Seminar: Moving freight in the city

Abstract

Moving freight in the city: The people, technologies, places, and spaces of urban goods mobility

Urban goods mobility has become a politically, socially, and economically salient topic in light of growing concerns about urban air quality, saturated infrastructure, collisions with other road users, and global climate change. Yet it has been argued that “issues related to urban freight transport do not carry much weight” ¹. Social science interest in the movement of freight has been limited: fifteen years ago, research revealed “scant reference to the movement of goods” ¹ in the journal Urban Studies, as well as limited treatment of freight in transport-related special issues, and transport conferences (e.g. 3% of articles in the 1999 Transportation Research Board). It has been argued that the shipping containers, parcels, distribution centres and pipelines that make up the systems of freight delivery are “barely noticed” ², and freight is largely invisible in transport geography.

The last decade has seen growing attention paid to the movement of goods, but there is still a great need for social scientists to critically engage with the movement of goods beyond the traditionally technical and quantitative perspectives. This presentation will consider why freight transport has been overshadowed, and point to some of the key issues relating to the people, technologies, places and spaces of urban goods mobility in the UK.

¹ Woudsma, C. (2001). Understanding the Movement of Goods, Not People: Issues, Evidence and Potential, Urban Studies, 38: 13, 2439–2455

² Rodrigues, J-P. (2006). Transport geography should follow the freight, Journal of Transport Geography, 14, 386-388.

Speaker

Debbie Hopkins