core of the city is surrounded by areas with highest accessibility values and gradually expanding outward from the core, while the locations of transfer stations have significant influence on the variation of network time-based accessibility. Taking into account different network development scenarios, the approach reveals regional accessibility differences in the metropolitan area of the city of Guangzhou, this clearly illustrating the impact of network accessibility in urban development.     

Spatial impact analysis of trans-Yangtze highway fixed links: A case study of the Yangtze River Delta,China

As an important infrastructure connecting straits or rivers, the construction of fixed links has become an effective measure for improving traffic conditions and promoting socio-economic development in many countries and regions around the world. Thus, it has become a significant topic in the field of transport geography. Taking the Yangtze River Delta as its case area, this study proposes a spatial impact model of trans-Yangtze highway fixed links, consisting of three components: an accessibility model, modified gravity model, and traffic utilisation model, which are used to analyse, respectively, cross-Yangtze accessibility and changes to transport structure, cross-Yangtze urban interaction and changes to economic structure, and the utilisation relationship of fixed links. Making use of existing fixed links while planning and building new ones has become the basis for achieving regional integration and sub-regional cooperation in this area, the aim of which is to create the barrier-free circulation of elements. The results prove that this spatial impact model coincides with reality. The increase in the number of fixed links has significantly shortened cross-river travel time and facilitated a unification of north-south highway networks. It has also promoted the formation of a high-connection urban network along the river. Northern urban nodes have joined the southern economic circle and finally achieved north-south integration. There are complex relationships between fixed links and their hinterlands, showing obvious utilisation gaps between the links. The complete system of trans-Yangtze fixed links is comprised of several river crossing facilities and connected highways. The function of each link is related to its role in the regional highway network. From a small number of fixed links to the realisation of multiple trans-Yangtze bridges and tunnels with easy access to multiple arterial highways, a ‘many-to-many’ spatial pattern is created that ultimately leads to the evolution of regional transport and economic structures.     

The development of the Yangtze River container port system

This paper sheds an empirical light on port development patterns by discussing the structure and the development of the Yangtze River ports system. We argue that the Yangtze River system is going through a regionalization phase, mainly in relation to the port of Shanghai. This process started on the lower Yangtze but is now also moving upstream. The transition towards the port regionalization phase is typically a gradual and market-driven process that mirrors the increased focus of market players on logistics integration. This paper builds on the existing literature on port systems and adapts port development models to river ports. Furthermore, we employ some statistical techniques that are common to the analysis of port systems, and introduce some techniques that have not been used much by transport geographers in ports. This paper will address the dynamics in the Yangtze River ports system by analyzing the level of cargo concentration and the degree of inequality in operations of the container ports. The paper also assesses observed differences in development of ports in different areas along the river (upstream/downstream) and reflects on the role of ownership structures in shaping regional load centre networks.     

Exploring the spatial impacts of human activities on urban traffic crashes using multi-source big data

Traffic crashes are geographical events, and their spatial patterns are strongly linked to the regional characteristics of road network, sociodemography, and human activities. Different human activities may have different impacts on traffic exposures, traffic conflicts and speeds in different transportation geographic areas, and accordingly generate different traffic safety outcomes. Most previous researches have concentrated on exploring the impacts of various road network attributes and sociodemographic characteristics on crash occurrence. However, the spatial impacts of human activities on traffic crashes are unclear. To fill this gap, this study attempts to investigate how human activities contribute to the spatial pattern of the traffic crashes in urban areas by leveraging multi-source big data. Three kinds of big data sources are used to collect human activities from the New York City. Then, all the collected data are aggregated into regional level (ZIP Code Tabulation Areas). Geographically Weighted Poisson Regression (GWPR) method is applied to identify the relationship between various influencing factors and regional crash frequency. The results reveal that human activity variables from multi-source big data significantly affect the spatial pattern of traffic crashes, which may bring new insights for roadway safety analyses. Comparative analyses are further performed for comparing the GWPR models which consider human activity variables from different big data sources. The results of comparative analyses suggest that multiple big data sources could complement with each other in the coverage of spatial areas and user groups, thereby improving the performance of zone-level crash models and fully unveiling the spatial impacts of human activities on traffic crashes in urban areas. The results of this study could help transportation authorities better identify high-risky regions and develop proactive countermeasures to effectively reduce crashes in these regions.     

Assessing equity in park accessibility using a travel behavior-based G2SFCA method in Nanjing,China

Spatial equity of parks is a major concern in environmental justice studies. While many measurements have been used to evaluate access to parks, few studies have considered the impact of travel behavior on park accessibility. This study aims to establish a travel behavior-based Gaussian two-step floating catchment area (TB-G2SFCA) method to assess spatial equity of parks in the Nanjing region, and Local Moran's I index is applied to identify spatial agglomeration patterns in assessing equity. The results demonstrate that (1) the traditional single-mode model maybe cannot provide accurate approach to evaluating park accessibility while the TB-G2SFCA method can provide a more realistic park accessibility evaluation; (2) the inhabitants of most communities distributed south of the Yangtze River can obtain better park services than the northern areas; (3) the spatial disparities of equity in park accessibility are severe in three suburban districts, relatively minor in four central districts, and insignificant in two central districts. These findings may assist urban planners and policy makers to frame more reasonable policy and planning to improve spatial equity to parks in urban areas.