Study on the transport advantage and optimal port scale of a Bay Area

To reveal the unique significant about the role of bay areas in global trade and shipping system, a Bay Area and a non-Bay Area are theoretically abstracted through urban economics methods. Given the assumption that except for port-based transportation all other elements remain constant, we analyze and prove the developmental advantages inherent in the Bay Area due to its longer coastline. Moreover, we set land, labor and transportation as the productivity factors and build a mathematical programming model to determine the optimal number and the initial scales of ports to build in a given Bay Area by means of a production function. The objective of the model is to maximize the total production profit within the region. For the case study, we adopt two kinds of transportation elements for numerical analysis, namely, the shortest distance to the nearest port and port accessibility to the outside world.

Automated summary

This study theoretically abstracts a Bay Area and a non-Bay Area using urban economics methods to analyze and prove the developmental advantages of the Bay Area due to its longer coastline. A mathematical programming model is built to determine the optimal number and scale of ports to be built in a given Bay Area, considering land, labor, and transportation as productivity factors.