Assessing the spatial patterns of Amazon warehouse network in the United States

Résumé En

E-commerce is simultaneously creating a new retail landscape through digitalization and new consumption and distribution practices (virtual access to a wide range of products, instantaneity, omnichannelity) and a new freight landscape in terms of the structuring of demand, the location characteristics of warehouses and distribution centers, transport strategies (modal choices and nodal facilities) and the handling of the last mile in central urban areas. The company Amazon embodies all of these developments in retail and e-commerce, being a dominant player in the e-commerce sector. This research therefore focuses on the evolution of Amazon's logistics system and in particular the geography of Amazon's warehouses, marked by an expansion of the spatial coverage of the warehouses and by a functional specialization of this logistics system. From the analysis of Amazon's logistics system, we understand how strong the spatial footprint of e-commerce is and we can confirm some of the major processes affecting the e-commerce sector and more broadly the retail sector. This empirical spatial analysis makes it possible to identify through cartographic representations several spatial logics for the establishment and extension of Amazon's logistics system: 1) a dual spatial rationale of networking and concentration of logistics warehouses, with the development of clusters of warehouses around major transport infrastructures and the creation of a more or less fine mesh of warehouses, particularly urban logistics areas; 2) a dual spatial rationale that focuses both on the outskirts of metropolitan areas and on dense urban centers; 3) an emergence of regionalized logistics strategies are being deployed that reveal differentiated systems, apparently taking into account territorialarrangements and socio-economic and urban dynamics.