About the project
Unpacking the Logistics Town documents and analyzes the promises and risks that exist when medium-sized cities are transformed into logistics cities. What happens when hopes for investment and jobs meet fears of insecure local financial gains, reduced influence over urban development and an increased share of low-paid jobs?
Unpacking examines the political, economic, and social processes through which post-industrial cities are transformed into logistics centers. The project innovatively investigates a moment in time when local communities are increasingly enrolled in platform economies, by studying how the e-commerce company Amazon in 2020 opened new logistics warehouses and distribution centrals in Dos Hermanas (Spain), Eskilstuna (Sweden) and Mansfield (U.K).
Through ethnographic research in Spain, Sweden and the UK, Unpacking rethinks the role of logistics in the spatial and social remaking of local communities, as well as traces the similarities between mid-size European towns in a time of ‘logistics revolution’.
