Scroll through any academic journal on city logistics, and you will find the same framing: how do we scale out-of-home delivery systems to keep pace with the rapid growth of e-commerce? It is an important-sounding question. It is also, increasingly, the wrong one.
The inconvenient truth is this: e-commerce is no longer growing the way it used to. In the Netherlands, PostNL delivered 7.1% fewer parcels in Q1 2026. Same message from other global companies such as DHL and UPS. That is not a blip. After years of double-digit growth that made logistics planners look like visionaries, we are now deep into an era of stagnation, consolidation, and in some markets, outright decline. The party is over.
Yet academia has not noticed. Researchers continue to pour energy into optimizing systems for a volume surge that has already passed. Papers on parcel lockers, micro-hubs, and autonomous delivery robots and drones still assume the central premise: more parcels are coming, so we must prepare.
But what if fewer parcels are coming? What if the market is structurally contracting; squeezed by weakening consumer confidence, geopolitical uncertainty, and the long-overdue end of pandemic-fuelled buying habits?
This is the research gap that matters. We need scholars who ask uncomfortable questions: What does a shrinking parcel market mean for carrier economics, for last-mile infrastructure investments, for the gig workers whose livelihoods depend on volume? How do carriers escape the race to the bottom when demand softens and overcapacity intensifies? How should cities plan logistics infrastructure for a market that may never return to its 2021 peak?
The logistics sector is already adapting awkwardly and under pressure. PostNL is deliberately trading volume for value. Carriers are consolidating. Platforms are renegotiating. Practitioners are navigating a reality that academic research is only beginning to acknowledge.
It is time for researchers to follow. The next wave of impactful city logistics research will not be built on the assumption of growth. It will be built on the courage to study non-growth, and to help an entire industry reinvent itself in a world where fewer parcels, not more, is the new normal.
Walther Ploos van Amstel is a professor of City Logistics at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.
Also read: The parcel market is broken