Open AccessPosted Content
Introduction to The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
TLDR
In this article, a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston, and from that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible.Abstract:
In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about. Published on the fiftieth anniversary of the first container voyage, this is the first comprehensive history of the shipping container. It recounts how the drive and imagination of an iconoclastic entrepreneur, Malcom McLean, turned containerization from an impractical idea into a massive industry that slashed the cost of transporting goods around the world and made the boom in global trade possible. But the container didn't just happen. Its adoption required huge sums of money, both from private investors and from ports that aspired to be on the leading edge of a new technology. It required years of high-stakes bargaining with two of the titans of organized labor, Harry Bridges and Teddy Gleason, as well as delicate negotiations on standards that made it possible for almost any container to travel on any truck or train or ship. Ultimately, it took McLean's success in supplying U.S. forces in Vietnam to persuade the world of the container's potential. Drawing on previously neglected sources, economist Marc Levinson shows how the container transformed economic geography, devastating traditional ports such as New York and London and fueling the growth of previously obscure ones, such as Oakland. By making shipping so cheap that industry could locate factories far from its customers, the container paved the way for Asia to become the world's workshop and brought consumers a previously unimaginable variety of low-cost products from around the globe.read more
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References
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TL;DR: In this article, a simple agent-based model for the geographical interplay between transportation costs, economies of scale, as well as information costs is proposed to address the transition between local and distributed economies.
Posted Content
North American Gateway and Corridor Initiatives in a Changing World
TL;DR: A brief introduction to the theory, concepts, reality and issues surrounding the development of trade gateways and corridors in Canada and around the world and identifies areas for further research and policy development for Canada and North America to retain their competitive position in the global economy as mentioned in this paper.
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The Dual Process of Xenophobia and Transnational Identity Formation in Turkey
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DissertationDOI
Insecurity Communities: Technologies of Insecurity Governance Under the European Neighbourhood Policy
Structural and Geographic Shifts in the Washington Warehousing Industry: Transportation Impacts for the Green River Valley
Anne Goodchild,Derek Andrioli +1 more
TL;DR: The authors in this article found that the warehousing industry has experienced rapid growth and restructuring since 1998, which has resulted in geographic shifts at the national, regional, and local scales.