Rethinking the Last Mile
PhD researcher Hanbit Chang shows last mile logistics becomes sustainable only when people, technology, and policy intersect, with insights from South Korea and the Netherlands.
PhD researcher Hanbit Chang of the Technology, Innovation & Society (TIS) group at the department Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences defended her PhD on February 10 with the thesis 鈥�Rerouting the Last-Mile: Contested Spatialities and Mobilities of Urban Logistics Innovations.鈥� Chang shows that sustainable urban logistics is not only about smart software and electric vehicles, but about how people, rules and places in the city come together.
Look deeper
In many cities, electric vehicles and artificial intelligence are becoming popular in delivery. Yet new issues are piling up. Congestion on narrow streets, the safety of road users, and higher workloads for couriers present difficult choices for businesses and municipalities. Chang investigates the last mile as a sociomaterial space in which work, technology, and policy continually interact, rather than as a final stage of delivery to be optimized.
Human compass
The research recognizes delivery work as spatially embedded expertise. Not as the execution of a navigation app, but as a practice that connects vehicles, mobile systems and the unruly city minute by minute. This embodied knowledge is crucial for making routes actually work, especially when digital instructions clash with closed bridges, temporary detours, access windows or unexpected crowding.
Two worlds
Couriers constantly mediate between the digital and physical dimensions of the last mile, as efficiency-driven route planning comes into tension with road space, parking availability, and access regulations on a daily basis. In South Korea, food delivery riders on motorcycles negotiate with and resist a culture in which algorithmic feedback loops reward speed over traffic safety. . In the Netherlands, where zero-emission zones have been implemented, PostNL鈥檚 workers are actively translating their expertise from standard vans to light electric freight vehicles, improving flows in dense city centers.
Real needs
For logistics service providers, this means that investing in technology alone is not enough. Additional effort is required to identify and adapt vehicles and software suited to the geographical context, while safeguarding workers鈥� safety and well-being.For policymakers, this means integrating logistics and freight transport as core components of urban planning and governance, from access regulations to zoning practices aimed at sustainable and liveable. This allows for alternative solutions for sustainable logistics give businesses a clearer path forward. cities.
Steering together
Chang shows that sustainable last mile solutions emerge where operations management and urban knowledge reinforce each other. Not by only optimizing or electrifying, but by centering people鈥檚 experience and connecting policy, technology and space.
Hanbit Chang defended her thesis on February 10. Title of the thesis: . Supervisors: Frauke Behrendt and Floor Alkemade.