Telecommunications, Transportation, and Location

Book excerpt: This book looks at the economics of the evolving interface between the movement of people, goods and information (telecommunications). It illustrates the increasing importance of information flows in relation to how people move about, the ways that goods are transported and on land-use patterns. The authors show how the linkages involved are not static but vary as technology develops, as social priorities shift, and as policymakers adjust institutional structures. The situation is evolving but, nevertheless, from a public policy and a narrower commercial, business perspective, it is important to gain broad insights into what is occurring and the ways that telecommunications, transportation, and location interact. This is the focus of the book. Telecommunications, Transportation and Location contains both synthesis and interpretations of what others have found in regard to these interactions as well as new work that extends earlier findings. The material is presented in a rigorous yet accessible manner to open it to a wide audience of practitioners concerned with policymaking within various levels of government and within private business. Researchers and academics teaching courses including transportation planning, communications, regional science, urban and regional planning, urban and regional economics and transport economics will find much to engage them within this book. It will also be very useful to logistics professionals, and policymakers and practitioners involved in transportation planning.