Chapter One Transportation where people leave: An introduction

Transportation means access: to jobs, information, communities, and services. When depopulation occurs a number of questions arise around the central query: what was and will be the role of transportation? This volume engages with several aspects of the depopulation-transportation topic and at multiple geographic scales—from the national and regional to the city- and neighborhood-level. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the challenges associated with population loss and how various aspects of transportation research intersect with these issues. We then summarize the chapters included in this volume, showing how they connect to larger emerging research themes, as well as to each other.