Logistics regimes and metropolitan logistics transition: a socio-spatial framework from a cross-reading of Paris and Casablanca
Nora Mareï, Adeline HeitzPurpose
This paper examines how metropolitan logistics systems evolve through the coexistence and recombination of multiple logistics arrangements. Building on insights from socio-technical transition studies, comparative urbanism and logistics geography, we propose the concept of logistics regimes as a socio-spatial framework for analysing long-term transformations in city logistics.
Design/methodology/approach
Empirically, the paper develops a qualitative, iterative and reflexive comparison of logistics transformations in Paris and Casablanca. Rather than treating these metropolitan areas as directly comparable cases, we mobilise a cross-reading of emblematic logistics centralities as analytically productive entry points for examining metropolitan logistics dynamics. This approach highlights recurring combinations of infrastructures, labour arrangements, governance configurations and spatial forms that structure the circulation of goods.
Findings
The analysis identifies five ideal-typical logistics regimes: a standardised and financialised peri-urban regime, an intermediate logistics regime, an urban logistics regime, a family-run or artisanal regime and a service-based regime. These regimes do not constitute successive stages of development, nor mutually exclusive categories. Rather, they coexist, overlap and interact within metropolitan logistics systems, generating differentiated trajectories of logistics transition.
Originality/value
The paper argues that the logistics transition is best understood as a process of regime recombination, in which inherited and emerging arrangements are continuously rearticulated under changing spatial, economic and institutional conditions. This perspective challenges conventional North–South binaries and linear narratives of logistics modernization. It also highlights the differentiated environmental and social trade-offs associated with each regime, suggesting that sustainability cannot be reduced to technological innovation or logistics efficiency alone. By articulating socio-technical transitions with comparative urbanism, the paper provides a flexible framework for analysing transformations of city logistics.