The Fourth Logistical Revolution Implications for Australian Cities

Abstract

In recent years, sudden and unexpected discontinuities have become more central concepts in the literature on regional development If we look back into European history for a moment, it is instructive to consider the evolution of Europe's cities as an international family. One illuminating example is the pathbreaking analysis by the Cambridge mathematician, Alistair Mees (1975). He took the hypothesis of the historians Henri Pirenne (1925) and Fernand Braudel as the starting point for an analysis of sudden changes in the specialization pattern of trading regions. Simply stated, Pirenne' hypothesis asserted that the central cause of the revival of Medieval towns and cities in the late middle ages was the emergence of free trade and associated improvements to the transportation system. This means that the backbone of today' European network economy was established as far back as the 11th century.