Cities, Regions and Flows: (Routledge Studies in Human Geography)

Urban regions have come under increasing pressure to adapt to the imperatives of mobility, including greater freedom of travel, rising trade volumes and global economic networks. Whereas urbanization was once characterized by the concentration of services and facilities, urban areas now have to ensure the exchange of goods, services and information in a much more complex, interrelated, highly competitive, and spatially dispersed environment. As a consequence, cities are challenged to ensure the functionality of infrastructure while mitigating negative environmental and social impacts.

Cities, Regions and Flows brings together debates in a single volume to present a theoretical framework for understanding the changing relationship between places and movement. It analyses the significance of flows of goods for urban and regional development and emphasises the twin processes of integration and disintegration that result from goods movement within urban space. It discusses urban regions as nodes for organizing the exchange of goods, services and information against a background of socio-economic and technological change, as well as new patterns of urbanization. The new logistics concepts and practices that have been developed in response to these changes exert both integrative and disintegrative effects on cities and regions. It also considers how urban policies are dealing with related challenges concerning infrastructure provision, land use, local labour markets and environmental sustainability.

Cities, Regions and Flows contains thoughtfully prepared case studies from five different continents on how cities manage to become part of value chains and how they strive for accessibility in an increasingly competitive environment. This book will be on interest to policy-makers and advanced classes in planning, geography, urban studies and transportation.

Part I: Introduction 1. Reconciling Cities and Flows in Geography and Regional Studies Part II: Theoretical Concepts, Research Questions 2. Economic Structure, Technological Change and Location Theory: The Evolution of Models Explaining the Link Between Cities and Flows 3. The Integration of Virtual Flows into Material Movements within the Global Economy 4. Supply Chain Management, Logistics Changes and the Concept of Friction 5. Goods Movement and Metropolitan Inequality: Global Restructuring, Commodity Flows, and Metropolitan Development Part III: Empirical Cases 6. The Paris Region: Operating and Planning Freight at Multiple Scales in a European City 7. From Hinterland to Distribution Center: The Chicago Region’s Shifting Gateway Function 8. Amazon Shipping, Commodity Flows and Urban Economic Development: The Case of Belém and Manaus 9. The Flight of Icarus? Incheon’s Transformation From Port Gateway to Global City 10. From Time Definite to Time Critical? Challenges Facing Airfreight and Port Growth in Durban Part IV: Challenges For Policy and Planning 11. Contested Trade and Policy Responses in Southern California 12. Infrastructure and Environmental Policy on Regulating Road Vehicle Emissions: From Top-Down Policy Directives to the Local Level 13. Freight, Land and Local Economic Development Part V: Conclusion 14. Cities, Flows and Scale: Policy Responses to the Challenges of Integration and Disintegration