Funding source: Volvo Research and Educational Foundations

Performance period: 1/1/2014 to 1/1/2017

Project description

This paper explores the relationship between employment density and freight activities. We consider density to be a proxy for land rents. High land rents deter land intensive activities. Thus manufacturing, wholesaling or warehousing are less likely to locate near the city core where land rents are highest. The literature shows that industry mix varies with density; only activities that benefit sufficiently from external economies are willing to pay the high rents that density implies. Freight intensive activities (e.g. warehousing and distribution) face the added disadvantage of congestion, limited road space, and often regulatory constraints in city cores. We therefore expect that freight intensive activities should also be less likely to locate in high rent areas. We use Los Angeles as our case study. We identify employment concentrations and categorize industry sectors by freight trip generation. We then examine spatial patterns of freight trip intensity. We find that 1) freight intensive activities locate more frequently outside of centers; 2) sector mix differs across centers, and hence freight intensity mix differs across centers; 3) larger centers are more differentiated than smaller centers; and 4) there is a general trend of increasing freight intensity with distance from the center.