Transport Infrastructure and Economic Development : An Organizational Analysis

In this work we make use of the concept of policy networks to introduce the main consequences underlying the building and establishing of a transport infrastructure for enhancing mobility. Our interest is connected with the vast domain of inter-organizational relations for transport systems: settings in which many key players, both public and private, cooperate to implement socially relevant public policy. Under this respect, policy networks may be interpreted as an analytical tool for examining, in transport settings, the relations between organizations, by taking into account the role played by private and public actors and the formal as well as informal relationships between them. This paper unfolds as follows. In par. 2 we depart by pointing out the relevance of the policy networks concept to study transportation infrastructures. Interpreting transport infrastructures as policy networks subsequently recalls a few issues that are covered in the following paragraphs. In particular, transportation infrastructures bring about both economic impacts (par. 3) and logistic advantages in terms of peripheralness/accessibility of a given area (par. 4). Finally, we look at the wider context of transportation infrastructure to derive a notion of organizing mobility as a more inclusive concept of policy network exploring how organizing mobility can represent an infrastructure for development