Jago Dodson

Planning for Urban Freight Transport: An Overview

Abstract Urban freight transport is essential to the functioning of cities, but is also an activity that affects the urban environment and communities. Yet, freight is often overlooked in discussions of urban transport, in contrast to passenger modes. Much freight research emphasises questions of operations and network management but is less attentive to the links between freight transport and urban development. New efforts are needed to improve understanding of the link between urban freight and cities. This paper presents a broad discussion of the links between urban freight transport and urban planning through an overview of the literature in the field. The paper discusses key problems confronting planning and policies for urban freight transport in relation to its importance, impacts, interrelationship between stakeholders, institutions, influencing factors and challenges. The paper proposes a revitalised agenda for planning for urban freight and identifies key directions for further research, particularly around the land-use, environmental and institutional dimensions of urban freight management. By identifying major underdeveloped areas of urban freight research, the paper offers guidance as to key issues that will need to be addressed as freight grows as a proportion of the urban transport task.

Exploring Social and Spatial Patterns in Private Vehicle Fuel Efficiency: a case study of Brisbane and Sydney, Australia

ABSTRACT Australian cities have seen continued growth in private car travel that has resulted in increasing vehicle energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. While much research has shown that vehicle demand is related to urban spatial structure, very little research has investigated the spatial patterns of private vehicle fuel efficiency (VFE) and its association with socio-spatial circumstances in urban areas. This study has combined State-level motor vehicle registration datasets with standard vehicle efficiency measures that permit a comprehensive understanding of spatial variation of VFE in urban areas. A spatial-based technique was applied to explore intra-urban patterns in socio-spatial conditions of private vehicle efficiency in Brisbane and Sydney. In both cities, the VFE of the private vehicle fleet tends to be lower in outer suburbs than in middle and inner suburbs. The analysis further shows that by linking the standard vehicle efficiency measures to the entire urban fleet datasets the VFE outcome showed a moderate relationship to socio-spatial variables in both cities. The built environment and household economic status are more transferable factors that relate to the VFE across different urban contexts. Outcomes from this research are of relevance to policy makers charged with identifying highly oil-vulnerable communities and designing intervention strategies to improve household vehicle efficiency.

Oil Vulnerability in the American City

This chapter investigates the varying intersection of volatile petroleum markets and housing finance pressures with household socioeconomic status and urban structure, using six American cities (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Portland) as case studies. The chapter responds to two important economic phenomena seen over the past several years. The first is the sharp growth and volatility in global petroleum prices between 2004 and 2012, which mark a dramatic departure from predominantly stable and low prices seen since World War II. The result of the post-2004 oil price gains has been marked gains in the cost of fuel in most nations, which in turn have raised concerns about the effect of higher fuel prices on the household sector. Oil prices remain extremely volatile—rising from around

The Global Infrastructure Turn and Urban Practice

40 per barrel in 2004 to over

How the structure of the Australian housing development industry influences climate change adaptation

145 in mid-2008 before dropping to

Investigating urban oil vulnerability

30 per barrel in 2009 and then rising again to over

How Will We Get There

100 in 2011 and finally falling to

How will we get there? New approaches to analyzing low-socio-economic status household access to destinations in Australian cities

85 per barrel, where it sits today. The result has been higher gasoline prices in US cities of around

The Socioeconomic Equity Dimensions of a Transition in Suburban Motor Vehicle Fuel and Technology

4 per gallon.

What is environmental planning

Abstract This paper assesses the emergence of a global ‘infrastructure turn’ and its implications for urban scholarship. The global infrastructure turn involves the emergence of a coordinated effort to stimulated infrastructure development at the national and global level via an array of international frameworks. The key elements of this shift are described and explanations are presented, which are founded in the working out of contradictions within global capitalist urbanization. The need for urbanists to attend to the global infrastructure turn is emphasised, and a set of elements to which attention must be given – discourse, technical practices and politics – is described. The paper concludes by arguing for greater attention to the global infrastructure turn by urban scholars.