Rail transport, commodity flows and sustainable urban development: An appraisal to the complementarity of a ‘Railway Town’ in India

Abstract

The present paper seeks to conceptualise the notion of complementarity with the help of rail-based commodity flow data in one of the most prominent railway towns in India i.e. PanditDeenDayalUpadhyaya Nagar (Mughal Sarai).Referring to the theoretical notion of ‘complementarity’ and a modified form of ‘gravity model’ from the ‘Family of Spatial Interaction Models’, this research puts an intensive discussion forward on the existing nature of spatial interaction of PanditDeenDayalUpadhyaya Nagar (Mughal Sarai)with its complementary areas and a comparison of these areas in terms of their relative complementarity with the town concerned.The resultant outcome in the form of a Complementarity Index, portrays a different, if not entirely contradictory picture from the crude values of material shipments to PanditDeenDayalUpadhyaya Nagar (Mughal Sarai). This analysis thus well-indicates that merely supplying greater amount of commodities of any kind does not necessarily reflect greater complementarity and vice versa. Therefore, a more comprehensive analysis of commodity flows is imperative to have a deeper insight into the notion of spatial interaction.