Transportation and regional inequality: the impact of railways in the Nordic countries, 1860–1960

Abstract

Before industrialisation, the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) were part of Europe's poor periphery, but over the last century these countries have become some of the richest in the world. This article analyses the origins of Nordic growth from the late-nineteenth century, focusing on a previously neglected topic: the role of transportation. We argue that transportation, and most notably large investments in railways, played a key role in Nordic industrialisation. Railways made the exploitation and exportation of natural resources possible in what had previously been isolated areas and helped fuel a process of rural-based industrialisation. By creating conditions that favoured migration towards previously scarcely populated, but economically booming areas, Nordic industrialisation was paralleled by a reduction in regional inequality as measured in per capita GDP. Railways were created before local population growth and helped shape the economic landscape of the entire region. The Nordic railway system is remarkable in that it helped exploit relatively deserted areas and create new towns. We demonstrate these points using maps based on HGIS highlighting railways, regional GDPs and population densities from the mid-nineteenth century until 1960The Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) form Europe's northernmost geographical region and include some areas that even reach beyond the Arctic Circle. 1 Although peripheral in geographic terms and small in population terms, but over the last century these countries have become some of the richest in the world.1 Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands are also often referred to as Nordic countries, but they have been omitted from this analysis due to a lack of data and the fact that their economic development and growth have mainly been due to factors other than railways.

История Строительства И Реконструкции Ярославского Вокзала В Москве

“…However, due to fast development of the road and the growth in transportations, the building required re-construction [7]. In 1868 I.V.…”

“…No studies devoted to the station's architectural form shaping were found among foreign works. Nevertheless, the general issues of Art Nouveau, railway infrastructure development, construction experience and railway stations' adaptation prospects are addressed in a variety of works and are of significant interest [7,26,28,41,43].…”

Railway network of Galicia and Austrian Silesia (1847-1914)

“…The main advantage of this paper is the construction of a spatial database of the railway network for the period 1847-1914. Although many researchers have discussed the impacts of railway construction on socio-economic processes in the past (Kerstin et al, 2018;Murzyn-Kupisz & Gwosdz, 2011), the original data were usually not shared with readers. For times when we know that historical processes influenced the current state of countries and regions (Grosfeld & Zhuravskaya, 2015) of which railway systems are a very good example (Król & Taczanowski, 2016;Taczanowski, 2012) or impacted the current ecosystem functioning (Munteanu et al, 2017), historical geography is still rarely 'data rich'.…”

Evaluating the regional social sustainability contribution of public‐private partnerships in China: The development of an indicator system

“…Therefore, water supplying PPP projects should improve water quality by bringing the private technological advantage. Compared with other types of transport, railways have the advantage of reducing traffic costs in medium-distance transportation and promoting substantial growth in interregional trade (Enflo, Alvarez-Palau, & Marti-Henneberg, 2018;Yi & Kim, 2018). Through the PPPs, railways projects can get a lower construction and operation costs as well as high management efficiency, which can expand the traffic costs advantage (Gangwar & Raghuram, 2015).…”