1A Good Future Transport System: Urban Production and Consumption Perspectives

Production and consumption have long been central to our understanding of the evolution and management of transport systems. That can be seen in the heritage of research exposing the complex links between these aspects. The current paper argues that there are now some new elements in that understanding which deserve consideration and will shape a different future. It focuses upon two inter-dependent changes that could influence the way we consider the design of transport systems. These changes are the growth in logistic systems for the globalisation of production and consumption, and the related spatial and functional restructuring of large scale urban regions. The core ideas of the paper are that these two changes, associated with innovation and structural change in the economy, have produced concentration as well as dispersal of different types of production and consumption in very large urban regions. They create the need for some new responses in a transport planning. The governance of these responses, especially distributing different transport users over time and space, is now critical to effective transport planning. These approaches also need to be considered in the context of the ecological dimensions of transport, (i