Reframing Urban Transportation As Complex Systems: A Three-Dimensional Evolutionary Perspective
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Drawing a parallel with blood vessels in living organisms, transportation catalyzes today’s urban development by creating connections, enhancing mobility, and enriching urban activities. Traditional perspectives often treat transportation merely as a component of cities, leaving us without a systematic understanding of how it evolves and functions within cities. Here, we argue that transportation should be reframed from the perspective of complex systems and propose a three-dimensional framework to look at how urban transportation evolves across three dimensions, including transportation infrastructures ( x ), transportation vehicles ( y ), and transportation space ( z ). By examining how these dimensions come into play both individually and collectively within cities, we can grasp the historical trajectory and current state of transportation evolution, and, in particular, how they have shaped urban development over time. More importantly, our framework illuminates the future directions of transportation evolution, as well as the potential forms of urban inequity that future transportation may generate.
Source: Engineering
Institutions: Southern University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Beijing Institute of Technology, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, University of Hong Kong, Zhejiang University, Jingdong (China), University of Macau
Language: English
Subfield: Transportation
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,300
OpenAlex ID: W7203688239