Does Transportation Technology Limit the
Development of Cities?
--Examining
the Transportation Technology Effect in Historical Periods
Yamin Lu
Jan 6th, 2016
1. Introduction
The question, whether the transportation
technology limits the development of cities, would be hard to answer generally.
It is beneficial to clarify several definitions and explanations in the first place
before any further discussion.
1.1 Transportation technology.
Transportation is defined as the act or process
of moving people and things from one place to another. In this definition, things
shall be seen as resource required for urban development through the whole
paper. Transportation technology shall be seen as the method to achieve the act
or process. It is determined by its patterns and capacities of delivering
people and resource. Hence, in terms of any kind of transportation technology limitation
or promotion, it can be seen as the reflection of patterns and capacities under
the particular demand pertaining to the urban development objective or
requirement.
1.2 Development of cities.
The development of cities contains a series
of aspects, including the urban economy, population, city structure and
environment issues, etc. It is complicated and difficult to completely cover all
these aspects in the essay scope. Therefore, this paper only identifies the
urban development objective and requirement with significant “demand” and its “satisfaction”.
The urban development demand can be seen
as the sum of all the urban development requirement of resources and people
aiming to an objective in a particular period. The satisfaction is the
fulfilled status referring to that demand. Hence, there would come the significant
phenomenon of limitation when transportation technology can not fully provide
what the cities demand, or there is no significant limitation.
1.3 Time Period.
The development of technology led the
transportation improvement (Garrison,
2001). Historically, during the Industry Revolution, it showed the positive
relationship between the development of cities and the transportation
evolution. In terms of the urbanization procedure, transportation improvement
is decisive (Falcocchio, 2015). In
other words, transportation technology promoted and limited the development of
cities in the Industry Revolution. It is the common science that Industry Revolution could be seen as the changing point of people’s lives (Hackett, 1992). Thus, this paper separates the time line into three periods,
Time before Industry Revolution.
Industry Revolution Period.
Time after Industry Revolution.
1.4 Significant issues.
This paper addresses the significant issues which
can prove the existence of limitation or promotion of transportation technology
on development of cities in different time period, respectively.
2. Effect of transportation technology on
developments of cities.
2.1 Time before Industry Revolution.
2.1.1 Urban construction issue.
In ancient China, almost all the cities were built
with walls to protect themselves (Beijing
Trip, 1999).
Usually, the resources of the city wall
construction were stones and timbers which were heavy and far from the city
location. To move the heavy materials to the construction site required strong transportation
capacity. At that time, only wagon of animal power and boats in canals can be
used as transport tools. Plenty of human labor was required too.
Here is the table listing the capacities of various
Animals used by human.
animal
|
weight (kg)
|
draft
force (kg)
|
typical
speed (m/s)
|
power (W)
|
heavy horse
|
700-1200
|
50-100
|
0.8 -1.2
|
500-1000
|
light horse
|
400-700
|
45-80
|
0.8 -1.4
|
400-800
|
mule
|
350-500
|
40-60
|
0.8 -1.0
|
300-600
|
donkey
|
150-300
|
20-40
|
0.6 -0.8
|
75-200
|
cow
|
400-600
|
50-60
|
0.6 -0.8
|
200-400
|
bullock/ox
|
500-900
|
60-80
|
0.5 -0.7
|
300-500
|
camel
|
500-1000
|
80-100
|
0.8 -1.2
|
400-700
|
buffalo
|
400-900
|
60-100
|
0.5 -1.0
|
600-1
|
‘Power and Drawbar Pull of Various Animals’, Fraenkel,
1986
From the table (Fraenkel, 1986), it can be seen
that the power of a heavy horse is only 1000W. The transport tools of human
labor and animal power were lack of heavy freight carrying capacity and
efficiency. It can be seen as the significant limitation of transportation
through the history before the industry revolution.
2.1.2 Postal issue.
Post is also a significant demand of urban
development. Trade documents or small materials should be transported by the
post system. There might be other need, such as home letters. The individual
communication between cities depended on the delivery of letters. In ancient
China, the recorded postal service started in almost 3000 years ago. This
service mostly was dealing with official documents. There were nearly 10,000 courier
stations within the country. Nearest neighbor station was only about three miles
apart. All the stations should normally keep the delivery horses.
With this description, three kinds of limitations
can be seen. Firstly, only the government at that time can support such a big
postal system which was difficult for common people’s personal use. Secondly,
each delivery cost a large amount of resource and human labor. Finally, maintaining
such a national system might be also huge. This brought the communication
limitation which was the essential city service.
2.2 Industry Revolution Period
The industry revolution increased the
city populations (DiMauro-Brooks, 2013).
But the aspects of city infrastructure, sanitation, city planning, law and
order were not associated with developments at the same time. City life was
full of diseases, crimes and filth.
In 2015, Falcocchio has evidenced the
statement above, as “during this period, cities had high population density;
streets were narrow, congested, and often polluted with horse manure and dead
animals.”
Hence, the living condition was turning
to a negative situation in the industry revolution. This turning showed the
significant limitation on the urban development.
2.3 Time after Industry Revolution
2.3.1 Features of different transportation
technology modes and inherent limitations.
There four modes of transportation, all
the advantages and disadvantages are listed in the graph below,
‘Comparison
matrix for transportation modes’, Logistics
Operational Guide, 2013
From the graph (Logistics Operational Guide, 2013), it can be seen that each mode
of transportation technology has its own disadvantages and limitation.
Road transportation technology might be
influenced by extreme weather. Rail transportation technology is lack of
flexibility. This means although the rail transportation can provide huge
freight capacity, but it requires big area for its infrastructure which may
effect the land use. Sea transportation technology needs large and proper area
for the infrastructure and also contains higher theft risk in the port. Air
transportation technology is limited by its safety sensitivity of dangerous
goods, size of shipment, weight and package size, etc.
Thus, rail, air and sea modes of
transportation technology have the same limitation of requiring the large land
use of infrastructure and inflexibility.
2.3.2 Traffic congestion issue.
In
majority of the global cities, road
traffic congestion is still going to be the leading problem (Jain, 2012). It brought negative effects
to the development of cities.
Early in 1840, Robinson has claimed that
traffic congestion would widely occur when the amount of vehicles is beyond the
road available capacity. Based on his research, he also provided 3
probabilities to cope with the future traffic demand as,
New construction, networks and rules.
Public transport development.
Rrestructuring the pattern of land use.
Even with his suggestion towards the
urban transportation mitigation, it is still obvious that any of these three
options somehow implied the urban development limited by traffic congestion
issues which now is the real situation.
2.3.3 Greenhouse gases emission issue.
It has argued (World Bank, 2010) that climate
change gives rise to the effects worsening the urban infrastructure, quality of
life, and entire urban systems in
both rich and poor countries. The
cause of climate change is mainly greenhouse gases emissions.
In 2014, Wright argued that 22% to 24%
of global greenhouse emissions from fossil fuel sources were from the transport
sector. The transport sector has become the second large green house emission
body.
Another report (United States Environment Protection Agency, 2013) evidenced and claimed
that the proportion of U.S. transportation greenhouse gases consumption is 27%
second with industry emission in 2013.
Greenhouse gases emission of existing
transportation technology not only limits the urban development, but also
threats the urban system.
3.Conclusion
In each time period, evidence could be
found to prove that the transportation technology limited the development of
cities in different aspects. But within the scope of this paper, it is still
unclear to state that the transportation technology would limit the urban
development in the future.
Moreover, the question ‘Does the negative
interaction among the urban aspects exist to cause a development limitation?’ still
needs further study.
Reference
Garrison, W. (2001) ‘Technological
Changes and Transportation Development’, University of California Transportation
Center, pp.4,
Wright, L. (2014) ‘The limits of technology:
Achieving transport efficiency in developing nations’, University College
London,
[Accessed: 13 December 2015]
Robinson, R. (1840) ‘Problems in the
urban environment: traffic congestion
Jain, V., Sharma, A., and Subramanian,
L. (2012). ‘Road traffic congestion in the developing world’, In Proceedings of
the 2nd ACM Symposium on Computing for Development, p. 11, Available
at: http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~lakshmi/traffic.pdf [Accessed: 13 December 2015]
