How Food Logistics Is Changing Our Cities.

Over the past two decades, the spaces for fresh food distribution in Italy have undergone major transformation processes, primarily aimed at increasing performance. These processes have taken place through logistical refinement, technological advancement, and increased automation throughout the supply chain. At the same time, the spaces for fresh food distribution have quickly expanded and increased their attractiveness compared to other logistics and production activities that are located in their proximity, thus determining important repercussions on local and national economies. This investigation focuses on Distribution Centers (DCs), which are one of the key spaces where the main transformations are taking place. Over 450 DCs are currently open in Italy. They consist of large warehouses, usually located in large, equipped areas, which are considered strategic for distribution and used by Mass Market Retailers (MMRs) for hosting all stages of food reception, sorting, and delivery to the vast network of stores. The decision to focus on DCs stems from the fact that they represent the emergence of new spatial organizations, new territorial functioning, new architectures, which have become increasingly relevant in contemporary urban landscapes in terms of size, numbers, and impact. DCs may represent among the few new architectural objects in the vast periphery of the Italian and European cities. Moreover, the typical peculiarities of fresh distribution make DCs highly dependent on human labor and more resistant to automation and high-tech developments, compared to other distribution realities, such as technological products. For these reasons, food distribution spaces have been selected as exemplary cases for investigating the relations between places, territories, people, and technologies. This research investigates the DCs of seven MMRs: Carrefour, Iper, MAAR, PAC2000A Conad, Pam Panorama, Sigma, Unes. These DCs are located in three selected case study areas: Santa Palomba (Roma), Pastorano and Carinaro (Caserta), Liscate, Truccazzano, and Biandrate (Milano). These areas were selected due to the fact that they are among the sites with the highest food logistics density in Italy (ECR Italy 2020), making them regional and national distribution hubs. The investigation seeks to capture the multiple degrees of transformation involving these spaces at different scales. Two main issues are highlighted: a) the strong relations between fresh food logistic centers and the territory, on a local and national scale; b) the forms of urbanity that are gradually taking shape inside and outside DCs.

In the field of urban studies, to date, there is little literature on fresh food distribution. In many ways, the existing literature is associated with the wide body of research that deals with logistics spaces and their impact on the territory. Here, two prevalent and seemingly unreconcilable views can be traced to the interaction between logistics spaces, techniques, human beings, and contexts. Due to automated processes and digital technologies, logistics spaces are on the one hand observed as ‘human exclusion zones’ (LeCavalier, 2019), infrastructures entirely dependent on codes and algorithms (Bensi, Marullo, 2018) that materialize into automated machines proper to a post-Antropocene that has little to do with the human body (Young, 2019; Lyster, 2019). Spatially, logistics defines a set of places generated by repeated formulas and governed by protocols, norms, and international standards (Easterling, 2014). Above all, they are mostly observed as rather homogeneous spaces, not very porous, not capable of attracting, and being contaminated by other activities not strictly related to logistics. On the other hand, another branch of the literature has begun to describe logistics spaces as more hybrid, where hybridization is determined both by the relevance of the human presence and by the progressive increase in the complexity of the activities and economies involved. In this case, labor spaces are observed as spaces for collective negotiation, marked by a strong political component (Khosravi, Bacchin, LaFleur, 2019; Cowen, 2014), where humans exist not only as ‘bodies’ but rather as ‘subjects’. Software, machines, and people become entangled, determining – in a kind of digital neo-Taylorism – continuous interface spaces between the subjects and the system of production (Neilson, Rossiter, 2021, 2017, 2014; Moritz, 2022; Moody, 2019; Mulholland, Stewart, 2015). This tension between technology and workers is evident in spatial development, where abstract procedures become immediately tangible (Bensi, Marullo, 2018) and even more evident when technologies multiply, and different storage and production processes take shape in the same places.

The investigation sets out from these last considerations, arguing first that how DCs are spaces that are strongly linked to the territories in which they are located. Secondly, the work focuses on how they are attracting other economies over time, building social and economic relations at different scales, which are increasingly complex and lasting. Currently, DCs are almost completely neglected by reflections of this kind which leads to numerous problems. One concern is, for example, the lack of planning attention linked to the emergence and diffusion of new forms of settlements. The result is a clear inadequacy of the spaces created with respect to human work, which remains the main factor in food distribution spaces. For this reason, I stress the importance of employing a detailed, relevant, and place-specific observation that can go beyond the strictly technical dimension of these spaces. In this way, it is possible to identify the density and variety of practices involved, the various emerging economies, and the weak forms of urbanity that are gaining ground. These weaknesses are due to the inhospitality of the spaces that currently host forms of urbanity. In conclusion, I argue the need for a new interpretative framework that considers DCs, and consequently more extensive emerging logistics platforms, within a more complex process of transformation and an articulated network of relationships. This framework is needed to relocate the logistical spaces within reflections that consider them as spaces in which to activate plans, policies, and projects at different scales, from that of the territory to one of the national policies, to architectural design.

Methodologically, the research is conducted through fieldwork and quantitative analyses. Empirical findings are collected through direct and participatory observations, qualitative and quantitative data, semi-structured interviews with managers, logistics directors, and workers, and represented by visual materials (photos and video), drawings (maps, sections, plans, and axonometry), data scapes, and texts. The thesis is provisionally structured in four chapters, in addition to the introduction and conclusions. The first chapter provides a theoretical framework based on a literature review that identifies the different interpretations and epistemologies of logistics in the urban field. Chapter 2 introduces the topic of food logistics distribution within the contemporary food system, focusing on the Italian case and describing DCs within the MMRs’ supply chain. A visual insert shows the Distribution Centers and explains them mainly through graphic materials collected during fieldwork or produced using the data collected. The third part is the main body of the thesis. Here, the empirical findings on the DCs of the three selected study areas are recounted, proposing more complex and articulated understandings of these spaces. Three reading layers are proposed: spaces and architectures, techniques, and workers. In the fourth chapter, some ‘interfaces’ are identified: thresholds, overlaps, and branches. They are transitional spaces in the logistics process,  that break or disrupt the seamless logistics process. It is also argued that logistics spaces can become an interface not exclusively related to logistics. They are attractor devices and function at the territorial level as magnets that stimulate a change in the economies and development prospects of the territories where DCs exist. In conclusion, I claimed that logistics spaces could, and perhaps should, be considered operable spaces at the multiple scales of architectural and urban projects.

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