The Changing South: Transportation and Communications Since 1947

Dramatic changes in socioeconomic activities and social relations within the South have been accompanied by equally dramatic changes in southern spatial interaction. This paper describes changes to southern infrastructure and flows that have occurred since World War II. Movement industries dealing with people, goods, and information are examined. The volume, velocity, and spatial extent of movement have expanded greatly during the post World War II era. Urbanization, globalization, feminization, and deregulation manifest altered patterns of infrastructure and spatial interaction. Despite capacities to move huge quantities of southern people, goods, and information, the level of accessibility to local, regional, national, and global systems of interaction varies significantly and increasingly across the southern landscape. This spatial variation (in concert with the environmental impacts of our movement systems) provides sources of concern for the nature of future southern development.