Patrick Witte

How smart is smart? Theoretical and empirical considerations on implementing smart city objectives – a case study of Dutch railway station areas

The current widespread attention on the concept of smart city in both policy and practice has stimulated academic discussion regarding the scope and applicability of this concept. An important question is whether cities and regions are truly advanced in implementing the concept in their policies and practices relative to its conceptual elaborations in academia. The aim of this paper is to analyse this congruence between theory and practice in the context of the ongoing transformations of railway station areas in European urban regions. Based on in-depth interviewing using aspects of Q-methodology, this paper investigates whether and how smart city concepts are implemented by stakeholders in three station redevelopment projects in the Netherlands. The results show that the current implementation of smart city concepts in practice is varied but modest and not (yet) very advanced. Knowledge exchange and innovations are currently hampered by a lack of acceptance and know-how among stakeholders, as well as by institutional and competitive constraints. For instance, stakeholders stress that data privacy regulations should be well organized before further implementation can occur. Transparency about how and what data are used may create more willingness among users to assist in developing and accepting new data technologies. However, the technologies are not yet completely developed, and concerns about the “loss” of personal privacy are holding back the widespread and advanced use of data supplied technologies. Although stakeholders seem to be aware of the opportunities the smart city concept offers, for now, the widespread implementation of innovative and advanced smart city concepts remains in the future.

Ships time in port

Much of the success of containerisation is due to time economies, particularly the reduction in the duration of port calls. Although vessels now spend a small amount of time in port compared with the time at sea, it is still a cost factor. The focus of this study is the amount of time container vessels spend in port. The average vessel turnaround times (ATTs) involving 70 ports of call involved in four major trade routes are examined. The principal research questions addressed are: how do ATTs vary among ports and how is this time metric related to port performance? ATTs are compared with traffic volumes measures of port efficiency. The results are weak and lead to a hypothesis that ATTs are differentiated regionally and functionally, rather than globally. Evidence is presented for this hypothesis. Several theoretical issues are considered arising from the results and questions for further research are presented.

European Corridors as Carriers of Dynamic Agglomeration Externalities

Abstract Transport corridors are viewed as a promising way forward in European Union (EU) transport policy, assumed to contribute positively to regional economic development. However, the validity of this assumption is not evident. The aim of this paper is to empirically test whether agglomeration economies in European transport corridor regions are positively related to indicators of regional economic development compared to regions outside the scope of corridors. The results build on the notion that the type of agglomeration economy in combination with the structure of the economy matters for prospects of structural economic growth in different regions. In this way, the analysis not only contributes to enhancing the empirical scrutiny of the corridor concept in EU transport policy, but also provides new insights into how corridors contribute to regional economic growth. We find only limited evidence for a corridor effect across European regions on productivity and employment growth externalities. Instead, we find a large degree of spatial heterogeneity interacting with corridors—a heterogeneity that has been little recognized in EU policies. We suggest that recent attention to place-based development strategies may accord well with the kinds of agglomeration effects related to corridor development observed in this study.

Comparing passenger flow and time schedule data to analyse High-Speed Railways and urban networks in China:

China’s High-Speed Railways (HSR) network is the biggest in the world, transporting large numbers of passengers by high-speed trains through urban networks. Little is known about the analytical meaning of the use of two types of flow data, namely, time schedule (transportation mode flow) and passenger flow data, to characterise the configuration of urban networks regarding the potential spatial effects of HSR networks on urban networks. In this article, we compare HSR passenger flow data with time schedule data from 2013 in China within the same analytical framework. The findings show great differences in the strength of cities and links generated using the two different types of flow data. These differences can be explained largely by the socio-economic attributes of the cities involved, such as tertiary employment, GDP per capita, the cities’ topological properties (closeness centrality) in HSR networks and institutional factors (hub status), especially for the difference in link strength. The strength of first-tier cities in China with high socio-economic performance and the HSR links connecting core cites and major cities within respective regions tends to be underestimated when using time schedule flows compared with passenger flows. When analysing the spatial structure of HSR and urban networks by means of flows, it is important for urban geographers and transportation planners to consider the meaning of the different types of data with the analytical results.

Entangled in scales: multilevel governance challenges for regional planning strategies

Abstract The academic discourse considers the regional scale as an important planning level to provide for spatial objectives that transcend the boundaries of local authorities. Nonetheless, the problem-solving capacity of the regional planning level is still questioned by both academics and practitioners. This paper studies the tension between formal and informal regional governance and its practical challenges for two cases of Dutch provinces struggling with their position in regional governance networks. These cases entail pan-European development (Trans-European Transport Networks – TEN-T) and regional land development (Bloemendalerpolder). It was found that at the metropolitan scale, formal regional planning powers tend to overrule socially produced regional governance arrangements. Simultaneously, regional planning powers lack support of these socially produced arrangements for their interventions. At the same time, at the supra-regional scale, provinces are a logical stakeholder to fulfil a prominent role in regional governance, but often lack the institutional capacity to act as such. We therefore argue that regional planning authorities need to be granted the power and capacity to take up a more centripetal, intermediate role in governance arrangements. This would provide them more capacity to act in disentangling the difficult practical challenges of scalar problems that many regional governance arrangements currently face.

Travelling without a helmet: tourists' vulnerabilities and responses to disasters in Indonesia

Tourists are particularly vulnerable when natural disasters occur in regions that they are visiting. It is assumed that they lack awareness and understanding of the actions that they need to take in such circumstances. This study examines the responses of tourists in times of disaster, building on empirical data collected through large-scale surveys conducted in Bali and Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in 2015. Both are important tourist destinations in the country that have suffered major disasters in recent years. The different types of responses to these events are framed using a grid/group analysis stemming from cultural theory. The study resulted in three key findings: (i) current disaster management planning largely follows a single rationale; (ii) tourists are not a homogeneous group, but rather a complex, diverse, and dynamic body of stakeholders; and (iii) the focus of disaster management planning should shift from a single rationale to a polyrational methodology. Disaster managers need to consider, therefore, these different aspects in the context of preparedness.

Does Activity Fulfil Aspiration? A Contextual Comparison of Smart City Applications in Practice

Research on smart city projects and applications has been increasing in recent years (Meijer and Bolivar 2015). The smart city concept is mostly considered from a technology-oriented perspective that stresses the use of data technologies, big data and ICT to ‘smarten up’ cities. In contrast, attention to soft aspects of the smart city—namely smart governance, people and social learning—seems to be limited in both academia and practice. Moreover, what seems to be largely missing from the literature is empirical insight into the extent to which different smart city aspects are factually known of and applied in different geographical contexts. This contribution presents a contextual comparison of smart city applications based on a mainly quantitative empirical analysis. Particular emphasis is put on the knowledge that government practitioners in the Netherlands have of smart aspects and the extent to which they are willing and able to implement smart aspects in their specific local and regional contexts. The results of the analysis show that both in the Netherlands and worldwide there are great aspirations to develop and implement smart city applications, but that to some extent factual activities are lagging behind. The reasons for this are mostly related to a lack of awareness of the possibilities and a lack of financial and political priority. This especially applies to smaller cities in the Netherlands. When this is resolved, actual activities are more likely to live up to the great aspirations regarding the smart city concept.

Challenges for Corridors: Future Perspectives on European Corridor Development

In many European policy documents, the integration of transport, spatial and economic dimensions in corridor development is advocated as a means to cope with challenges that occur within corridors. For many years, however, knowledge about corridors was only developed from a sector perspective and with a more or less technocratic approach—despite a growing call for a more integrated analysis of corridor issues. To address these challenges efficiently, the integration argument needs specific knowledge on the different problem areas. Therefore, the question remains as to what extent an integrated analysis would be beneficial in resolving persistent corridor issues, such as the existence of bottlenecks. This contribution aims to highlight the outcome of two related research projects in which the possible added value of an integrated perspective on corridor development is addressed. The evidence presented reflects the current state-of-the-art knowledge regarding integrated corridor development and the possible future challenges for European corridors that may result from this. Whether the added value of the integration argument in corridor development can be found in practice will be researched as well as whether this leads to restating the importance of corridors for present-day European policy objectives.

Sectoral Drawbacks in Transport: Towards a New Analytical Framework on European Transport Corridors

The present understanding of bottlenecks in the European transport network fails to grasp the cumulating and culminating effects of bottlenecks, for the scope of the research is in most cases limited to a one-sided (logistics) perspective. A theoretical framework has been created, which argues that bottlenecks should be interpreted as integrative, complex problems, operating on the cutting edge between transportation, spatial planning, environmental issues, economic development and transnational governance. This chapter will provide empirical evidence to support this framework, in a context of European transport corridor development. The theoretical framework has been tested in an empirical setting by zooming in on the European transport Corridor 24. In a first step, both general (macro-level) and specific (micro-level) bottlenecks have been identified by interviewing logistics experts. In a next step, these first results will be further used to perform an in-depth, qualitative analysis of bottlenecks in case-study areas along Corridor 24. One of the key findings is that bottlenecks emerge from different, sectoral perspectives. Moreover, these perspectives appear to be highly interrelated. In other words, more attention should be paid to the cumulating and culminating effects of bottlenecks, operating as comprehensive problem areas. The most important implication is that, when using a limited, sectoral perspective on bottlenecks, one loses track of the possible added value of sector-transcendent analyses. This will ultimately lead to inefficient use of transport networks. This chapter provides a new conceptualisation for the possibilities of inter-sectoral coordination in dealing with bottlenecks in the European transport network.