The last mile is undergoing a rapid technological shift. Logistics companies are electrifying their fleets and deploying new digital systems for routing, tracking, and delivery management. Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly built into these systems, promising lower emissions, shorter distances, reduced fuel use, and lower operating costs. But Hanbit Chang’s dissertation, Rerouting the Last-Mile: Contested Spatialities and Mobilities of Urban Logistics Innovation, offers a critical reminder: innovation does not automatically make logistics more sustainable or equitable on the ground.
Chang argues that while electrification and AI-driven optimization can decarbonize freight, they also intensify delivery traffic in cities and increase pressure on logistics workers as consumer demand continues to grow. These consequences can undermine the very sustainability goals the innovations are meant to advance, create new conflicts in dense urban streets, and raise safety concerns for riders and drivers.
A key contribution of the thesis is to shift attention from technology and operations to the people who make the last mile work. The last mile is not just the final step of a delivery chain; it is a complex socio-material space shaped by regulations, urban design, digital platforms, vehicles, and labor practices. By drawing on critical geography and mobilities studies, the dissertation examines how workers interact with new technologies and, in doing so, shape urban logistics itself.
Through case studies in South Korea and the Netherlands, Chang highlights how different countries pursue sustainability through different technological pathways. South Korea has focused on automation to speed up food delivery, while the Netherlands has prioritized electrifying freight with light electric freight vehicles (LEFVs) and compliance with Zero-Emission Zones (ZEZs). Despite these differences, both systems rely on frontline workers to absorb uncertainty, bend rigid systems, and navigate the city safely and efficiently.
The dissertation’s three empirical chapters show how these workers adapt to new forms of digital management. In South Korea, AI-powered algorithms push food delivery riders to deliver faster, narrowing their autonomy over route choice, time management, and risk. Speed is rewarded; safety is not. This creates a feedback loop that increases traffic violations and crash risks, raising broader questions about how cities want to govern AI-driven mobilities.
In the Netherlands, research into PostNL’s transition toward electric fleets reveals a different dynamic. LEFVs reduce emissions and congestion, improve coexistence with cyclists and pedestrians, and fit better into narrow streets than vans. But their success depends on planning, access rules, charging infrastructure, and workers’ ability to manage fluctuating parcel volumes and time windows. In this sense, electrification is not just a technological upgrade but a spatial and governance challenge.
To make sense of this, Chang introduces the concept of the “logistical assemblage,” showing that sustainable logistics is not achieved through perfect optimization but through ongoing human negotiation with technologies, regulations, and urban form. Workers’ tacit knowledge and embodied skills remain central to keeping cities supplied every day.
The dissertation ultimately challenges narrow, techno-optimistic visions of sustainable logistics. Electrification and AI matter, but so do labor conditions, urban policy, and the lived spatial realities of the last mile. As city logistics debates increasingly center on infrastructure, zoning, and digital platforms, Chang’s findings offer an important reminder: sustainability is not only an engineering problem but also a human and spatial one.