Mobility in daily life: between freedom and unfreedom

management. Whilst ships aremoveable assets, port and terminal infrastructures are not. It is beyond the power of the ports and terminals themselves to solve all the landside access problems, but local authorities need to be aware of the need for continuous improvement if ‘their’ ports are to remain preferred gateways in SCs. Retrofitting transport capacity in existing built environments takes political will and time and is never cheap. There are seldom simple solutions that everyone can accept. The examples included in the various chapters demonstrate Oram’s (1968) First Law of Mechanisation: ‘If you improve a stage in the process of cargo handling you will immediately have to improve the stage before and after that one.’ Historically this is illustrated by the introduction of multimodal cargo containers. The full benefits of containerising cargo are only realised when they are moved end-to-end in a SC. Hence, inland transport and ocean shipping not only have to mesh efficiently, each component segment must not impede the process because of inadequate infrastructure, excessive costs, and/or regulatory constraints. Should such constraints persist, SC trajectories will inevitably be modified and peripheral ports that offer a bypass opportunity may flourish in the wake of any such dissatisfaction. Several contributors note that governance is changing in concert with a diversity of management philosophies. There can be more profit in the logistics side of the business than in simply running a port or terminal. Nevertheless, ports and terminals are located in the midst of communities with differences in culture and attitudes to the environment that cannot be ignored. Concomitant with modernisation of ports and the growing complexity of SCs there is the need for institutional capacity building. Overall, the book provides a series of linked perspectives on research that focuses on how maritime city-ports and terminals are responding to the challenges of meeting the needs of numerous global supply chains that are becoming increasingly diverse and complex. Ports are but one element in the chain. Some suffer from chronic landside congestion. Some find it difficult to keep pace with the concentration in shipping practices including provision of capacity to handle larger vessels. Some ports, once favoured by geography, cannot depend upon that factor to head off competition. Port management is not free from political influences. There are interesting observations on public-private sector policy implications. The intent of the book is achieved. That is, ‘to advance research in the fields of the interaction between cities and ports in a logistics-restructured environment, the spatial, economic and functional dynamics in port-cities in response to global supply chains and the outcomes on and implications for port governance structures and policy makers.’ The various authors from different disciplines provide a useful, comprehensive and rich menu of references to back their very contemporary views on what is driving ports to become more highly integrated in global supply chains. The editors and the publisher have combined to produce a high quality product that I am happy to recommend. Books that assemble material in chapters arising from special workshops and conference sessions can result in unbalanced outcomes. This book is well balanced in scope. A more concise work, shorn of repetition, could be obtained if a single author produced the volume based on the collective wisdom of the workshop’s participants. Nevertheless, the various chapters provide insights that will spur further research. This is not a textbook for undergraduates. It will assist postgraduates wrestling with the literature concerning supply chains.