Logistics: Situating flows in a spatial context

Abstract

The origins of logistics lie in military and imperial methods of expansion and control of geographical space. It is principally associated with the more recent contexts of business management and engineering. Logistics systems are now the conveyor belts of the global system of trade, commerce and production, and its associated techniques and strategies aim at optimizing flows and throughput within discrete units (such as firms), in economic networks and across geographical space. Because flows are important determinants for the development of places, logistics has the power to structure territories. Therefore, it has raised considerable interest in the field of geography, not only with regard to cities and their dense agglomeration of people, buildings, and infrastructure but also in geopolitical terms as it fosters the exploration, control, and surveillance of areas. The paper presents a critical account of logistics operations and their relevance for the making (and unmaking) of territories, related policy dimensions, and future challenges for research.

Málaga Costa del Sol airport and its new conceptualization of hinterland

“…An example of this benefit can be seen in the average employment for warehouses within the 7 km buffer of Pearson Airport compared to other Toronto based warehouses, both in Canada. Hesse (2020) suggests that logistics systems are the conveyor belts of the global system of trade, commerce and production. Based on the association between places and flows, logistics is a vital component of the making of territories in a networked.…”

Holding water for the city: Emergent geographies of storage and the urbanization of nature

“…In many contexts, the duration of storage is shaped by market forces, such as speculative investment and supply chain logistics (De Lara, 2018; Simpson, 2018). Notably, in recent years, the turn toward “just-in-time” or “lean” production has shifted storage strategies in many commodity chains, reducing the volume of and duration for which goods are held in place (De Lara, 2018; Hesse, 2020). But common to all storage arrangements is an assumed orientation toward the future, particularly the often-undefined moment of the stockpiled materials’ eventual use.…”

Logistical geographies

“…Within this general frame, researchers have zoomed‐in to look at these dynamics at the district and neighbourhood levels. Many post‐industrial cities have seen the repurposing of central warehousing, rail yard and freight consolidation facilities into housing, retail, leisure and business service spaces, while logistics services such as storage and consolidation have been redistributed beyond the core urban area, and to suburban and exurban locations in particular, due to their extensive space requirements (Hesse, 2020; Vormann, 2015). As Cidell (2011:836) describes, “with little room to expand within the central city, new intermodal facilities must be built on the far edges of the metropolitan area to attain the elusive balance between sufficient infrastructure and labor on the one hand, and large parcels of vacant land and lack of congestion on the other.” In turn, architecture and planning scholars have profiled the increasingly pervasive building forms associated with logistics developments (e.g., warehouses and data centres) and their effects on the broader urban form (e.g., Lecavalier, 2016; Lyster, 2016; Waldheim & Berger, 2008).…”