ABSTRACT
This is a book about the role that freight plays in the configuration of cities and urban regions. Specifically we are interested in showing the tangible outcomes of freight movement on cities – how specific places shape and are shaped by freight flows. The literature on globalization and its geographical manifestations pays considerable attention to some flows – of people, money, ideas and information. Yet, flows of goods and material have been largely ignored in the contemporary literature on urban and regional development. Several misperceptions feed this lacuna. The perception that freight is not an interesting object of study belies the complexity, diversity and multi-directionality of the flows that connect contemporary producers and consumers. The belief that freight is a dirty activity with no place in sustainable urbanism belies the fact that no city has ever been, nor can be, self-contained. The assumption that freight is a purely transport issue that does not lie at the core of the (public and personal) transport-land use planning nexus belies the impacts of freight on neighbourhoods, as well as the role of warehouses and freight terminals in sub-and exurban expansion. The presumption that freight is not politically important because it ‘does not vote’ belies the role of private business, public corporations and regional growth coalitions that seek to influence urban infrastructure spending decisions. The assumption that freight is merely a derived demand created by an external driving force belies the role that transport providers play in attracting freight flows and the associated goods-handling activity to particular jurisdictions, as well as the actions of residents who seek to repel its negative externalities. And finally, the perception that freight is relatively unimportant in today’s creative, informational and cultural economy belies the fact that every member of the creative class is also a consumer, indeed a connoisseur, of manufactured, transported and marketed items.
