The production of logistics places in France and Germany: a comparison between Paris, Frankfurt-am-Main and Kassel

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/workorgalaboglob.13.1.0030
• Pages: 30-46
• Published date: 01 April 2019
• Date: 01 April 2019
• Author: Clément Barbier,Cécile Cuny,Nicolas Raimbault
• Subject Matter: logistics areas,production of space,local governance,metropolitan discourses,Paris,Frankfurt-am-Main,Kassel

30 Work organisation, labour & globalisation Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2019

The production of logistics places

in France and Germany:

a comparison between Paris,

Frankfurt-am-Main and Kassel

Clément Barbier, Cécile Cuny and Nicolas Raimbault

Clément Barbier is a Postdoctoral Researcher at University

Paris Est/Lab’Urba, an Associate Researcher at the Lille

Center for European Research on Administration, Politics

and Society and an Associate Researcher at the Centre for

Sociological and Political Research in Paris, France.

Cécile Cuny is an Assistant Professor in Urban Planning

at the Paris School of Urban Planning (University Paris-Est

Marne-la-Vallée) in France.

Nicolas Raimbault is an Assistant Professor in the Institute

of Geography and Urban Planning at the University of

Nantes, France, and a Research Fellow at the Luxembourg

Institute of Socio-Economic Research, Luxembourg.

ABSTRACT

Logistics is now a key concept for the analysis of the transformations

of global capitalism and a central perspective for understanding

the changing power relations within global production networks.

Furthermore, the development of logistics relies on the construction

of thousands of warehouses and terminals that are essential nodes

in the circulation of goods. The production of these logistics zones

entails negotiations and coalitions between local authorities and

different local and global rms, and structures the everyday life of

logistics workers. The aim of this article, therefore, is to analyse the

production of logistics areas at metropolitan and local scale, through

a comparison between Paris (France) and Frankfurt-am-Main and

Kassel (Germany). Based on an interdisciplinary approach combining

urban sociology, urban geography and political science, it reveals that

the production of logistics places is primarily the outcome of local

negotiations and legitimisation processes in which the logistics

real estate investments of globalised nancial markets

are embedded.

Work organisation, labour & globalisation Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2019 31

KEY WORDS

logistics areas, production of space, local governance, metropolitan discourses,

Paris, Frankfurt-am-Main, Kassel

Introduction

Logistics is now a key concept in the analysis of the transformations of global capitalism

and a central perspective for understanding the changing power relations within global

production networks (Cowen, 2014; Bernes, 2013; Mezzadra & Neilson, 2013, 2015;

Neilson, Rossiter & Zehle, 2010; Rossiter, 2012). From a material point of view, the

development of logistics activities and flows entails the construction of thousands of

warehouses and terminals that are essential nodes in the circulation of goods (Dablanc

& Frémont, 2015; Cidell, 2015). These multiple logistics sites are mainly understood as

the physical infrastructures that make current globalisation processes possible: the

emergence of a ‘wall-less global factory’ (Cowen, 2014), the diversion of capital into the

built environment, and thus the expansion of the geographical frontiers of the

accumulation process (Danyluk, 2018). In contrast with these approaches that identify

logistics as something new, the result of a ‘logistics revolution’ (Bonacich & Wilson,

2008), research on logistics workers highlights the continuities between logistics

activities and the manufacturing world (Benvegnù & Gaborieau, 2017).

However, global scale production is only one dimension of the space-making

practices of logistics. This article deals with warehouses and terminals that are

concentrated in urban regions. They raise many political issues in terms of the

production of urban and metropolitan space, which have been addressed by current

debates on ‘City Logistics’ (Taniguchi et al., 2001) and the ‘Logistics City’ (Cowen,

2014). As argued by Cowen, research on ‘City Logistics’ highlights the problems of the

coordination of flows at urban and metropolitan or regional levels but hardly considers

workers’ working conditions and the normative orders according to which logistics

organisations reshape cities (Cowen, 2014:180–84). With the concept of ‘Logistics City’

Cowen thus defends a critical approach to the relationships between logistics and urban

development, showing that logistics produce specific urban forms that are not

conceived for people but for goods, according to an order derived from their military

origins. Consequently, these spaces are standardised, privatised, fragmented, unsafe for

workers and lacking in any democratic control by citizens. Nonetheless, the concept of

‘Logistics City’ tends to generalise specific cases of former military zones recently

converted into logistics international hubs (the main examples are Basra Logistics City

in Iraq, the Global Gateway Logistics City in the Philippines and Dubai Logistics City),

without considering more ‘common’ logistics places, which are embedded in traditional

industrial urban areas or in new economic development projects. These are precisely

the logistics spaces we aim to study in this article that analyses the production of

logistics spaces at metropolitan and local scale with the aim of complementing

approaches that explore the global scale dynamics of logistics (e.g. Cowen, 2014,

Danyluk, 2018). Rooted between urban sociology, urban geography (Storper, 2013) and

policy analysis (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2012), this holistic perspective on the modes of