<italic>E</italic>-commerce and logistics sprawl: A spatial exploration of last-mile logistics platforms: Fid-Bau Portal

E-commerce and logistics sprawl: A spatial exploration of last-mile logistics platforms

Fried, Travis / Goodchild, Anne

Abstract The rise of e-commerce helped fuel consumer appetite for quick home deliveries. One consequence has been the placing of some logistics facilities in proximity to denser consumer markets. The trend departs from prevailing discussion on “logistics sprawl,” or the proliferation of warehousing into the urban periphery. This study spatially and statistically explores the facility- and region-level dimensions that characterize the centrality of e-commerce logistics platforms. Analyzing 910 operational Amazon logistics platforms in 89 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) between 2013 and 2021, this study estimates temporal changes in distances to relative, population centroids and population-weighted market densities. Results reveal that although some platforms serving last-mile deliveries locate closer to consumers than upstream distribution platforms to better fulfill time-demands, centrality varies due to facility operating characteristics, market size, and when the platform opened.

Highlights • Do e-commerce logistics platforms open closer to urban consumers to meet heightened time-demands and do they decentralize in alignment with broader warehousing trends? • This study employs centrographic techniques to measure platform distances from consumer centers and densities between 2013 and 2021. • Platforms serving last-mile deliveries locate closer to consumers than upstream platforms, but facility size, costs, public incentives received, and metropolitan population, among other factors, determine centrality. • Platforms opened between 2020 and 2021, including last-mile platforms, located less centrally than years prior with implications for facility operations.