Contexts of space and the city
<\/strong>Discussions on city logistics should begin with concepts that I consider key to this application of logistics – space and the city. It is within them that the subject of our interest is located. Space is a concept perceived by the average person mainly intuitively and – although everyone has direct contact with it – they experience it most often emotionally and, moreover, in various contexts. Most often, we notice a distinct physical space, offering a specific organization of natural and anthropogenic forms, conditioning access to resources that are in the field of interest of human activity. Through this prism, we evaluate the attractiveness of space. Interestingly, if one were not to evaluate space in this way, but to perceive its aesthetic values, one would notice objects more often than the space between them. Physical space is measurable using Euclidean geometry. For Hegel, space was an expression of the spirit. It is precisely this mythical, spiritual, conceptual space that is the extension in which the world of human material and immaterial symbols exists. This is another dimension of space, on which the possibility of considering this category does not end. Every definition of space is imperfect, as it must be formulated under the assumption of a specific concept of space, yet every type of it objectively or subjectively shapes our perception of the world. And that is why it is very difficult to provide a definitive description of a city when placing it in space. Undoubtedly, the city is based on the category of space (place, room, environment). It has its material dimension in the form of infrastructure (for example, buildings, streets, factories, plants, schools, hospitals, libraries, entertainment institutions, technology, industry, and the entire material culture), it has its supply (expressed, for example, by movement, communication, translocation arteries for people and goods), and its spiritual dimension (civilization, i.e., systems that improve collective life, such as law, language, code of conduct, folklore, tradition, means of subsistence, model of existence). In this element of phenomena, various definitions of the city take their origin. The city attracts people with various promises. The specificity of the city is not only related to the real, material space, which provides the premises for fulfilling promises, but also to the virtual, discursive context of the place – the specificity of local cultural, religious, and national coexistence, combined with the desire to build one’s own unique city and its genius loci<\/em>. Such conditions attract diverse users to the city, who in their mass constitute a great “explosive mixture” capable of creating qualitatively new values. These values form the basis for differentiation and gaining a competitive advantage not only by individual units but by cities as a whole. People change cities, co-creating them, but they also change themselves. A person thrown into the whirlwind of the city tries to exist in it, adapting to the environment, often changing standards of behavior considered universal. One observes the limitation of the social role to handling basic formalities, the disappearance of altruistic attitudes, the functionality of interpersonal contacts, etc. These phenomena are intensifying in terms of their scale. By 2015, the number of cities with a population exceeding 1 million will increase to 554, of which three-quarters (426 cities) will be located in developing countries. Huge cities are also developing – with a population exceeding 8 million inhabitants, which were once defined by the UN as a “megacity” – currently, this status is held by cities whose population exceeds 10 million. The UN predicts that by 2015, as many as 21 cities will be classified in this category. According to the UN forecast, the growth of the urban population will occur rather in smaller cities and as a result of reclassifying rural areas as urban.<\/p>
Presenting these reflections, I want to look for connections between the situation outlined in this way and city logistics, which is the subject of consideration. In my opinion, two phenomena are key here – the striving of people – city residents – to satisfy their needs in favorable conditions and the necessity of overcoming space (including mainly urban space) in order to realize these needs. Space objectively causes the necessity of overcoming it to achieve unity of place and time, therefore it requires, among other things, organizing and carrying out transport activities, and the movement itself is a cause of many troubles both for organizers, people or cargo being moved, and the environment. For this reason, taking into account the spatial and human (social) context, I believe it is worth promoting the following definition of the city: The city is a common space, belonging to the community inhabiting it, which has the right to have its conditions for political, social, and ecological fulfillment guaranteed, while simultaneously assuming the obligation of mutual solidarity<\/em>. In an object outlined in this way, logistics is needed to improve all kinds of movements and the phenomena accompanying them.<\/p>
The genesis of city logistics and the controversies surrounding it
<\/strong>The shaping of flows in cities has a direct impact on the degree of nuisance that transport creates for city users and on the perceived level of satisfaction with life in the city. Congestion (traffic jams) was a characteristic feature of central London long before the invention of the car, and in Rome long before the founding of London. All flows (movements) within the city, both of cargo and people, take place independently of each other and lead to unnecessary burdening of linear transport infrastructure, increasing the intensity of competition among users for its throughput capacity, as these movements are largely not subject to coordination processes. The diversity of movements carried out in urban areas, necessary for the proper functioning of cities, causes these movements, regardless of their intensity, to cause undesirable effects, among which the most frequently mentioned are:<\/p>
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transport congestion,<\/div>
<\/li>adverse impact on the city environment,<\/div>
<\/li>lowering the level of customer service (recipients and senders of cargo, natural persons, people traveling within the city),<\/div>
<\/li>increasing the costs of movements.<\/div>
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<\/ul>A record traffic jam was recorded on May 9, 2008, in Sao Paulo, Brazil – it was 266 km long, and 3.5 million people were stuck in it.<\/p>
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 5\/2010.<\/p>
7342_Logistyka2010-7.pdf<\/a>