Tribune. Epiphenomenon or profound upheaval in our society, we observe the emergence of a new model of metropolises called “quarter-hour cities”, according to the concept proposed by the academic Carlos Moreno. In this ideal urban model, citizens can obtain everything that is essential to their existence within fifteen minutes on foot or five minutes by bike from their homes, on the model of Copenhagen, Melbourne (Australia) or even Ottawa.
This aspiration to hyper-proximity is combined, paradoxically, with the continued exuberant growth of online commerce and platforms for transactions between individuals, which by definition generate the transport of products – even food products -, over long distances. longer and longer. In other words, faced with the consumer’s intention not to move any more, the relocation close to services and activities is combined with the need to make consumer goods converge towards him that cannot be produced and marketed on the market. square. With, as a corollary, a risk of accentuation of urban and peri-urban pollution.
The success of the “quarter-hour city”, and its ecological ambition, therefore depends on the ability of e-commerce to become more virtuous and less carbon-emitting throughout the logistics and transport chain.
Thousands of heavy goods vehicles
While the headache of home delivery in the city center, also known as the “last mile”, has not yet been fully resolved, urban logistics are constantly finding solutions to reconcile consumer requirements with imperatives. of a sustainable city. Soft-mode delivery solutions thanks to the generalization of fleets of low-carbon vehicles, intelligent use of land in hypercentre, digitalization … delivery operators have proven their commitment to meet the challenges, however complex, raised by urban logistics. The obvious progress made by manufacturers of electric vehicles, in particular, makes it possible to overcome technical constraints, such as range and load capacity, which we still stumbled upon barely five years ago.
However, the – essential – efforts on last mile delivery will not be enough to meet the objective of carbon neutrality by 2050 provided for in the national low carbon strategy and in the Paris Agreement. We must also act upstream of the logistics and transport chain so that green delivery in urban areas is not the tree that hides a forest of carbon emissions. At present, before this last kilometer, there are thousands of heavy goods vehicles, thermal energy for the most part, which crisscross France from depots located on the outskirts to the gates of town centers.
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