How Food Logistics Is Changing Our Cities.

Over the past decade, Large-Scale Retail companies have deeply redefined the structure of food distribution logistics due to changes in consumer demand and calls for increased performance, food safety, and sustainability. The main spaces within which this transformation has taken place have been Distribution Centers (DCs), which are large warehouses used to serve the network of shops and stores. Today, there are more than 450 DCs in Italy.

The literature that has so far dealt with these spaces has highlighted, on the one hand, their functionalist character, describing forms of codification and standardization, as well as the fact that they are pieces of a more extensive extra-territorial logistical network; on the other hand, that they are permeated by labour-related practices that create specific workspaces characterized by negotiations, tensions, and conflicts.
Despite their widespread presence and increasing relevance in contemporary Italian and European urban landscapes, the impacts on the surroundings of DCs have been observed less, not only in social and environmental terms but also, and especially, in relation to the emerging new urban forms they generate.

This research describes the increase and spread of DCs, highlighting how the operation of these spaces – alongside the relevant upheavals and imbalances – determines new logistics-led urbanizations characterized by an extreme diversity of spaces in terms of scale, morphology, quality, operations, and practices. Observing, describing, and interpreting them is important, first, to reflect on a project that can test the plurality of their urban features and, second, to highlight specific spaces where such a project could be more effective.

To do so, the research will trade on fieldwork conducted on Italian national territory since 2020, developing in more detail three selected areas: Santa Palomba (Roma), Aversa Nord (Caserta), and Liscate and Casirate d’Adda (Regione Logistica Milanese).

Watch the video abstract on YouTube