When many offi­cials plan smart cities, they dis­cuss the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits that should nat­u­ral­ly occur once peo­ple real­ize a des­ti­na­tion is a cut­ting-edge place to live or do busi­ness. 

How­ev­er, one aspect that is not always stud­ied is how the com­bi­na­tion of smart cities and con­nect­ed fleets could make it eas­i­er for peo­ple to get things they need or want, allow­ing indi­vid­u­als to con­tribute more to the econ­o­my as pur­chas­ing becomes eas­i­er. 

Connected Infrastructure Could Help People Get Their Goods Faster

The rise in online shop­ping allowed peo­ple to order almost any­thing with­out leav­ing home. As the e‑commerce sec­tor became more com­pet­i­tive, retail­ers real­ized effi­cien­cy would help stores or deliv­ery ser­vices stand out.

Now, Wal­mart and Tar­get offer same-day deliv­er­ies, emerg­ing as direct com­peti­tors to Ama­zon, which pro­vid­ed ultra-fast deliv­er­ies ear­li­er than the oth­er two brands. Deliv­ery ser­vices are also more spe­cif­ic with time­frames. DPD pro­vides cus­tomers with two-hour win­dows for par­cel arrivals. Peo­ple who use the com­pa­ny’s app can see pre­cise­ly how many stops remain until dri­vers reach their homes or busi­ness­es. 

Land use changes could also be on the way. Ama­zon once oper­at­ed on the out­skirts of com­mu­ni­ties, typ­i­cal­ly using mas­sive facil­i­ties. That’s chang­ing now. Sources say Ama­zon deci­sion-mak­ers plan to cre­ate 1,000 small deliv­ery hubs in towns and cities across the Unit­ed States. As con­nec­tiv­i­ty lev­els increase and goods get clos­er to the peo­ple who buy them, online shop­ping could become vir­tu­al­ly fric­tion­less. 

A recent study found that online shop­ping pur­chas­es increased by 6 to 10 per­cent­age points across most prod­uct cat­e­gories since the COVID-19 health threat emerged. Also, most respon­dents planned to keep buy­ing things through the inter­net after the nov­el coro­n­avirus gets under con­trol. If some­one lives in a con­nect­ed city and sees real-time updates about the move­ment of recent­ly pur­chased goods in tran­sit, they may be more like­ly to buy more items due to the increased trans­paren­cy. 

Fleet Technologies May Help Overcome Logistics Obstacles

Smart cities some­times become tourist hotspots, espe­cial­ly if vis­i­tors want to see what’s pos­si­ble when tech­nol­o­gy makes some­where a more enjoy­able place to live. How­ev­er, the increased traf­fic from deliv­er­ies can cause frus­trat­ing lev­els of con­ges­tion. 

In 2018, Lon­don’s may­or launched a roadmap to make it “the smartest city in the world.” Lon­don is already a pop­u­lar tourist des­ti­na­tion. Long before the efforts to make it more high-tech, city offi­cials noticed that deliv­ery traf­fic dis­cour­aged vis­i­tors. A 2008 study from a Lon­don land­lord found deliv­ery vehi­cles account­ed for 35% of all peak-hour traf­fic in the Regent Street shop­ping dis­trict. After that, the area’s retail­ers had to use a con­sol­i­da­tion cen­ter, with one com­pa­ny han­dling deliv­er­ies. 

Con­sol­i­da­tion cen­ters don’t always cre­ate whol­ly favor­able sit­u­a­tions. The Uni­ver­si­ty of New­cas­tle had such a facil­i­ty that cut pol­lu­tion. How­ev­er, it cost an extra £100,000 a year to run and ulti­mate­ly shut down. This exam­ple shows that even when a city has the con­nect­ed infra­struc­ture to try dif­fer­ent options, it is not always finan­cial­ly fea­si­ble. 

There are oth­er for­ward-think­ing ways to man­age back­ups, and it’s vital to at least con­sid­er those options. One study found that 54% of truck dri­vers waste three to five hours dur­ing every vis­it to a load­ing dock. Using new tech­nolo­gies to get items on and off trucks could reduce those delays. Com­pa­nies can also use geofenc­ing tech­nolo­gies to receive alerts when a dri­ver gets with­in a cer­tain dis­tance of a ware­house. Hav­ing that knowl­edge gives them more time to pre­pare. 

Com­pa­nies are work­ing with tech­nolo­gies like robots and e‑bikes to deliv­er goods through more effi­cient, green­er meth­ods. How­ev­er, it’s too ear­ly to tell if the adop­tion of these alter­na­tives will be wide­spread enough to make a major dif­fer­ence, whether in smart cities or less advanced ones.

Updated Vending Machines Give People More Purchasing Options 

Logis­tics dif­fi­cul­ties are espe­cial­ly like­ly in cities with cen­turies of his­to­ry. Then, even the best efforts to improve those places could fall short due to old infra­struc­ture. 

Bet­ti­na Tratz-Ryan is a Ger­man-based Gart­ner ana­lyst who research­es intel­li­gent urban ecosys­tems. As she points out, “Last-mile logis­tics inno­va­tion in Europe dif­fers from that of the U.S. in that Euro­pean cities often have aging infra­struc­ture that goes back to medieval times. Here, the focus is on find­ing solu­tions that uti­lize small­er deliv­ery form fac­tors with low­er emis­sions because of the lack of park­ing spaces for urban deliv­ery and a larg­er focus on cli­mate issues.” Tratz-Ryan gave exam­ples of hand carts, bicy­cles, and par­cel lock­ers con­nect­ed to mobile apps. 

Else­where, city offi­cials strate­gi­cal­ly placed vend­ing machines to give peo­ple more ways to pur­chase dur­ing COVID-19 lock­downs. Those let peo­ple approach on foot to buy items imme­di­ate­ly, there­by remov­ing issues asso­ci­at­ed with deliv­ery trucks. Carl­ton, a sub­urb of Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia, installed one that dis­pensed every­thing from books to win­ery vouch­ers, with new sup­plies added dai­ly. The machine helped small busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to prof­it, even once lock­downs took effect. 

Major com­pa­nies oper­at­ing vend­ing machines as sig­nif­i­cant parts of their busi­ness con­nect them to their fleet man­age­ment tech­nol­o­gy, too. Coca-Cola and its ven­dors use facial tech to tell which devices get the most traf­fic and which drinks sell fastest. Then, restock­ing pro­fes­sion­als know which bev­er­ages to bring. These machines also offer cash­less pay­ments, help­ing peo­ple quench their thirst with­out pock­et change. 

Some­day, those ben­e­fits could extend to con­sumers, too. Many vend­ing machines now sell high-end mer­chan­dise, like elec­tron­ics. Some­one might use an app to deter­mine which prod­ucts are in the dis­pensers clos­est to them.

A Hopeful but Still Uncertain Future

As cities become more con­nect­ed, they’ll like­ly include more fleet tech­nolo­gies. Nev­er­the­less, it’s still too ear­ly to know how those imple­men­ta­tions might boost economies. 

Since many logis­tics com­pa­nies are test­ing their new tech­nolo­gies, enti­ties may encounter chal­lenges that reveal how smarter is not always bet­ter. Smart cities may solve some logis­ti­cal and eco­nom­ic prob­lems, but peo­ple should not auto­mat­i­cal­ly assume they’ll fix all of them.