Sustainable Management of Roadside: Towards a Research Agenda

The relationship between road infrastructure and economic development are widely studied since 25 million kilometers of new roads will be built by 2050. Closely linked to the growth of road infrastructure, there has been an increase in the area dedicated to roadside. The roadside verges are a social interface between forests, wildlife, agricultural farms, rural communities, vehicles, communication networks, landscape, and many other aspects. The roadside has the potential to generate positive and negative effects on human health, environment, ecology, road security and energy. It is relevant to analyze how scientific researchers have studied the roadside management and to what extent they are integrated the ecological, social and economic sustainability. A systematic literature review is developed aiming of define the research trends about the relationship between sustainable management and roadside or roadside verge through graphical representation of bibliometric maps using VOSviewer, a visualization tool. Key issues are identified in recently published papers such as environmental, vehicular network, communication, security, health, energy and markets. These issues must be integrated in a research agenda to highlight the need to adopt a transdisciplinary and systemic approach concerning territorial studies. Furthermore, we must also remark that it is capital that a sustainable management of roadside verges develops a strong multidimensional vision from ecological, social, economic, technological and political points of view. Also, future developments need to be focused into nondeterministic or lineal models or strategies of roadside management and its integration in local dynamics, to fully contribute to the sustainability of territorial development.