Freight, Climate Resilience, and Urban Livability: Managing Industrial Transportation in Growing Port Cities

Maulsri Jha

Freight, Climate Resilience, and Urban Livability: Managing Industrial Transportation in Growing Port Cities

Author(s)	Maulsri Jha
Country	United States
Abstract	Port cities concentrate nationally significant freight infrastructure within metropolitan environments where people live, work, and experience environmental risk. Climate change intensifies this tension. Sea-level rise, storm surge, extreme precipitation, heat, and compound disruptions threaten terminals, access roads, rail corridors, utilities, and inland distribution networks, while conventional responses can deepen truck traffic, land-use conflict, emissions, and displacement in near-port communities. This article develops a Port-City Resilience and Livability framework and applies it to comparative case studies of Mumbai, the Seattle-Tacoma port region, and Rotterdam. Mumbai demonstrates the challenge of sustaining freight mobility across a flood-prone, congested metropolitan region characterized by rapid port expansion, uneven infrastructure, and acute competition for land. Seattle-Tacoma illustrates collaborative emissions planning and the opportunities and limitations of zero-emission freight transitions in communities already burdened by diesel pollution and industrial land use. Rotterdam demonstrates integrated port, water, energy, and hinterland planning at continental scale, while exposing the difficulty of decarbonizing an industrial cluster whose economic role is tied to fossil-energy systems. The comparison finds that resilient port development cannot be measured only by cargo throughput or rapid post-disaster recovery. It must also reduce chronic health burdens, prevent the spatial transfer of risk, maintain multimodal redundancy, decarbonize equipment and freight corridors, and give affected communities enforceable influence over investment. The article proposes performance measures covering physical robustness, network continuity, energy and digital interdependencies, emissions, land-use compatibility, distributive equity, ecological function, and accountable governance. It concludes that industrial transportation becomes climate infrastructure only when adaptation, decarbonization, and urban livability are planned as a unified metropolitan system.
Keywords	port cities; urban freight; climate resilience; environmental justice; industrial transportation; decarbonization; urban livability
Published In	Volume 17, Issue 2, July-December 2026
Published On	2026-09-04

View / Download PDF File

About IJAIDR Fees & Payment Current Issue Publication Archive	Submit Research Paper Track Submission Status Publication Guidelines Peer Review & Plagiarism	Join as a Reviewer Editors & Reviewers Get Reviewer Membership Certi.	Website/Journal Policies Usage Policy Content Policies Privacy Policy

Contact Us	Message on WhatsApp	+91-9687-182-185	editor@ijaidr.com

Journal of Advances in Developmental Research

A Widely Indexed Open Access Peer Reviewed Multidisciplinary Bi-monthly Scholarly International Journal

Freight, Climate Resilience, and Urban Livability: Managing Industrial Transportation in Growing Port Cities

Share this