7 - The transportation system

Summary

The relationship between the location of activities and the transport system has been discussed extensively in the literature for many years, but it is only recently that it has been established more formally. This is due perhaps to the historical development of theories related to the use of space and those related to the use of transport, and to the fact that both evolved in relative isolation.

It was pointed out in previous chapters that the majority of land use theories considered the transportation system as having a definite effect on the location of activities; this is a common element in the works of Von Thünen (1826), Christaller (1933), Hansen (1959), Wingo (1961), Alonso (1964) and Lowry (1964), as well as most of the land use research that took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s. All of this work, though, considered accessibility or transport costs in an ambiguous way, and basically as exogenous. Even in the work of Wingo, which could be considered to have pioneered the field because it developed both transport and land use to considerable extent, the two remained in separate compartments, and the transport variables that go into the land use model were restricted to the concept of ‘distance to the centre’.