Online shopping and mobility behaviors : views from Paris and NYC

Long ignored by political and research stakeholders, the transportation of goods and, in particular, urban logistics, are now essential for cities and urban planning.  The advent of new information and communication technologies (ICT) is reshuffling the deck of this complex ecosystem by modifying production processes and people’s daily urban trips, in particular, those related to shopping.

With the development of online shopping (or e-commerce), the Internet is now a supply method in its own right, inducing new relationships between people and their consumer space(s).  In this respect, ICTs are seen as a means to considerably extend interaction potentials between the mobility of people and the mobility of goods ;  ultimately leading us to re-examine people’s relationship to space and time.

Yet: little empirical work about how people are changing their consumption and mobility practices related to such purchases.

To dig into the research and address these questions, the 6t team is excited to announce a partnership with 6-t Research to conduct a large-scale exploratory survey, in order to obtain new data on the consumption and mobility practices of the population of Paris and New York City. Experts from the academic and professional world are also associated in a steering committee in which the City Council of Paris and NYC are represented.

The NYU Rudin Center's participation in this project is sponsored by the C2SMART Research Center. The work will result in a report to be published in 2018. The research will share our finding for all to use in future decision making and planning or more generally to understand emerging practices in the rapidly developing delivery industry.

Stay tuned for updates on the project!