The integrated urban geography of retail and logistics in the on-demand economy.

The rise in e-commerce led to the advent of the on-demand economy with ever faster, cheaper and more personalised deliveries. This new consumer mindset severely complicates traditional retail and logistics processes and is reshaping their physical landscapes (Dablanc, 2019; Hagberg et al., 2016). Resultantly, this evolution changed the requirements of service provisions in and around urban areas, challenging local authorities to manage the urban fabric. Recent literature in the fields of consumer behaviour, economic geography and urban logistics recognized these issues and studies the impact hereof (Birkin et al., 2017; Donaldy, 2013; Heitz et al., 2018). Yet, each of these studies remain within the cocoons of established research fields, applying a retail or logistics perspective. The proposed research tackles the mentioned issues from a multidisciplinary perspective, considering retail and logistics as an integrated system and assessing their common impact through a geographical lens. This is done in three steps. First, the evolution of the demand and supply for retail and logistics services is studied. Second, the evolved demand and supply are contrasted by calculating two indices. One indicating omni-channel retail accessibility and another measuring urban retail and logistics performances in the on-demand economy. Third, the work is completed by studying how urban policy makers can better manage the ongoing integration of both sectors in dense urban areas.

Keywords:URBAN LOGISTICS

Disciplines:Transport economics, Urban, rural and regional economics, Geography of mobility and transportation, Urban and regional geography