[00:00:04]
>> I want to talk a little bit about why I'm actually doing research on warehousing and supply chain logistics 1st explaining for those of you that don't know the field of city and regional planning there is a school City Regional Planning on campus. The larger field is really focused on creating quality places for people to live and standards in highest higher standards of living.

[00:00:31]
In the main traditional feel the main subfields within that are environmental planning transportation planning housing land use planning land use planning a very key part of our feel where we're very spatially oriented and economic development planning and and Economic Development Planning is my area of specialization and within that I'm very focused on how Room prove the economies what's happening with the labor force what industrial restructuring is doing to affect the prospects for quality of living in quality jobs in places and I focus on it from in the aspects of new development but also very much for redevelopment and that is something that I mention later on because that's part of what I think is so intriguing about the rise of the way in which e-commerce is affecting the supply chain logistics field and what it means for a different kind of space the space on in the ex-urbs of a metro area in the suburbs and the space within the inner city the last mile problem so so just to kind of give you a little introduction there.

[00:01:42]
So telling you right there about that focused on particularly spatial implications of the shifts in supply chain logistics responding to e-commerce the built environment component of that is why I'm talking about warehousing. And then I'm doing also research I have a grant from the National Science Foundation National Robotics initiative to look at the adoption of robotics within manufacturing and how that's affecting local economies and local work forces so there's a key part of how I moved into thinking about this one of the aspects of automation that are occurring in warehouses and what the real uptake of robots will be and how that will affect work and warehouses but.

[00:02:33]
Before proceeding I really want to step back for a 2nd and and talk to you about economic development because I do economic development planning and there's this much broader field of economic development we are here at Georgia Tech in an Economic Development Institute it's one of the reasons I have found my career here to be so exciting that many of the innovations the research that's occurring here will translate into new industries new firms and new jobs of the future right.

[00:03:02]
So and then we have seen a similar synergy over in technology square where all of the state level economic activity is and so there's this broader field and the field defines itself in terms of what it does basically as the flight implies here as creating wealth and also creating jobs particularly in political circles will talk about jobs because jobs are attached to workers and workers are voters so and essentially the view is that economic growth equals economic development within planning because we are very concerned about the spatial aspects as well as the human aspects in terms of who who wins and who loses in the economic development process and can we can we change that can we minimise the adverse effects and prepare people for economic change industrial change which is always occurring we make a distinction.

[00:04:01]
But and in that distinction also responds back to some of the things there's many many of course positive things that come from traditional economic development but we also have the things that we need to address such as climate change which I like Thomas Friedman's phrase global weirding because lots of people say well how can we are getting warmer the general public when we're having an oppressive the snow successor and things like that so the global weirding which has been scientifically shown we do expect.

[00:04:33]
We have more experience of all kinds of climate we have our carbon emissions that are a byproduct of our economic development that are leading to this and we have devastating impacts on national and local economies from the climate change that's occurring and again plantings focused on these these particular communities except for us so we're very concerned about that we also have the issue of sprawl we talk a lot in our field about urban sprawl and as I'll refer to it later there's there's a concept being talked about in terms of logistics where all how the reconfiguring of the logistics industry is Can contributing to sprawl and metropolitan areas and there are negative impacts of that there are positive impacts of the location of the activity in terms of creating jobs and new economic activity for outlying communities but we are increasing carbon emissions in that process we are consuming land that can never be.

[00:05:38]
Turn back into greenfield plants and so we need and there are environmental implications from some of those aspects and then the other part of traditional economic development that's really critical right now and you hear a lot of discussion about it is that. Recent trends recent industrial restructuring have really generated a process where we have a growth in our low wage workforce which is not something that we think of as advancing economic development and we have growing inequality and it's been a major theme in political circles and in policy circles for quite a while now the growing concern over that so so that's without paying attention to other factors if you just focusing on wealth creation and job creation then you aren't addressing these issues so so.

[00:06:34]
From a planning perspective economic development is more than economic growth job and wealth creation it actually is something that is achieved when a community standard of living can be purpose served and increased through a process of human and physical development based on principles of equity and sustainability so that's the the lens through which economic development planning work occurs and so our goal is to have a minimum standard of living for all that increases over time or else we're not advancing that we do says inequality we don't suggest that it's completely eliminated because there's you want to be able to have merit 10 incentives for innovation in creating new activities just rewarding people for their hard work or their brilliance but there are things aspects of traditional economic development that have had negative impacts on different demographic groups and we want to reduce those impacts and make a level more level playing field and then there are spatially defined groups we have a lot of discussion going on right now about their urban rural divide and how critical that is getting so that's one aspect of it there's the central city and the suburb and there are different aspects of central city all around midtown where we're in a major growth boom but we have many parts of the city that aren't that and all over the country you find that so we're concerned about that as well and we want to promote sustainable resource use in production and maybe even create new jobs and economic activity from finding out new ways to be sustainable.

[00:08:12]
OK So that introduction to my field and why I have the audacity to be studying your field and then my research focus is exploring the urban trends in logistics and warehousing it's really thinking about supply chain management focusing a lot where House automation and robotics as I mentioned earlier why e-commerce in particular because this phenomenon is driving so much change which I don't have to tell you folks but it's driving a lot of change in.

[00:08:46]
The kinds of things that we're focused on economic development planning so there are implications for central cities and suburbs and excerpts out of the growth of e-commerce and the changes in land use transportation and other aspects to support that and there are also economic development implications about how will the number in quality of jobs change through e-commerce there's a lot of it tension focused on right now on the lowering of the quality of jobs and as a result of e-commerce and we'll talk about that this new I know you know it which is the trend what is the transforming with the stick industry.

[00:09:26]
But the e-commerce has been made possible course by the growth of the information economy but also by very very efficient supply chains so we have in our current political climate a lot of retrenching on trade liberalization and that raises questions about what kinds of impacts that will be placing on the economic front and what are the effects of the tariffs and trade wars where we don't have the data yet but that could be a while I'm trying to study this industry it could be something that sort of moving the industry or shifting it in a way that's hard to track.

[00:10:06]
So. I want to start by the the fact that prior to this period with that we're in right now in this retrenching we did have a large period of expanding globalization global economies and really driven in many ways by consumer. The Globe these are the stats for the world that 57.5 percent of the world's G.D.P. is based off of the consumer economy then beyond that in the U.S. where the highest of in terms of the portion of our economy that's based on consumers and that's close to 70 percent and what will happen there in terms of other forces that are happening and suggestions of global retrenching and the decline in the global economy will accompany that So here is just a statistic on the growth of e-commerce as a share of retail and in the 3rd quarter of 2018 is accounted for just under 10 percent of all sales that are occurring in the U.S..

[00:11:14]
They were $130900000000.00 which was an increase of 3 point one percent from just the previous quarter and it was an increase of 14.5 percent from a year earlier so very fast growth going on in e-commerce So where else space is of course the big thing is that. Accompanying the growth of e-commerce has to be the it that the growth of warehouses because we have so many products that are coming into the country that we're creating that people are purchasing and they're not purchasing them as much from brick and mortar stores so it's very hard to get data on where houses this particular.

[00:12:01]
Figure here is for a commercial building survey that stopped it 2012 we don't actually collect publicly collect as we do with Labor Day the income data the census data data on our built environment it's a it's a very frustrating thing for someone who focuses on these issues but what this shows us in the trends or I think occurring continue to occur is that warehouse growth doesn't happen equally across size category it's the largest warehouse sizes have been growing and and they're growing many of them are larger than any of this was being projected in that the smallest categories were growing which makes you think about the need for warehouse space within the central cities to accommodate the goods that are coming in and to address the last mile problem so what we do know on the large category size Amazon added 59 warehouses since 2013 ranging from 420000 square feet to almost 1300000 square feet enormous amount of square footage being added and warehousing.

[00:13:15]
And here sort of an example I just want to not have it all the Amazon So here's one of the big distribution centers far from Wal-Mart that actually went into Florida more in the early 2000 and so a lot of them are are even bigger nowadays but if you look at it in this sort of rural landscape it's right it's right next to.

[00:13:37]
A highway exit of course but it is a very large footprint so so that is something to keep in mind reference again a little bit later and then these are just some recent statistics that are showing how the height took buildings where House buildings is increasing and. That we added in Atlanta alone we added almost 55000000 square feet of.

[00:14:10]
Warehouse space in the last in the 5 year period between 20122017 I don't know about you but when I look outside that on the edges of the metro area then especially in the southern part of the metro area the land clearing going on in the massive warehouse is going up this makes this figure probably much higher now so so the answer to 2 recent developments relate to this growth in e-commerce as I implied one the growth the did the distribution centers and there's just a small graphic of that.

[00:14:47]
But there are different from traditional warehouses in that they are points of transition and throughput rather than storage and they tend to be in major population centers because that's where they need to make deliveries to customers but they can also be waypoints between major population centers and then the other side is the notion of trying to meet the increased activity in warehouses and to do so competitively is to what extent are warehouse robots going to be adopted this is of course the the Amazon robot which is the Kebo robot Amazon actually bought the Kiva company and began using mobile warehouse robots in 2014 they say that their youth they have about one $100000.00 of them in use as of the middle of last year so these robots what they're doing is basically moving pallets around and these are these large.

[00:15:45]
Shelving systems for. The implications out of the one where house. Changes from e-commerce is that. As I mentioned there is driving it's e-commerce is driving the automation in the warehouses and it's driving the need for new buildings to accommodate automation those higher ceilings right now the recent statistics just came out this week is that we now have in this country the lowest industrial vacancy rate ever recorded and that's because of the demand for.

[00:16:24]
Warehouse space but it is as I mentioned earlier leading to logistic sprawl So if that going back to the image of the Wal-Mart in rural Florida one mega warehouse can equal $22.00 football fields so that's an enormous amount of greenfield consumption and new road infrastructure to support it and there's a rule of thumb that's been suggested from C.B.R. either 1000000000 in e-commerce revenue requires 1.20.

[00:16:56]
1000000 square feet of district you should center space for effective management so you that's another aspect of what's driving that so it's changing very much the landscape and metro areas having a significant impact on it and then my question here thinking about long term economic development in the need to maintain places when you have major industrial shifts is what will happen if something changes and the demand for these warehouses goes down I am referring here to the dead big box problem which you all maybe 3000000 with that routinely big box stores they last about 15 years and then they close them and the community is left with this huge albatross that it's very difficult to reposition or resale resell and it's once you start to have make buildings like that that set for a long time it typically begins a cycle of decay because it has negative effects on surrounding property.

[00:17:57]
Yes So with these warehouses in that being a monster version of the do Dead big box problem and if we think about that now are there ways in which maybe they could ultimately be designed that they're more easily reconfigured for something else which is what the trend had been to been for the big bucks promise when some communities realize they need to think about this proactively so I want to shift now and talk about logistics employment So one question that that we've raised might I have my 3 Ph D. students working with me on my grant is whether logistics in some ways is becoming the new manufacturing this graph here the can't see small numbers but but it shows not only has logistics industry employment been growing steadily from just under 4000000 in 2002 to over 4700000 in 2016 the interesting thing is that the growth is exactly equal to the percentage that manufacturing Shrank so we have fewer manufacturing jobs and we've continued this decline in manufacturing jobs since the $1970.00 S. but we have this pretty significant growth going in logistics jobs.

[00:19:20]
In that over the Great Recession so logistics is the green line on the bottom it showed much less volatility than manufacturing did so there's that's. A positive aspect for a community that they may be less impacted by the winds of a recession in. The city this is not OK they're.

[00:19:47]
All right so. This the left chart repeats the graphic we just saw so that you can more easily compare with with the right side which shows that. The average annual wages in logistics have fallen further behind the US as a whole in the manufacturing in the construction sectors so the manufacturing see if I can get this to click that I'm trying to pull my data for you.

[00:20:19]
Manufacturing workers we still receive a pretty good wage at about 65000 a year construction workers about 60000 a year and logistics is down 50000 here so so on the one hand the stability is great but on the other hand these are lower wage jobs the kinds of things that are contributing to the fact that 40 percent of all jobs in the U.S. are now considerable wage and then here just thinking about logistics relative to total U.S. employment logistics industry is a large and growing employer nationwide as we've talked about its growth rate is significantly higher than the U.S. as a whole while total U.S. employment grew by 11 percent between 20062018 the logistics sector grew by just under 20 percent so.

[00:21:16]
That that is one thing to be considering in terms of it's. A greater share of U.S. jobs and then here is an interesting phenomena to so in terms of earnings logistics workers earn more on average than workers in many other sectors on a weekly basis but the early less hourly so what this means is that.

[00:21:47]
The They're working more hours. And the the the jobs tend to fall on you know they have low skill and education requirements but they require significant time commitments in the workers don't have control over their time commitments whatsoever and we'll talk more about that and so essentially. The work is has been characterized as precarious work it has low wages because of those high high low wages but the higher weekly earnings just because of the demands of them having to be there when they they do have work but it's unstable work arrangements much of the work is.

[00:22:35]
Handled through employment specialized employment agencies are supplying workers to the warehouses and so there are temporary workers that work at will and they often will though they'll ramp up during the holiday time and in the looser jobs afterwards so the fact that it is temporary employment means that their annual incomes may not be very high even though the weekly wages are high when they get the work so there is this notion of underemployment that they have difficulty getting full time year round jobs in the logistics and warehouse which leads to economic insecurity difficulty in maintaining a decent standard of living paying for.

[00:23:25]
Paying for a house mortgages and car payments etc through the temporary agencies they receive no employer provided benefits and benefits and sells as much as 30 to 50 percent to your your salary and then they have because they're cheaper a workers very little in the way of legal and sort of regulatory protections so that's why in many of the work in the it's called precarious.

[00:23:54]
So why are companies using a precarious work model Well in many ways they don't have a choice at least at this point because they're dealing with very strong competitive pressures you know the global competition has increased greatly. And Wal-Mart and Amazon earth because of their size. Smaller and smaller firms can't compete as well in many ways so they're there are vertically disses disintegrated organizational structures occurring as a way to be more cost efficient and so that's they have to do that in order to stay competitive.

[00:24:32]
The they outsource a lot of activities that used to occur within their firms because of this pressure and they 4 Focus on their core competencies. The outsourcing also has been critiqued as that which shields companies from all kinds of. Issues and as a result of all this the job quality in logistics has a road it because of these kinds of pressures so it's kind of a vicious cycle in terms of responding to the increased competition that comes in a global economy where we have very efficient supply chains the same thing is happening in trucking which is the other key job category that we were we've been looking at.

[00:25:18]
The short haul trucking in particular which is called Dre and not sure why but maybe want to you folks will have a good explanation for why it's called that. Is is particularly impacted by the shifts in the logistics industry being fueled in many ways by e-commerce So there are small trucking firms that have to compete for shitty shipping contracts and they don't use their own trucks they use independent contractors that have their own trucks that lease their own trucks these tribal drivers are truck owner operators are classified as independent contractors but the the phrase here is misclassified because they are independent they they they have one firm they're not allowed to drive for other firms so they don't have the independency that that would allow them to be more competitive they and what's happened is that they're not paid by the hour they're paid by the trip so they're not compensated for long delays at terminals or being caught in traffic so they're out early wage can go down and as a result of that and they have to pay all the costs of vehicle ownership and operations so it's a pretty difficult situation that they have been put in again responding to the ways in which these competitive pressures are playing out.

[00:26:47]
So same thing we know we have these externally sterilisation of labor costs from lead firm vertical disintegration deteriorating job quality increase job insecurity many of the workers are the picker Packers in the. Warehouses and thinking back about robot robotics and the adoption of that and that's it's unclear you know what the impacts are but the picking is the real challenge in robotics in terms of creating robots that can pick well and then this is supposed to be more packaging supposed to be more the phrase I wanted in there was sort of moving the materials and you saw what the king the robots are doing that part of it has been resolved but that it's a proprietary robot to Amazon so how it will diffuse to the rest of the warehouse sector is unclear so so then the other thing just to think about in terms of statistics on all of this because normally you know economic theory tells us that if you increase productivity you increase wages right that's that's been our long standard standard labor economics but what this is showing you is that.

[00:28:03]
The the weight of goods in freight have was have a 6 percent change. Between 20072013 the value had an 8 percent increase so the goods be shipped are more valuable or costs more and this is controlling for inflation. Employment only grew by one percent even though you had that increase in though the freight weight and value that was occurring and most significantly at the bottom the logistics average annual wage actually declined by almost one percent so there's something there that is not working with what traditional economic labor theory suggests but it does suggest that the workers themselves are becoming more productive they're just not being compensated for that productivity so and then it leads to a lot of questions about what the impacts with robotics will be here is a conveyor belt that's being.

[00:29:11]
That for a fully automated Shanghai warehouse that in concept or being produced rather. Fully automated pretty much that you know says that you might have 4 or 5 employees occurring at it in the warehouse I don't there's a lot of skepticism says to system about whether that will occur on a wide scale because it may be that you have very narrow select products that are being handled in those and so they'd be more of a specialized warehouse.

[00:29:41]
But the. Then the long term notion the question is whether the introduction of robots may reduce jobs the number of jobs in a warehouse but would they change the quality of those jobs and with that lead to higher skills being used with them and in turn would that result in higher standard of living but in the better way to say it with that and that's something that we hope we might get to do some research on.

[00:30:13]
So then I just last part I want to go to is to thinking about Metro impacts metropolitan impacts because that's my field again with the metro area is really where well it's certainly where the majority of all US population lives and it's a higher percentage of economic activity comes out that there are many.

[00:30:35]
People across the globe that say that it's our cities our major cities that are the source of innovation change and that they are the drivers not not Nations there are those that argue that it's really the cities and not nations that are the major drivers of the globe in the powerhouses of the globe so it's a really interesting thing from that aspect.

[00:30:59]
But so in order to take a look at a little bit about what's happening with logistics in metro areas. Very difficult to get the data on this but what we did do is shift to a data source that's called. Real time labor market information so what's happening is that firm burning glass technologies out of Massachusetts.

[00:31:25]
$3652047.00 collects all the job ads that are listed in the web in the country and they started doing this for job placement firms and labor market planners but they're allowing researchers to get access to the data and what's great about it is that it has the name of the company you know the name of the job you have the skill set they're looking for you have the geocoding for that and so we through our we're able to muster up the funds to buy this data set which is quite pricey and then we went in and pull pulled out.

[00:32:05]
Logistics jobs for the top metropolitan areas in the just 6 that we identified and the way in which we identify them made is parallel to how others are identifying the top logistics areas so. We thought we focus specifically on warehousing and truck driver jobs and what you're seeing here is this is not people in the jobs it's job ads so where is the demand for this would just explain where in these metropolitan areas it is if you will kind of a future indicator of what's happening in the industry so.

[00:32:50]
You're you can see that. The. Heavy The biggest demand for logistics Jobs was heavy and tractor trailer truck drivers and the 2nd biggest demand which is the green on the pie and then the 2nd biggest demand was for laborers and freight stock material and hand handlers So those are your biggest categories for which job advertisements are being created but then you'll see the rest of the categories there I won't go over them and detail.

[00:33:28]
And then here we see sort of there's a time series that we were able to create we went from 2017 to 2010 because the burning glass data is not really reliable and those middle years because of the national recession so so but we are able to get a time series of prerecession and post reception 2007 that's the 1st point 2010 and then annually from 2010 to 2017 and.

[00:33:58]
Just to show you sort of the demand in these these metro areas the top metro areas I mentioned are said that we are focusing on and the interesting thing which we don't have an explanation for is sort of the. The major sort of peak and sort of decline going on with heavy and tractor trailer truck drivers anybody has thought about that does that suggest a shift to rail or some kind of aspect there and why would that be the case and love your insights so.

[00:34:35]
The other thing we want to look at these are the top imma say when we found that had logistics activity but we want to know how specialized the economies were in the just 6 in these areas that have the highest levels of. Logistic activity and so here this into see the right in the table is called a low quick ocean is just an index of specialization it's whether your metropolitan area has a higher percentage of workers in trucking or in with warehouse workers then the national average and that's then you're more specialized in the nation as a whole and so you can see there that.

[00:35:24]
Is definitely more specialized Chicago New York by sheer size has a lot of the industry but it's not as specialized in logistics other cities and then Dallas is quite specialized instance kind of a weird phenomenon because it's considered a top logistics center but it's really transporting oil and gas with very much not as focused on warehouse workers and the and those kinds of things and then here's simply a list of the skills that are demanded in the warehouses and forklift operators number one physical demand skills being able to handle.

[00:36:10]
12 hours a day running back and forth and warehouses with products and being on your feet all day that's the other biggest care characteristic So that's a comparison of the US with the top 6 in a say so I won't go into much detail about that. So in terms of where there are the mation is going to eliminate jobs or spend a lot of talk I know you've seen the spike in the news about trucks and truck driving you know we're going to have automated trucks and we're going to eliminate the largest employment category in the U.S. which is truck drivers if you didn't know that already so.

[00:36:51]
And and they're so they're perceived as the most under threat because of driving vehicle technology but we there's some very good work done by a communist in the Census Bureau that say the potential displacement is not straightforward and after overestimated and that's something that will be. So through I'll go into a little bit more so truck driving that they analyzed and this is Gettleman and Monaco they analyzed the primary 3 primary truck driving occupations.

[00:37:34]
Driver sales workers have been tractor trailer truck drivers that's the traditional long haul driving the 1st one driver sales workers is much more what she would think of as a last mile delivery or delivery van successor and then the last category late truck or truck delivery services drivers are local deliveries usually in vans but it's colludes U.P.S. or Fed Ex and so there are 3 occupations of truck driving that these 2 economists looked at they constitute 3000000 jobs of which 1700000 are heavy truck drivers and then they talked about what they did was a very careful analysis of the skills required in those occupations from having a commercial driving license.

[00:38:24]
Being able to handle hazardous materials all the way down to your communication skills and they they have an occupation requirements survey that they're analyzing that asked employees to generate task lists for their jobs with without predefined categories they analyzed the text of these lists for heavy truck drivers and these numbers are the percentage of tasks here aren't on the chart here these numbers are the percentage of task lists that each task category appeared on suggesting that heavy truck drivers perform a significant amount of non driving work.

[00:39:05]
Over 80 percent of the total task list for individual truck drivers mentions at least some form of non driving work so the point being that. While there are Thomas vehicles will displace drivers in some ways it's also likely to change the nature of many current driving occupation it's shift responsibilities to different tasks it's unlikely that in the near term all 3000000 truck drivers will be the splays although from some of the national media you would be thinking that was the case and they also looked at the issue of 1st and last mile.

[00:39:43]
Aspects of trucking and they'll be very difficult to automate in some ways it's a now analogous to flying where most of a flight if you think about for pilots is out of mated but not the takeoff and the landing so there are 2 critical aspects of that so the level of automation Also if any of you have been looking at that for being able to use these driverless trucks once they're developed.

[00:40:13]
Is going to be heavily dependent on whether we have the appropriate infrastructure for the use of them so dedicated lanes except and that's going to require an infrastructure investment and that's going to be car or political action so and then there's been some Teamster pushback on this truck driving where they're trying to limit the amount of.

[00:40:38]
Freight the weight of freight in Thomas vehicles that would allow the need for truck drivers to be there for anything weighing $2000.00 pounds or more. So essentially on the time of the truck driving aspect. We should probably expect a slow uptake on that despite what we're been hearing in the news.

[00:41:02]
A time in the long haul to suburban distribution centers is probably the most feasible but there are institutional structure requirements as I mentioned and then there are some serious. Institutional barriers that occur at the moment. And if you're looking for sort of thinking about. Drones being part of the them monitoring of the autonomous trucks we have lots of privacy and security restrictions that have to be worked out for that and so just quickly the last point about getting to the city on this so I've mentioned several times we have last mile delivery issues and something happened to.

[00:41:51]
My. That was perfectly fine on my side before hand. Anyway. That was showing you a locker in an urban area in a neighborhood so we have. The notion of we're going back to smaller urban distribution in many ways and how do we do that and what kinds of forms are going to be most efficient for that from a sustainability perspective how do you do that and not and to traffic congestion and resulting emissions and other aspects.

[00:42:27]
So there are hazards involved in e-commerce last mild. Deliveries and growth in that sector which we need to be thinking about that's the 1000000 there are millions of additional parcels for home and business delivery that will occur as opposed to restocking a store there is the expectation of a media it or 2 day delivery which has a pretty significant environmental cost that some of the environmental economist are tracking these days there's also additional delivery related congestion increased admissions more wear on roads with more trucks delivering their C. issue a final delivery completion and whether repeated delivery attempts are going to further add to congestion and the missions and there are other things like the packages left on tended there's a lot of expense involved in working out all these issues.

[00:43:22]
Of potential counteraction to rising B.M.T. in emissions from increased last mile traffic is the growth in the use of electric vehicles here are some U.P.S. electric trucks I think Europe is quite a bit ahead of us the use of all of this but hopefully we will move more towards in the U.S. but when you P.S. has multiple electric vehicles start of partnerships.

[00:43:49]
That acts in D.H.L. are using electric delivery vans and Fedex is also buying semi trucks space so maybe we can work and have some real positive aspects on lowering the congestion that is potential from the last mile delivery. The other thing that's intriguing as a play out are again thinking about space and there were use of buildings is the.

[00:44:18]
Increased demand for smaller urban core warehouse space which has to occur to accommodate all of the growth in e-commerce can we use regions where you reduce fake an industrial properties. Of course something that is a job producing activity as opposed to another conversion to. A trendy restaurant or or a neighborhood.

[00:44:44]
And are we making sure that we save some of the industrial property because so much of that land has been converted to other uses in Atlanta is a great example of this. But there where we're short changing ourselves on an act of economic activity if we don't think about some of this.

[00:45:04]
So so there's that aspect and then there are alternatives of course to. Click and pick are clicking collected traditional retail stores for for ways to pick up products of the stores themselves in a way become a kind of a warehouse. The automated customer pack packets pick up and drop up centers in neighborhoods we have our own at Amazon one here at Georgia Tech interesting thought about whether the right share companies can also become product the words as well which might give those workers a more constant source of income.

[00:45:42]
And then of course the drone robot industry so here's just a picture of of sort. Situations in New York where the Amazon lockers are going up and we'll have our own little maps of these they can be inside stores as well we already are seeing that here and then this key effort here on robotics which it looks a little awkward but they're moving forward closer to being able to have.

[00:46:11]
Robots robot dogs This is called the robot dog delivering your packages So final thoughts I want to recap this traditional of economic development to sustainable local economic development So going beyond economic growth that which is job creation of wealth creation to. Economic development that is thinking about. The quality of jobs.

[00:46:44]
In minimizing inequalities or reducing at least inequalities between demographic groups such as the very low wage. Warehouse worker that is also a temporary worker and quite vulnerable in many ways spatially defined groups what's happening in the ex-urbs versus the central city ultimately down the road thinking about what this means for rural areas and that it promotes new encourages sustainable resource use in production.

[00:47:15]
And my big question which I would love to hear some of your perspectives on is can we shape E.-Commerce driven changes to logistics to promote more sustainable economic development in terms of the built environment in terms of reuse of industrial properties and terms and minimizing environmental impacts and in terms of logistics work and whether we can upgrade through combining robots with workers.

[00:47:43]
The jobs that remain and. Reduce inequality that way so can we reduce be carious this increase wages and employment security and. Just time for questions and discussion and the Donald being thrilled with the big truck that came to the White House with the Teamsters in his 1st year so.

[00:48:11]
To a. Yeah a break for all. Of those. Of. You because I think. It was. Well. Let's I'm not quite sure what year you're asking or. Was the reason right now. Are you talking about the packaging for it.