ABSTRACT
Throughout port and maritime studies, the link between flows and the socioeconomic characteristics of localities has been investigated mostly qualitatively. While systematic international quantitative investigations remain scarce and dispersed, their reliance upon port tonnage statistics tends to ignore maritime linkages. Conversely, maritime network studies remain abstract, where ports are considered only as nodes in a graph. What is the influence of the local economy on the situation in-and specialization of-maritime networks? Are there significant interrelations between types of maritime flows and types of local economies? Using such an approach we shall first discuss the wider scientific literature about transport and regional development, with a particular focus on previous quantitative studies. Second, this chapter provides an analysis of the Pacific Rim area based on the comparison of vessel movement data and regional socio-economic data collected at the level of subnational entities or port regions. The fact that populations and markets are concentrated on the coastlines of North America, Asia, and Oceania (Lee et al., 2008) motivated the search for spatial and functional interdependencies between traffic and local economic structure. In addition, the Asia-Pacific Rim “had become the indisputed main generator of containers” in the world (Rimmer, 2014: 91) and a major concentration of multinational industrial and logistics corporations.
