Dutch Cities Ban 15-Minute Delivery Services
vice.com
vice.com
Especially in Amsterdam the infrastructure in neighbourhoods is not suitable, the stores need to re-up their supply many times a day (10-15 times), leading to (bike) traffic build up in the often narrow streets [1][2].
They also supply in the weekend, which goes against local ruling on when business can load/offload (generally not in the weekend).
Their scooters and bikes take up a lot of space on sidewalks as well, which normally was used by residents only.
[0]: https://www.instagram.com/stopdarkstoreswoonwijk/ [1]: https://www.instagram.com/p/CZhHWrHo61n/ [2]: https://www.instagram.com/p/CW_BFtdDHIz/
However the bigger problem everyone talks about is their appalling work conditions and how they squashed the attempt to unionize.
Their walkability (apart from Rotterdam perhaps) is extremely high. Bike lanes everywhere, and pedestrian traffic is king (compared to most other western cities).
With such city planning there happen to be small shops everywhere for people to pop into. Often there are 2-3 grocery stores in the same street.
These fast delivery stores are not serving an actual need in these places. And given that they just take up space that might otherwise be used for an actual corner grocery store, I would go as far as saying that they are not needed anywhere except perhaps in the car centric cities of US & Canada.
Who are you to tell anyone what they need? If there's a consumer demand for it, and companies willng and able to serve that market, you're free to use them or not. But you don't get to determine how and where people get their groceries, that's none of your business.
I realize that in some Dutch cities the council is long used to shaping infrastructure in order to force things, but call that what it is: forceful local government shaping cities according to some guiding principle.
That is very far removed from dismissing dissenting opinions to the point of there being "no need" for them.
(sorry for the rant, just very pissed off with this far-left assumption of always being right, and presenting opinions as obvious fact)
It's not much different in America, it's just that corporations make the decisions in their interest rather than politicians.
The libertarian fantasy that each individual or organisation should have unfettered freedom to do whatever they please would be more attractive if such individuals or organisations were also compelled to pay the costs of whatever negative externalities they create.
No worries, you are forgiven.
If they're not serving the "actual" needs in these places, wouldn't they go out of business?
> "a global urban phenomenon heavily backed by billions of dollars in venture capital"
> "[...] Gorillas, Getir, Flink, Zapp, and a number of other goofily-named startups that, according to reports, lose up to $150 per order."
They are certainly not making break even, let alone a profit.
Mandating that your city doesn’t change is never successful in the long run. But you can target the externalities. From the Reuters article:
> Complaints include restocking and delivery going on 24 hours a day as well as traffic hazards from racing scooters.
This is where action should be focused.
I think it’s naive to assume banning the storefronts fixes the externality. The real source is people wanting delivery. What if we don’t fix the courier traffic because everyone moves from dark storefront delivery to UberEat style apps that order shopping+delivery from non-dark storefronts?
Or what if apps form deals with local stores to make hybrid in person / delivery storefronts, giving us the same externalities but non-dark storefronts?
It isn't as simple as that. People think they want delivery instead of a shopping experience. More specifically, people think they want this because it is being (a) heavily advertised to them, and (b) heavily subsidized to them. The public aren't being given all of the information.
Right now, most delivery apps have free or very very low delivery fees because of VC money, with the end-goal being to monopolize the market and jack up the prices when people are either too dependent on these services, or local alternatives stop existing. The average consumer doesn't know this - they just think that this tech company has somehow made it financially feasible to charge someone $5 to get me my groceries/food from halfway across town.
It's what Uber did, and most people are annoyed with Uber's current prices (or ambivalent to it, simiilar to how it was with Taxis). Except this is much worse, because Uber just changed how the business was run - delivery apps are changing how we buy and consume things, which would be much harder to recover from.
> More specifically, people think they want this because it is being (a) heavily advertised to them, and (b) heavily subsidized to them. The public aren't being given all of the information.
I don’t agree with (a), people aren’t stupid and every industry has advertising. (b) is a serious problem and deserves consideration without respect to the specific industry.
In all seriousness, they want to ban "dark stores" that serve as primary outlets of these delivery services. Their super efficient in terms of space utilization (should be a good thing) but paper over their store front creating unsightly scenes for busybody neighbors.
They could say a store can't have paper over fronts, but then the dark stores could just not paper over their fronts. Or they could say you have to sell goods, but there are plenty of businesses that don't sell goods. I guess they could sell some goods and have most of their business come from delivery. Or maybe they say X% of your money has to come from in store sales, but that could similarly be gamed and now every business has to start keeping track and reporting this number as well! I don't know anything about Dutch law, but without arbitrary discretion, I don't see how this is enforced without being a huge inconvenience or expense
People have spoken and they obviously value the convenience of these services that its worth putting mini-warehouses in central city locations. Central planners can't arbitrarily decree what kind of city they want. They can try but that goes against the whole ethos of a city being a living breathing place.
Elected officials can enact laws
But more importantly, putting everything up to a vote will just lead to oppression by the most vocal people with too much time on their hands. The bar for allowing something shouldn't be "do the majority of people that are involved in this sort of thing want this"? It should be "do enough people benefit from this such that its a viable business"? Then you can make sure the business is following reasonable laws. For instance if the drivers are speeding or breaking noise ordinance, then they should be forced to obey the law.
That's the point of the market and that's what the market does well, allocate resources.
If the market regulated well, Uber would not exist (to name just one zombie firm), having burned $30B in an attempt to reach profitability while leaving social destruction in its wake.
the central planners have spoken
Imagine being a single mom that works a lot and struggles to do grocery shopping. Imagine having a crying child with an ear infection and wanting to have someone deliver some medicine quickly so you can get to bed. But no, that's not allowed because it bothers the delicate sensibilities of some busy body who has nothing better to do than to but in to the lives of other people.
Your example is a hand-wavy hypothetical about how allowing some service impacts others by second and third order effects by what could be there instead.
Do you see the difference?
And where you said "It's none of your business what 10% of people are doing. I don't know how it degrades quality of life" you were also explicitly hand-waving away the costs that these businesses impose on those not directly involved in the transactions.
So yes, in my post I was at least considering these costs. In your post, you were choosing to wave them away as inconsequential. I certainly do see the difference.
You see this situation all the time in municipal government. They'll slap in speed bumps or stop signs whatever to satisfy several dozen people complaining about traffic on a particular street only to find afterwards that double the number are now complaining about having to listen to every motorcycle, heavy truck, and civic with an obnoxious exhaust accelerate back up to speed after each stop.
Not to say that this is good or bad, but the monetary transaction does not factor in the externalities, which means that it is ultimately incomplete.
Alternative explanation: they like acting like tyrants when they can and as long as people let them. And if they don't, they make up excuses for their blunders and find a scapegoat to blame.
> central
>The main complaint with these services is that they turn local storefronts into small warehouses, paper over the windows, and create small but locally meaningful delivery operations in residential areas. An increasing number of residents and local politicians believe this is not a good use of such spaces and, if allowed to proliferate, will detract from the whole point of urban living.
Isn't this exactly the kind of mixed use development that people were just fawning over?
Surely nobody thought that the business portion of mixed use development was going to be exclusively artisanal consumer facing stuff with a storefront?
That's probably exactly what they were thinking.
I don't see what's wrong with limiting what mixed use means. It's a bit like saying "surely nobody believed that a fruit bowl was going to be exclusively fruit people enjoy".
Walking outside is a pleasure. You cut it out of your day and within a week you'll start to feel depression.
Or you won't feel it, but everyone around you (or not around you, ha) will notice as you slowly become a useless blob glued to a screen.
Sometimes this sort of stuff just makes me want to turn off the Internet at the wall.
The statement about let the market decide was specific to the 15 minute delivery operations that exist. If they can operate in proper zoning then why not allow them.