- Email: [email protected]
Guest editors’ introduction: institutions and the transformation of transport nodes
Journal of Transport Geography 27 (2013) 1–3
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Journal of Transport Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo
Editorial
Guest editors’ introduction: institutions and the transformation of transport nodes
This Special Issue of the Journal of Transport Geography explores the changing relationship between institutions and transport nodes. This relationship is important because how we govern transport nodes affects their performance and development, including geography, and because how they develop and perform shapes local and non-local stakeholders’ relationships towards them. And the relationship is complicated because both the operational modes and institutional frameworks that affect transport nodes are subject to processes of change operating at various spatial and temporal scales. Indeed, transport nodes have not escaped the profound political and economic changes which have swept across the globe in the past three decades; seaports, airports and other transportation terminals have been key sites in the remaking of the global economy. Not only have the connections, functions, scale and internal operations of transport nodes changed, so too have the institutional frameworks and systems of governance in which they are planned, financed and managed. Structures and strategies which coordinated relations and behaviour between stakeholders in the era of inter-national trade no longer matched the emerging globalized economic, operational and ideological environment. Key user and provider organizations increasingly found it difficult to implement their stated functions and so sought to adjust institutional frameworks to sustain competitiveness or even simply to survive. Although institutional reform objectives were diverse, the core objectives remained similar – to lower transactions costs – leading policymakers to advocate generic solutions irrespective of geographical differences. Such a view played a major role in leading inter-governmental organizations to propose so-called ‘international best practices’ to tackle performance, productivity and development problems. For instance, within seaports, various reform models were proposed by the World Bank (2007); the ‘landlord’ model was the most influential whereby port governance was reorganized from public ownership and operation, to (semi-)autonomous ownership and private operation. Such an approach, however, was not without its critics who highlighted the importance of institutional frameworks during the process of transformation. Understood as the formal rules, compliance procedures and standard operating practices that structure the relationships between actors in various units of the polity and economy (Hall, 1986), institutions may restrict established economic and social structures from diverting (too far) away from their initial forms (Williamson, 2000). Such processes of institutional change are also shaped by shared cultural conceptions, collective experience and perception of deviance (Wu et al., 2010). Hence, under the influence of established institutional 0966-6923/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2012.08.010
frameworks, we would expect the transformation process to be path-dependent and incremental. Post-reform settings would often possess identifiable characteristics from pre-reform remnants. Even if this was not preferred by certain stakeholders, existing institutional frameworks provide countervailing forces against dramatic change, thus restricting the alternatives and rationalities of decision-making processes, and cohering them to established though not necessarily unchanged paths. The significance of institutions for the evolution and development of a broad range of economic activities is now well understood; and transformation processes at transport nodes are no exception. Research in the past decade by Airriess (2001), Hall (2003), Jacobs (2007), Jacobs and Hall (2007), Ng and Pallis (2010), Notteboom (2009) and Wang et al. (2004) on various port reforms around the world suggests that reform choices were highly restricted by respective institutional characteristics. This is equally true in both developed and developing economies. Research on dry ports, for example, has highlighted the inappropriateness of ‘western solutions’ as they raise significant uncertainties for reform if developing economies blindly follow the experiences of advanced economies without first understanding existing institutional frameworks (for instance, see Ng and Cetin, 2012; Ng and Gujar, 2009). All this research indicates shortcomings, in the search for generic solutions and application of international best practices, to address the stated problems. Indeed, even when the same instrument was applied to solve a largely similar problem, the implementation process could vary, thus causing diversified outcomes. Here a critical question is to be raised: while previous research confirmed that institutions do matter, how and why institutions matter remains relatively unaddressed. In what ways, and to what extent, do institutional structures shape the process of change in transport nodes, such as devolution, concession agreements and hinterland strategies of seaports, resulting in path dependent outcomes? Under what conditions would path disruption occur and how would it be disrupted? What are the sources and implications of the presence of contradictions in institutional frameworks which operate at various spatial scales? How can we understand situations where institutional change occurs but development trajectories remain unaltered? There is clearly a need to further explore the relationship between institutions, governance and development of transport nodes. Despite the shared experiences of development under globalization and thus pressure for similar reform and transformation, significant divergence exists among governance and development trajectories within transport nodes. Indeed, this is not surprising given that they are often embedded within fixed locations, and
2
Editorial / Journal of Transport Geography 27 (2013) 1–3
thus subject to specific regional and local dynamics. This implies that investigations of transport nodes have the potential to enrich institutional theories and contribute to their refinement to help understand the evolution and development of economic activity more broadly. If the development of transport nodes corresponds to institutional frameworks, then processes of transformation should neither be regarded as the outcome of a sole rational actor, nor the product of an arena simply dominated by exogenous forces. Rather, their development should reflect the responses to tackling exogenous forces and the interactions between stakeholders within existing institutional frameworks. Following this line of argument, it is hypothesized that, even when the same solution is applied to different transport nodes within different countries under different institutional settings, the transformation process and outcome would not necessarily be equivalent. Understanding such, this Special Issue focuses on the development of transport nodes around the world, with special attention being paid to their embeddedness within existing governance and institutional frameworks. Papers investigate how existing institutional legacies contribute to diversified outcomes in various economic, social and political contexts. The papers included here reflect on experiences that have entailed the provision of generic, spatially neutral solutions in different geographical settings, as well as enriching our understanding of path dependency in organizational change. The outputs of this Special Issue can serve as the basis to extend similar analysis towards other economic sectors and develop a theoretical framework explaining why and how institutional structures and political-cultural traditions affect processes of economic reform and regional development. This also has clear implications for any evaluation of the costs and benefits of transport infra- and superstructure investments, especially in the identification of the determinants of success, as well as how and why these may differ according to the economic and social context. This does not only imply a prescription of success maximization, but offers opportunities for sophisticated operators to tailor-make their design configurations to fit particular conditions within different geographical regions. All of the contributions to this Special Issue emphasise how trajectories of change in both transport nodes and institutional frameworks are shaped by prior conditions, decisions and structures. With such close attention to temporal dynamics to understand spatial outcomes, it is not surprising that most employ a (comparative) case study methodology. Four papers focus on Europe: Debrie et al. compare national port reforms in France and Italy; Daamen and Vries compare four European port cities; Notteboom et al. compare two dominant ports of the north-west range, Antwerp and Rotterdam; while Dooms et al. focus on Antwerp. The other papers focus on the USA (Monios and Lambert), Australia (Cahoon et al.) and Brazil (Ng et al.). Another commonality of the papers is that they each examine some aspect of maritime port development. However, they also reveal considerable variation in precisely what they take to be the boundaries of the ‘port’ – from the national port reform laws and policy frameworks (compared by Debrie et al.), to inland dry port facilities (examined by Ng et al.), to the interactions of stakeholders in a single place (examined by Dooms et al.). Of course, while these choices reflect the different dimensions of the institutional frameworks addressed by each of the authors, they also reflect longstanding geographical questions about the appropriate scale(s) for understanding patterns of port development (see Olivier and Slack, 2006). Indeed, a central geographic question being explored here concerns the relationship between institutions and scale; and for this reason, we use scale as the organizing principle for the introducing and outlining each of the papers. Building on the substantial geographical literature on the port– city interface, Daamen and Vries (2013) explore how formal and
informal institutional rules may affect the emergence of sustainable development plans at the port–city interface. They are interested in whether changes in port operations and organization, as well as governance and ownership, might affect the division or sharing of responsibilities between port and urban (city) organizations. Their comparison of Marseille, Barcelona, Hamburg, and Rotterdam confirms that property rights and externalities continue to cause conflict at the port–city interface, but somewhat surprisingly, they find that port corporatization has not exacerbated the conflict. They also highlight the complicated role of norms and expectations – broadly understood as informal institutions – in this case, of the continued migration of port activities away from the city core as exerting a powerful effect on planning decisions. The port and city planners they interviewed are implicitly asking, why build common port–city institutions if there is no expectation of a shared future? Also working at the city-scale, Dooms et al. (2013) provide some timely insight as to why managers of transport nodes should pay attention to building port–city institutions. They focus on the increasingly complex patterns of stakeholder engagements that confronted the Port of Antwerp as it developed downstream on the right and left banks of the Scheldt River. Future expansions on the left bank are increasingly uncertain because of the perceived illegitimacy of past investment decisions there. Fundamental governance reform and the creation of a new formal institutional framework may be required to ensure that the Port has a social license for future expansion. The paper thus draws our attention to the dynamic relationship between stakeholders, their interests, expectations and perceptions, and formal governance arrangements, and how these together shape patterns of investment in transport nodes. Part of the conflict between ports and cities has to do with the re-scaling of port activities beyond the confines of their traditionally urban jurisdictions. In their contribution, Notteboom et al. (2013) trace the institutional challenges that arise from the operational challenges of port regionalization, which itself results from changes in shipping technology and industrial organization. Regionalization entails the development of inland terminals in the immediate hinterland of the port, and high-density corridors to connect these with the main marine terminals. They show that both Rotterdam and Antwerp port authorities underwent institutional change in response to the port regionalization challenge. They employ the concept of ‘institutional plasticity’ to understand the way actors selectively modify existing institutions in ways that accommodate emerging and recognizable challenges, without embarking on an entirely new development trajectory. Pathdependency is understood here as a characteristic of institutional frameworks which in turn shape, but do not determine, the development trajectories of transportation terminals. For now, the Port of Rotterdam looks better governed for regionalization than the Port of Antwerp. The development of high-density inland corridors – in particular, freight rail – is now regarded as a central component of any successful contemporary seaport. Monios and Lambert (2013) present a case study of the Heartland Intermodal Corridor which connects the port at Norfolk, Virginia to inland logistics terminals at Columbus, Ohio in the United States. This is a case of successful multi-state and multi-sector collaboration to achieve a significant transportation improvement. The authors identify a series of institutional factors which contribute to this outcome; a useful insight from their careful reconstruction of events is their identification of the role of a relatively weak but long-standing body, the Appalachian Regional Commission, in convening more powerful organizations in a forum that was able to overcome the collective action problem. Also looking to the inland infrastructure that allows large seaports connect to hinterland markets, Ng et al. (2013) focus on the case of dry ports in Brazil. This is a less optimistic paper about
Editorial / Journal of Transport Geography 27 (2013) 1–3
the role of institutions; they argue that Brazilian dry ports are not living up to their potential role as logistics platforms. Instead of engaging in value adding activities (postponement, customization, mix-and-match, etc.), they are often mired in paperwork. The reason why these dry ports have ended up adopting this rather limited function is institutional; rather than fundamentally challenging or by-passing existing customs practices, dry ports have been ‘recruited’ to serve the bureaucratic function of customs control, in part because it is even more costly to do so at the ports of entry. Institutions, used here to emphasize systems of rules and networks of rule-enforcers, act to limit the role of these facilities in the transport system. However, before taking the Brazilian case as firm evidence that transport node reform should simply override local opposition, we are reminded by Debrie et al. (2013) that top-down plans invariably meet countervailing forces in democratic societies. In their paper, comparing national port reform schemes in Italy and France, they show that local forces can shape the reform process resulting in diversified outcomes. The central point of their contribution is not that all national port reform schemes will fail, but rather that they will be shaped in varying degrees according to the way local ports are embedded in specific the institutional frameworks, decisional chains, economic and social contexts. At the extreme, this paper highlights the following dilemma for national policy-makers: it is precisely those transport nodes which are weakly embedded in their regional and local context that can be reshaped in the topdown fashion, conversely those that are strongly embedded cannot. The final paper in the collection suggests a way forward for reforming the governance of transport nodes by shifting the focus from the national to the regional scale. There is a risk here of falling into the trap of viewing the region as the solution to all problems that are too small for the nation-state and too big for the municipality to get right. However, Cahoon et al. (2013) emphasise a process of regional engagement rather than a particular scale of action per se. Using the case of Burnie Port, in Tasmania, Australia, they advance the Regional Development Platform Model. This model places the port authority at the heart of a local innovation network, so creating the potential for further development of the transport infrastructure in the context of broader regional economic development. Note too that this paper shifts our understanding of the performance of transport nodes from their ‘transportation’ function to their wider social and economic contribution. In conclusion, what the papers in this collection show is that the governance of transport nodes makes a difference to their long run development and performance; and, conversely, that the development of transport nodes itself informs how a variety of actors seek to shape institutional frameworks. What emerges thus is a rather complicated and dynamic picture of the working out of human structure and agency in the context of transport nodes. Port managers, policymakers, transport service providers, perhaps others too, do not only try to squeeze more performance out of existing transport nodes and systems. As the cases show, they are also willing to contemplate small and large changes to the governance of nodes and systems. Even if the final outcomes of these efforts cannot be predicted in advance, it is clear that these governance reforms tend to replicate existing institutions and hence development trajectories. Last but not least, we acknowledge that this Special Issue was supported by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council under the project entitled Regional Asymmetries in Sectoral Reforms: PathDependency and Institutional Embeddedness of Port Development (PolyU5488/11H). Moreover, the publication of this Special Issue would not be possible without the strong support from the Editors of the Journal of Transport Geography and paper reviewers who had provided very useful information and advice. The usual disclaimers apply.
3
References Airriess, C.A., 2001. Regional production information–communication technology and the developmental state: the rise of Singapore as a global container node. Geoforum 32 (2), 235–254. Cahoon, S., Chen, S.-L., Haugstetter, H., 2013. Path dependency and regional port authorities: a case for innovation network leadership? Journal of Transport Geography 27, 66–75. Daamen, T.A., Vries, I., 2013. Governing the European port–city interface. Institutional impacts on spatial projects between city and port. Journal of Transport Geography 27, 4–13. Debrie, J., Lavaud-Letilleul, V., Parola, F., 2013. Shaping port governance. The territorial trajectories of reform. Journal of Transport Geography 27, 56–65. Dooms, M., Verbeke, A., Haezendonck, E., 2013. Stakeholder management and path dependence in large-scale transport infrastructure development: the port of Antwerp case (1960–2010). Journal of Transport Geography 27, 14–25. Hall, P.A., 1986. Governing the economy: the politics of state intervention in Britain and France. Polity, Cambridge. Hall, P.V., 2003. Regional institutional convergence? Reflections from the Baltimore waterfront. Economic Geography 79 (3), 347–363. Jacobs, W., 2007. Port competition between Los Angeles and Long Beach: an institutional analysis. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 98, 360–372. Jacobs, W., Hall, P.V., 2007. What conditions supply chain strategies of ports? The case of Dubai. GeoJournal 68, 327–342. Monios, J., Lambert, B., 2013. The Heartland Intermodal Corridor: public private partnerships and the transformation of institutional settings. Journal of Transport Geography 27, 36–45. Ng, A.K.Y., Cetin, I.B., 2012. Locational characteristics of dry ports in developing economies: some lessons from Northern India. Regional Studies 46 (6), 757– 773. Ng, A.K.Y., Pallis, A.A., 2010. Port governance reforms in diversified institutional frameworks: generic solutions, implementation asymmetries. Environment and Planning A 42 (9), 2147–2167. Ng, A.K.Y., Padilha, F., Pallis, A.A., 2013. Institutions, bureaucratic and logistical roles of dry ports: the Brazilian experience. Journal of Transport Geography 27, 46– 55. Ng, K.Y.A., Gujar, G.C., 2009. The spatial characteristics of inland transport nodes: evidences from Southern India. Journal of Transport Geography 17 (5), 346– 356. Notteboom, T., 2009. Path dependency and contingency in the development of multi-port gateway regions and multi-port node regions. In: Notteboom, T., Ducruet, C., De Langen, P.W. (Eds.), Ports in Proximity: Competition, and Coordination among Adjacent Seaports. Ashgate, Aldershot, pp. 55–72. Notteboom, T., De Langen, P., Jacobs, W., 2013. Institutional plasticity and path dependence in seaports: Interactions between institutions, port governance reforms and port authority routines. Journal of Transport Geography 27, 26–35. Olivier, D., Slack, B., 2006. Rethinking the port. Environment & Planning A 38, 1409– 1427. Wang, J.J., Ng, A.K.Y., Olivier, D., 2004. Port governance in China: a review of policies in an era of internationalizing port management practices. Transport Policy 11 (3), 237–250. Williamson, O.E., 2000. The new institutional economics: taking stock, looking ahead. Journal of Economic Literature 38, 595–613. World Bank, 2007. The World Bank Port Reform Toolkit, Second Edition. The World Bank Group, Washington, DC. Wu, F., He, S., Webster, C., 2010. Path dependency and the neighbourhood effect: urban poverty in impoverished neighbourhoods in Chinese cities. Environment and Planning A 42 (1), 134–152.
⇑
Adolf K.Y. Ng Department of Supply Chain Management, Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, Canada ⇑ Tel.: +1 204 474 8377 E-mail address: [email protected] Peter V. Hall 1 Urban Studies Program & Geography Department, Simon Fraser University, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6B 5K3 E-mail address: [email protected] Athanasios A. Pallis 2 Department of Shipping, Trade & Transport, University of the Aegean, 2 Korai St., 82 100, Greece E-mail address: [email protected]
1 2
Tel.: +1 778 782 6691 Tel.: +30 22710 35275
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Journal of Transport Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo
Editorial
Guest editors’ introduction: institutions and the transformation of transport nodes
This Special Issue of the Journal of Transport Geography explores the changing relationship between institutions and transport nodes. This relationship is important because how we govern transport nodes affects their performance and development, including geography, and because how they develop and perform shapes local and non-local stakeholders’ relationships towards them. And the relationship is complicated because both the operational modes and institutional frameworks that affect transport nodes are subject to processes of change operating at various spatial and temporal scales. Indeed, transport nodes have not escaped the profound political and economic changes which have swept across the globe in the past three decades; seaports, airports and other transportation terminals have been key sites in the remaking of the global economy. Not only have the connections, functions, scale and internal operations of transport nodes changed, so too have the institutional frameworks and systems of governance in which they are planned, financed and managed. Structures and strategies which coordinated relations and behaviour between stakeholders in the era of inter-national trade no longer matched the emerging globalized economic, operational and ideological environment. Key user and provider organizations increasingly found it difficult to implement their stated functions and so sought to adjust institutional frameworks to sustain competitiveness or even simply to survive. Although institutional reform objectives were diverse, the core objectives remained similar – to lower transactions costs – leading policymakers to advocate generic solutions irrespective of geographical differences. Such a view played a major role in leading inter-governmental organizations to propose so-called ‘international best practices’ to tackle performance, productivity and development problems. For instance, within seaports, various reform models were proposed by the World Bank (2007); the ‘landlord’ model was the most influential whereby port governance was reorganized from public ownership and operation, to (semi-)autonomous ownership and private operation. Such an approach, however, was not without its critics who highlighted the importance of institutional frameworks during the process of transformation. Understood as the formal rules, compliance procedures and standard operating practices that structure the relationships between actors in various units of the polity and economy (Hall, 1986), institutions may restrict established economic and social structures from diverting (too far) away from their initial forms (Williamson, 2000). Such processes of institutional change are also shaped by shared cultural conceptions, collective experience and perception of deviance (Wu et al., 2010). Hence, under the influence of established institutional 0966-6923/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2012.08.010
frameworks, we would expect the transformation process to be path-dependent and incremental. Post-reform settings would often possess identifiable characteristics from pre-reform remnants. Even if this was not preferred by certain stakeholders, existing institutional frameworks provide countervailing forces against dramatic change, thus restricting the alternatives and rationalities of decision-making processes, and cohering them to established though not necessarily unchanged paths. The significance of institutions for the evolution and development of a broad range of economic activities is now well understood; and transformation processes at transport nodes are no exception. Research in the past decade by Airriess (2001), Hall (2003), Jacobs (2007), Jacobs and Hall (2007), Ng and Pallis (2010), Notteboom (2009) and Wang et al. (2004) on various port reforms around the world suggests that reform choices were highly restricted by respective institutional characteristics. This is equally true in both developed and developing economies. Research on dry ports, for example, has highlighted the inappropriateness of ‘western solutions’ as they raise significant uncertainties for reform if developing economies blindly follow the experiences of advanced economies without first understanding existing institutional frameworks (for instance, see Ng and Cetin, 2012; Ng and Gujar, 2009). All this research indicates shortcomings, in the search for generic solutions and application of international best practices, to address the stated problems. Indeed, even when the same instrument was applied to solve a largely similar problem, the implementation process could vary, thus causing diversified outcomes. Here a critical question is to be raised: while previous research confirmed that institutions do matter, how and why institutions matter remains relatively unaddressed. In what ways, and to what extent, do institutional structures shape the process of change in transport nodes, such as devolution, concession agreements and hinterland strategies of seaports, resulting in path dependent outcomes? Under what conditions would path disruption occur and how would it be disrupted? What are the sources and implications of the presence of contradictions in institutional frameworks which operate at various spatial scales? How can we understand situations where institutional change occurs but development trajectories remain unaltered? There is clearly a need to further explore the relationship between institutions, governance and development of transport nodes. Despite the shared experiences of development under globalization and thus pressure for similar reform and transformation, significant divergence exists among governance and development trajectories within transport nodes. Indeed, this is not surprising given that they are often embedded within fixed locations, and
2
Editorial / Journal of Transport Geography 27 (2013) 1–3
thus subject to specific regional and local dynamics. This implies that investigations of transport nodes have the potential to enrich institutional theories and contribute to their refinement to help understand the evolution and development of economic activity more broadly. If the development of transport nodes corresponds to institutional frameworks, then processes of transformation should neither be regarded as the outcome of a sole rational actor, nor the product of an arena simply dominated by exogenous forces. Rather, their development should reflect the responses to tackling exogenous forces and the interactions between stakeholders within existing institutional frameworks. Following this line of argument, it is hypothesized that, even when the same solution is applied to different transport nodes within different countries under different institutional settings, the transformation process and outcome would not necessarily be equivalent. Understanding such, this Special Issue focuses on the development of transport nodes around the world, with special attention being paid to their embeddedness within existing governance and institutional frameworks. Papers investigate how existing institutional legacies contribute to diversified outcomes in various economic, social and political contexts. The papers included here reflect on experiences that have entailed the provision of generic, spatially neutral solutions in different geographical settings, as well as enriching our understanding of path dependency in organizational change. The outputs of this Special Issue can serve as the basis to extend similar analysis towards other economic sectors and develop a theoretical framework explaining why and how institutional structures and political-cultural traditions affect processes of economic reform and regional development. This also has clear implications for any evaluation of the costs and benefits of transport infra- and superstructure investments, especially in the identification of the determinants of success, as well as how and why these may differ according to the economic and social context. This does not only imply a prescription of success maximization, but offers opportunities for sophisticated operators to tailor-make their design configurations to fit particular conditions within different geographical regions. All of the contributions to this Special Issue emphasise how trajectories of change in both transport nodes and institutional frameworks are shaped by prior conditions, decisions and structures. With such close attention to temporal dynamics to understand spatial outcomes, it is not surprising that most employ a (comparative) case study methodology. Four papers focus on Europe: Debrie et al. compare national port reforms in France and Italy; Daamen and Vries compare four European port cities; Notteboom et al. compare two dominant ports of the north-west range, Antwerp and Rotterdam; while Dooms et al. focus on Antwerp. The other papers focus on the USA (Monios and Lambert), Australia (Cahoon et al.) and Brazil (Ng et al.). Another commonality of the papers is that they each examine some aspect of maritime port development. However, they also reveal considerable variation in precisely what they take to be the boundaries of the ‘port’ – from the national port reform laws and policy frameworks (compared by Debrie et al.), to inland dry port facilities (examined by Ng et al.), to the interactions of stakeholders in a single place (examined by Dooms et al.). Of course, while these choices reflect the different dimensions of the institutional frameworks addressed by each of the authors, they also reflect longstanding geographical questions about the appropriate scale(s) for understanding patterns of port development (see Olivier and Slack, 2006). Indeed, a central geographic question being explored here concerns the relationship between institutions and scale; and for this reason, we use scale as the organizing principle for the introducing and outlining each of the papers. Building on the substantial geographical literature on the port– city interface, Daamen and Vries (2013) explore how formal and
informal institutional rules may affect the emergence of sustainable development plans at the port–city interface. They are interested in whether changes in port operations and organization, as well as governance and ownership, might affect the division or sharing of responsibilities between port and urban (city) organizations. Their comparison of Marseille, Barcelona, Hamburg, and Rotterdam confirms that property rights and externalities continue to cause conflict at the port–city interface, but somewhat surprisingly, they find that port corporatization has not exacerbated the conflict. They also highlight the complicated role of norms and expectations – broadly understood as informal institutions – in this case, of the continued migration of port activities away from the city core as exerting a powerful effect on planning decisions. The port and city planners they interviewed are implicitly asking, why build common port–city institutions if there is no expectation of a shared future? Also working at the city-scale, Dooms et al. (2013) provide some timely insight as to why managers of transport nodes should pay attention to building port–city institutions. They focus on the increasingly complex patterns of stakeholder engagements that confronted the Port of Antwerp as it developed downstream on the right and left banks of the Scheldt River. Future expansions on the left bank are increasingly uncertain because of the perceived illegitimacy of past investment decisions there. Fundamental governance reform and the creation of a new formal institutional framework may be required to ensure that the Port has a social license for future expansion. The paper thus draws our attention to the dynamic relationship between stakeholders, their interests, expectations and perceptions, and formal governance arrangements, and how these together shape patterns of investment in transport nodes. Part of the conflict between ports and cities has to do with the re-scaling of port activities beyond the confines of their traditionally urban jurisdictions. In their contribution, Notteboom et al. (2013) trace the institutional challenges that arise from the operational challenges of port regionalization, which itself results from changes in shipping technology and industrial organization. Regionalization entails the development of inland terminals in the immediate hinterland of the port, and high-density corridors to connect these with the main marine terminals. They show that both Rotterdam and Antwerp port authorities underwent institutional change in response to the port regionalization challenge. They employ the concept of ‘institutional plasticity’ to understand the way actors selectively modify existing institutions in ways that accommodate emerging and recognizable challenges, without embarking on an entirely new development trajectory. Pathdependency is understood here as a characteristic of institutional frameworks which in turn shape, but do not determine, the development trajectories of transportation terminals. For now, the Port of Rotterdam looks better governed for regionalization than the Port of Antwerp. The development of high-density inland corridors – in particular, freight rail – is now regarded as a central component of any successful contemporary seaport. Monios and Lambert (2013) present a case study of the Heartland Intermodal Corridor which connects the port at Norfolk, Virginia to inland logistics terminals at Columbus, Ohio in the United States. This is a case of successful multi-state and multi-sector collaboration to achieve a significant transportation improvement. The authors identify a series of institutional factors which contribute to this outcome; a useful insight from their careful reconstruction of events is their identification of the role of a relatively weak but long-standing body, the Appalachian Regional Commission, in convening more powerful organizations in a forum that was able to overcome the collective action problem. Also looking to the inland infrastructure that allows large seaports connect to hinterland markets, Ng et al. (2013) focus on the case of dry ports in Brazil. This is a less optimistic paper about
Editorial / Journal of Transport Geography 27 (2013) 1–3
the role of institutions; they argue that Brazilian dry ports are not living up to their potential role as logistics platforms. Instead of engaging in value adding activities (postponement, customization, mix-and-match, etc.), they are often mired in paperwork. The reason why these dry ports have ended up adopting this rather limited function is institutional; rather than fundamentally challenging or by-passing existing customs practices, dry ports have been ‘recruited’ to serve the bureaucratic function of customs control, in part because it is even more costly to do so at the ports of entry. Institutions, used here to emphasize systems of rules and networks of rule-enforcers, act to limit the role of these facilities in the transport system. However, before taking the Brazilian case as firm evidence that transport node reform should simply override local opposition, we are reminded by Debrie et al. (2013) that top-down plans invariably meet countervailing forces in democratic societies. In their paper, comparing national port reform schemes in Italy and France, they show that local forces can shape the reform process resulting in diversified outcomes. The central point of their contribution is not that all national port reform schemes will fail, but rather that they will be shaped in varying degrees according to the way local ports are embedded in specific the institutional frameworks, decisional chains, economic and social contexts. At the extreme, this paper highlights the following dilemma for national policy-makers: it is precisely those transport nodes which are weakly embedded in their regional and local context that can be reshaped in the topdown fashion, conversely those that are strongly embedded cannot. The final paper in the collection suggests a way forward for reforming the governance of transport nodes by shifting the focus from the national to the regional scale. There is a risk here of falling into the trap of viewing the region as the solution to all problems that are too small for the nation-state and too big for the municipality to get right. However, Cahoon et al. (2013) emphasise a process of regional engagement rather than a particular scale of action per se. Using the case of Burnie Port, in Tasmania, Australia, they advance the Regional Development Platform Model. This model places the port authority at the heart of a local innovation network, so creating the potential for further development of the transport infrastructure in the context of broader regional economic development. Note too that this paper shifts our understanding of the performance of transport nodes from their ‘transportation’ function to their wider social and economic contribution. In conclusion, what the papers in this collection show is that the governance of transport nodes makes a difference to their long run development and performance; and, conversely, that the development of transport nodes itself informs how a variety of actors seek to shape institutional frameworks. What emerges thus is a rather complicated and dynamic picture of the working out of human structure and agency in the context of transport nodes. Port managers, policymakers, transport service providers, perhaps others too, do not only try to squeeze more performance out of existing transport nodes and systems. As the cases show, they are also willing to contemplate small and large changes to the governance of nodes and systems. Even if the final outcomes of these efforts cannot be predicted in advance, it is clear that these governance reforms tend to replicate existing institutions and hence development trajectories. Last but not least, we acknowledge that this Special Issue was supported by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council under the project entitled Regional Asymmetries in Sectoral Reforms: PathDependency and Institutional Embeddedness of Port Development (PolyU5488/11H). Moreover, the publication of this Special Issue would not be possible without the strong support from the Editors of the Journal of Transport Geography and paper reviewers who had provided very useful information and advice. The usual disclaimers apply.
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Adolf K.Y. Ng Department of Supply Chain Management, Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, Canada ⇑ Tel.: +1 204 474 8377 E-mail address: [email protected] Peter V. Hall 1 Urban Studies Program & Geography Department, Simon Fraser University, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6B 5K3 E-mail address: [email protected] Athanasios A. Pallis 2 Department of Shipping, Trade & Transport, University of the Aegean, 2 Korai St., 82 100, Greece E-mail address: [email protected]
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