ABSTRACT
Like many common words, “gateway” has often been loosely defined and used. One of the more carefully defined concepts of gateway comes from Burghardt (1971), who considered a gateway as an entrance into or out of some area geographically, with a fertile hinterland on the one side and an infertile region on the other. The concept of a gateway has regained its popularity recently in the formulation of regional or even national development strategies in various countries, including the USA and Canada. From a transport geographic point of view, such a trend can be seen as the recognition and realization of geographical intermediacy. From a global supply chain (GSC) perspective, a gateway is regarded as a node in a GSC when the transport searches for the easiest, shortest, and lowest cost route (Gillen et al. 2007). Attracting GSCs to one or a set of gateways and corridors can also be interpreted as the state’s efforts to reshape its accessibility pattern in order to gain from the “transit” economy.
