Transportation in the context of "Built environment"

Globalization is the process of increasing interdependence and integration among the economies, markets, societies, and cultures of different countries worldwide. This is made possible by the reduction of barriers to international trade, the liberalization of capital movements, the development of transportation, and the advancement of information and communication technologies. The term globalization first appeared in the early 20th century (supplanting an earlier French term mondialisation). It developed its current meaning sometime in the second half of the 20th century, and came into popular use in the 1990s to describe the unprecedented international connectivity of the post–Cold War world.The origins of globalization can be traced back to the 18th and 19th centuries, driven by advances in transportation and communication technologies. These developments increased global interactions, fostering the growth of international trade and the exchange of ideas, beliefs, and cultures. While globalization is primarily an economic process of interaction and integration, it is also closely linked to social and cultural dynamics. Additionally, disputes and international diplomacy have played significant roles in the history and evolution of globalization, continuing to shape its modern form. Though many scholars place the origins of globalization in modern times, others trace its history to long before the European Age of Discovery and voyages to the New World, and some even to the third millennium BCE. Large-scale globalization began in the 1820s, and in the late 19th century and early 20th century drove a rapid expansion in the connectivity of the world's economies and cultures. The term global city was subsequently popularized by sociologist Saskia Sassen in her work The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (1991).

Globalization describes the growing interdependence of the world's economies, cultures, and populations, brought about by cross-border trade in goods and services, technology, and flows of investment, people, and information. Countries have built economic partnerships to facilitate these movements over many centuries.

Urban planning (also called city planning or town planning in some contexts) is the process of developing and designing land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportation, communications, and distribution networks, and their accessibility. Traditionally, urban planning followed a top-down approach in master planning the physical layout of human settlements. The primary concern was the public welfare, which included considerations of efficiency, sanitation, protection and use of the environment, as well as taking account of effects of the master plans on the social and economic activities. Over time, urban planning has adopted a focus on the social and environmental "bottom lines" that focuses on using planning as a tool to improve the health and well-being of people and maintain sustainability standards. In the early 21st century, urban planning experts such as Jane Jacobs called on urban planners to take resident experiences and needs more into consideration.

Urban planning answers questions about how people will live, work, and play in a given area and thus, guides orderly development in urban, suburban and rural areas. Although predominantly concerned with the planning of settlements and communities, urban planners are also responsible for planning the efficient transportation of goods, resources, people, and waste; the distribution of basic necessities such as water and electricity; a sense of inclusion and opportunity for people of all kinds, culture and needs; economic growth or business development; improving health and conserving areas of natural environmental significance that actively contributes to reduction in CO₂ emissions as well as protecting heritage structures and built environments. Since most urban planning teams consist of highly educated individuals that work for city governments, recent debates focus on how to involve more community members in city planning processes.

Commerce is the organized system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions that directly or indirectly contribute to the smooth, unhindered exchange of goods, services, and other things of value—predominantly through transactional processes—at the right time, place, quantity, quality and price through various channels among the original producers and the final consumers within local, regional, national or international economies. The diversity in the distribution of natural resources, differences of human needs and wants, and division of labour along with comparative advantage are the principal factors that give rise to commercial exchanges.

Commerce consists of trade and aids to trade (i.e. auxiliary commercial services) taking place along the entire supply chain. Trade is the exchange of goods (including raw materials, intermediate and finished goods) and services between buyers and sellers in return for an agreed-upon price at traditional (or online) marketplaces. It is categorized into domestic trade, including retail and wholesale as well as local, regional, inter-regional and international/foreign trade (encompassing import, export and entrepôt/re-export trades). The exchange of currencies (in foreign exchange markets), commodities (in commodity markets/exchanges) and securities and derivatives (in stock exchanges and financial markets) in specialized exchange markets, typically operating under the domain of finance and investment, also falls under the umbrella of trade. On the other hand, auxiliary commercial activities (aids to trade) which can facilitate trade include commercial intermediaries, banking, credit financing and related services, transportation, packaging, warehousing, communication, advertising and insurance. Their purpose is to remove hindrances related to direct personal contact, payments, savings, funding, separation of place and time, product protection and preservation, knowledge and risk.

Social inequality occurs when resources within a society are distributed unevenly, often as a result of inequitable allocation practices that create distinct unequal patterns based on socially defined categories of people. Differences in accessing social goods within society are influenced by factors like power, religion, kinship, prestige, race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, intelligence and class. Social inequality usually implies the lack of equality of outcome, but may alternatively be conceptualized as a lack of equality in access to opportunity.

Social inequality is linked to economic inequality, usually described as the basis of the unequal distribution of income or wealth. Although the disciplines of economics and sociology generally use different theoretical approaches to examine and explain economic inequality, both fields are actively involved in researching this inequality. However, social and natural resources other than purely economic resources are also unevenly distributed in most societies and may contribute to social status. Norms of allocation can also affect the distribution of rights and privileges, social power, access to public goods such as education or the judicial system, adequate housing, transportation, credit and financial services such as banking and other social goods and services.

Energy development is the field of activities focused on obtaining sources of energy from natural resources. These activities include the production of renewable, nuclear, and fossil fuel derived sources of energy, and for the recovery and reuse of energy that would otherwise be wasted. Energy conservation and efficiency measures reduce the demand for energy development, and can have benefits to society with improvements to environmental issues.

Societies use energy for transportation, manufacturing, illumination, heating and air conditioning, and communication, for industrial, commercial, agricultural and domestic purposes. Energy resources may be classified as primary resources, where the resource can be used in substantially its original form, or as secondary resources, where the energy source must be converted into a more conveniently usable form. Non-renewable resources are significantly depleted by human use, whereas renewable resources are produced by ongoing processes that can sustain indefinite human exploitation.

In transportation, cargo refers to goods transported by land, water or air, while freight refers to its conveyance. In economics, freight refers to goods transported at a freight rate for commercial gain. The term cargo is also used in case of goods in the cold-chain, because the perishable inventory is always in transit towards a final end-use, even when it is held in cold storage or other similar climate-controlled facilities, including warehouses.

Multi-modal container units, designed as reusable carriers to facilitate unit load handling of the goods contained, are also referred to as cargo, especially by shipping lines and logistics operators. When empty containers are shipped each unit is documented as a cargo and when goods are stored within, the contents are termed containerized cargo. Similarly, aircraft ULD boxes are also documented as cargo, with an associated packing list of the items contained within.

A mode of transport is a method or way of travelling, or of transporting people or cargo. The different modes of transport include air, water, and land transport, which includes rails or railways, road and off-road transport. Other modes of transport also exist, including pipelines, cable transport, and space transport. Human-powered transport and animal-powered transport are sometimes regarded as distinct modes, but they may lie in other categories such as land or water transport.

In general, transportation refers to the moving of people, animals, and other goods from one place to another, and means of transport refers to the transport facilities used to carry people or cargo according to the chosen mode. Examples of the means of transport include automobile, airplane, ship, truck, and train. Each mode of transport has a fundamentally different set of technological solutions. Each mode has its own infrastructure, vehicles, transport operators and operations.