Considering the relationship between freight transport and urban form

There has been much discussion since the mid-1980s about the relationship between transport and urban form. However, all of this body of research has concerned itself with passenger transport (i.e. the movement of people). This report is intended as an initial investigation into the relationship between road freight transport and urban form. Important trends in road freight transport and logistics and the land use associated with these activities are discussed. Data about road freight transport activity by heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) in Britain that has been disaggregated from a UK government survey is analysed to investigate the nature of urban freight operations in sixteen selected urban areas. This includes analysis of the efficiency and transport intensity of these operations on journeys to, from and within each urban area. Scenarios concerning urban freight operations based on reductions in length of haul, and improvements in vehicle lading factors, vehicle carrying capacities and empty running are constructed in order to investigate the potential effect of such changes on the vehicle kilometres performed on journeys to, from and within the sixteen urban areas.

Investigating relationships between road freight transport, facility location, logistics management and urban form

This paper examines road freight transport activity and its relationship with facility location, logistics management and urban form through an analysis of 14 selected urban areas in the UK. Improved understanding of this relationship will assist planners when making transport and land use decisions. The findings suggest that several geographical, spatial and land use factors have important influences on freight activity in urban areas. Commercial and industrial land use patterns affect the types and quantities of goods produced, consumed, and hence the total quantity of freight transport handled. This also influences the distances over which goods are moved and by what specific mode. There has been relatively low growth in warehousing in many of the selected areas over the last decade compared to the national average as well suburbanisation of warehousing in some locations. This affects the origin and destination of journeys visiting these facilities and typically increases the distance of such journeys. A greater proportion of road freight has been shown to be lifted on internal journeys in large urban areas than in smaller ones. Journeys within urban areas have been shown to be less efficient than journeys to and from the urban area in the 14 locations studied due to the much smaller average vehicle carrying capacities and lower lading factors for journeys within urban areas. The length of haul on journeys to and from urban areas studied was found to be greatest for those areas with a major seaport and/or which were geographically remote. This affects the road freight transport intensity of goods transport journeys.

The Distributional Effect of Events on Rural and Urban Households in China

International tourism is considered an effective means of economic development. However, the effects of tourism are not evenly distributed between rural and urban households in China. In the wake of significant socioeconomic events, the uneven distribution of the economic effects has huge welfare implications for Chinese households. This study is the first attempt to evaluate the distributional effect of two large, recent, sequential events on China's rural and urban households. It adopts an innovative approach that combines an econometric model and a two-household computable general equilibrium model. The results show that in terms of welfare, urban households were more adversely affected by the events than rural households. To mitigate the loss of welfare, measures should be taken to continually promote China as a destination and attract tourists after such events occur. Meanwhile, training and education should be made more accessible to rural households to increase their job opportunities.

Understanding community empowerment in urban regeneration and planning in England: putting policy and practice in context

Community involvement in the fields of town planning and urban regeneration includes a wide range of opportunities for residents and service users to engage with networks, partnerships and centres of power. Both the terminology and degree of the transfer of power to citizens varies in different policy areas and contexts but five core objectives can be identified. This article approaches the subject of community empowerment by exploring the theoretical literature; reviewing recent policy pronouncements relating to community involvement in England and by discussing a recent case study of an Urban II project in London. The conclusions suggest that community empowerment is always likely to be partial and contingent on local circumstances and the wider context.

Spacing abstraction: capitalism, law and the metropolis

In considering contemporary accounts of the interrelations of economic, legal and urban forms of social relations in the emergence of a global capitalist modernity, this paper argues that politico-juridical imaginaries of new forms of transnational universality have tended to be limited by virtue of both an anachronistic recourse to spatial models of the polis and a failure to confront the ineliminability of abstraction to any idea of global social interconnectivity. In such terms, it argues, Lefebvre’s famous call for a ‘right to the city’ needs to be reinscribed as a properly modern right to the metropolis; one that would allow us to conceive of the possibility of new kinds of relation between individual and collective subjectivity and the development of abstract social forms.

Notation timelines and the aesthetics of disappearance

Contemporary cities are frequently surrounded by transitional landscapes: ambiguous lands, non-places on the urban edge, commonly experienced under the condition of speed. Although variously shaped by processes of urbanisation, logistics of road engineering, safety and ownership, and local people's lives, for travellers such landscapes are usually perceived in a state of disappearance. This condition presents a major challenge for the traditional methods used in architecture and urban design. For designers interested in the organisation and design of such mobility routes for the engagement of the traveller, a method of scripting based on notation timelines would provide a helpful supplement to traditional master plans. This paper explores the development of such a method and its roots in time-based arts, such as dance, music and film, as well as in the recent history of architecture and urban design. It does so through the presentation of an experimental study based on a real route, the train journey from London to Stansted airport.

LUTI models, freight transport and freight facility location

The subject of this book is the new scientific research in the field of modelling the interaction between land use and transport (LUTI modelling). Transport and the location of activities in space have been important themes of study in engineering, social sciences and urban and regional planning

Housing market trend and rail transport investments in the city of Naples

Rail transport investments can influence housing market trends, as demonstrated in the literature. However many empirical researches highlight that different results can derive from different urban context applications and that each case should be threaten separately. It is for this reason that this paper is focused on the single case of the city of Naples, where many rail transport investments have been carried out in the last decades. The aim of this study is to give an interpretation of the housing values changes due to the opening of new metro stations. This study applies GIS tools in order to show the spatial distribution and the intensity of rail impacts in different areas of the urban system from 1994 to 2004. This study shows that the extent of the impacts varies from place to place and the effects intensity requires the presence of several complementary factors such as central location of the new stations and the presence of urban planning policies in the transit corridors. This again testifies how housing market is strictly related to the infrastructures investments planning and urban design.