ng implemented by the United Kingdom, the report will present an argument in favor of centralized, national road construction planning.
Theory and Rationale for Strategic Road Network Development
H. J. de Blij and Peter O. Muller (917) position the development of road networks and transport systems in the larger context of patterns of national or regional development. Several different approaches to this issue can be identified. First, in some instances, economic development focuses on spatial aspects of how people make a living, thereby dealing with patterns of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. These patterns exhibit considerable variation.
However, as long as states have existed, they have been organized around core areas, the "focus of human activity that function as the leading locales of authority and productivity. In the modern state, the core is a heartland, where the largest population cluster, major cities, the capital, most efficient transport networks, firms and factories, and other leading assets of the country are concentrated (de Blij and Muller, 17). Simultaneously, states also possess peripheries that are also important sources of goods and services (often including agricultural products) that are part of a two-way transfer from the core to the outlying areas or regions of the country. While there is often a significant dichotomy to be observed in these two areas, the fact of the matter is that they are mutually dependent and that economic growth and development mandate the establishment of a network of transport systems and alternatives that effective and comprehensively link them together (de Blij and Marston, 18).
According to the United Kingdom's Labour and Finance
Industry Group (1), transport systems matter for several
. National productivity: not just access to markets and suppliers, but supporting the intensity of economic interaction central to clu...