E-Commerce & Last-Mile Warehouses in NYC

"Mobilizing research, planning, design, and local leadership to help communities around the world adapt to climate change."

This project was completed for The Undergraduate Sustainable Development Workshop. The workshop is a client-based course where students serve on teams to address critical sustainable development issues.

A warehouse or center where goods are stored to be delivered within the next day for expedient online shopping aka “Next-Day delivery" resulting in a quick turnaround.

Last-Mile Warehouses create a difficult problem in urban centers due to the need for proximity and the lack of space and infrastructure. This problem often leads to warehouse development in poorer communities around the peripheries of cities. The same is true for New York City.

Sustainable Development Issues:

• Economic benefits for those who can afford
• Social and environmental costs

Environmental Justice issues:

• Questions about equal distribution
• Concerns over burden sharing

Oftentimes these issues are mitigated through a city's Comprehensive Plan and/or local zoning boards. Unfortunately, New York City is the only city in New York that is exempt from a Comprehensive Plan, instead substituting it with their Zoning Resolution (which was drafted in the 1960s). Thus, there is no clear definition of a last-mile warehouse for the city. The result is numerous loopholes that allow many companies to build these facilities "as-right" without the consent of community boards, zoning boards, or the city, leaving communities without a say in what happens in their own neighborhood.

Communities in close proximity to last-mile warehouses bear the burden of consumer habits that push for faster and faster delivery services. In addition to fostering notoriously inhumane work conditions, Amazon's facilities create hazardous living conditions through worsened air and noise quality caused by heavy traffic.

•  Destruction of Historic Neighborhoods 
•  Loss of traditional shopping 
•  Few and low-paying jobs 
•  Noise and Air Pollution 
•  Decreased Quality of Life 

In addition to the physical buildings, there are numerous impacts on the transit network as a result of increased truck traffic.

Last-mile warehouses, particularly for small packages, comprise most of Amazon's operations in the City

Last-mile warehouses are an extremely new phenomenon, with the pandemic vastly accelerating their expansion. Consequently, the City has not yet provided regulation of these facilities and very little research has documented their impacts.

Amazon's last-mile warehouses are not evenly distributed across the city. Low-income communities disproportionately bear the burden of last-mile warehouses. Additionally, a majority of the facilities are located in opportunity zones.  These zones  were created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 to incentivize investment in low-income communities. The prevalence of Amazon's last-mile warehouses in NYC's opportunity zones indicates both the uneven distribution of their impacts but also Amazon's potential use of government subsidies to develop these facilities that do not benefit local communities.

Method: First we acquired the locations of Amazon’s warehouses from MWPVL International, a supply chain firm. We then geocoded the addresses. We accessed traffic data and truck routes from the Department of Transportation’s  Traffic Data Viewer . We analyzed traffic patterns using hot spot analysis to determine whether Amazon’s last-mile warehouses seek out areas with high traffic, create traffic, or both. We created maps of annual traffic hot spots and any Amazon warehouse openings for each year between 2015 and 2019.

Findings: The patterns showed last-mile warehouses opening in areas that were either traffic hot-spots the previous year or the year that they opened. Therefore, it appears that Amazon locates its last-mile warehouses in areas that already receive heavy traffic, exacerbating existing congestion.

E-commerce last-mile warehouses exacerbate pre-existing issues by locating in areas with higher congestion and asthma rates. E-commerce presents new problems by causing traffic by unloading in the middle of streets, locating and routing in ways counter to NYC's design, and by their rapid overturn in product. Most importantly these burdens are not shared evenly across New York City.

We propose that a text amendment be drafted to the New York City Zoning Resolution, which requires a special permit for last-mile warehouses. We believe that it is essential to designate last-mile warehouses as a distinct category given their quick turnaround of goods, substantial effects on traffic, and the increased risk to public safety which they cause. While specifics for this distinction can be settled through the needs of community groups and the realities of warehouse management, we believe that there are several precedents within the zoning resolution that can be used to quantify what is and is not a last-mile warehouse.

We propose that City Planning takes precedent from many commercial regulations by placing thresholds on the number of parking spaces, number of deliveries per day, and the amount of usable floor space. We also propose that due to the unique nature of these facilities a new measurement: the amount of time packages stay inside the building be considered as well. These thresholds will help assure that the appropriate size facility is located in the appropriate neighborhood.

As a part of this permitting process we also request that all permits be accompanied by:

• A comprehensive traffic plan
• A comprehensive environmental impact statement
• Mandatory e-charging stations
• Enforcement of eco-roofing (solar and/or green and/or wind)
• And approval by the local community board

In an effort to ensure that community needs are met first we also recommend that community boards be given the right to grant a limited environmental impact statement and traffic plan for smaller and/or local facilities at their discretion. However, facilities that go beyond the thresholds set by NY City Planning must always submit an EIS and traffic plan.

The team also recommends that there be a serious reconsideration of Section 203 of the NYC Charter ("Fair Share"). Based on our research the distribution of these last-mile warehouses is clearly unevenly distributed amongst the five boroughs which suggest that the burdens are not being evenly distributed either. We recommend that City Council take a serious look at this principle vis-à-vis last-mile warehouses. The Fair Share principle should be specifically invoked in any last-mile warehouse permitting process to ensure that one neighborhood or borough is not disproportionately impacted by the industry.

Acknowledging that not all problems can be mitigated through zoning, the team also has numerous suggestions and recommendations that tackle the issues associated with transportation. We recommend a more rigorous consideration of the currently optional night-time and electric vehicle programs within the city. We also encourage considerations into the potential use of rail and especially maritime transportation as the majority of these facilities have access to a waterfront. We believe that utilizing the waterfront will greatly help reduce congestion and will also help optimize the space currently being taken up by already-existing warehouses.

Congestion Pricing

Finally, we recommend that NYC implement a congestion pricing program for e-commerce deliveries. Such a scheme could either require EZ-pass style devices or license-plate billing for any e-commerce deliveries within the city. This would both incentivize companies to think of alternative modes of transportation and would provide funds to help restore communities that have already been impacted by last-mile warehouses. In addition, there could be different fares to incentivize lower axel vehicles and electric vehicles.

We see the next steps as connecting community groups across the 5 boroughs, educating the consumers and raising advocacy about the issues associated with next-day deliveries, promoting a culture of cyclecar and local consumerism, and conducting more field research to help build the case that last-mile warehouses are distinct from other facilities. We also believe it essential to have other groups that are committed to continuing the project and carrying the torch to accomplish these next steps.