Urban Locker (2017)
By: Onur Ekmekci
Tags: Urbanism, Cities, Design, Urban Planning

Back in 2017, Nazanin Mehrin and I participated in “SHOP, MEET, THRIVE: Livability in the New American City” competition organized by the American Institute of Architects, Washington D.C. Chapter. While taking Washington D.C. as the main site for interventions, the competition was posing the following main questions, which are even more relevant today at the end of 2020: “How will retail continue to be a part of the social life of cities, redefining its relation to streetscapes and the public realm? How can, and will, this change the face of retail, and thus, our communities?” We were quite thrilled and honored that our entry “Urban Locker” got selected as first-place winner in this competition and was presented to a Jury at the CityAge Conference in Washington D.C., and was also included in the follow-up competition publication.

Following text and images are from our competition entry, unedited, and reflecting some of our thoughts in 2017. Much has changed since then; especially due to the negative impact the COVID pandemic has had on the urban cores and commercial establishments in cities all around the world in the last year. There is no doubt we will need to reexamine the role of shopping in our daily social interactions and urban environments and come up with new creative solutions. With that in mind, we decided it is worthwhile to reintroduce the project (food for thought) and publish it on this platform to a wider audience. In the coming months, we would intend to revisit the underlying principles of this project (and our approach) in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic to see if we can further develop our ideas and take them to the next level, so stay tuned for that.

November 2017:

Trade and evolution of urban form of cities have been historically intertwined since the formation of bazaars millennia ago. Though trade and commerce have manifested themselves in different typologies since the beginning of cities, one commonality throughout this long journey is the social interactivity that commercial space has provided to the urban life. Recently, however, online shopping has slowly taken the reign as the dominant form of shopping, as people simply buying more goods online than they used to. Having the convenience of getting things delivered to their doorsteps or to lockers near where they live, online shopping has already made shopping easier, faster, and much more convenient. On the other hand, it is likely to diminish social, humane interactivity and vibrancy generated by the shopping in more traditional brick and mortal shops or busy commercial streets that are the quintessential components of the urban life, as we know it.

We do accept the notion that online shopping is likely to stay as predominant shopping mode in the years to come, however we argue that the last mile delivery involved in the current system can be further improved. We have chosen Amazon as a representative of electronic commerce companies and internet retailers. In Amazon’s current logistics system, local fulfillment centers are the places where sorting and distribution of goods happen. These centers are often found far from the central districts of cities and large amount of trucks are required to deliver goods from the main regional warehouse to these centers. Instead, we propose to locate the new smaller footprint fulfillment centers in more central locations near major transit nodes, such as metro stations. Furthermore, we propose to utilize Washington, D.C.’s existing transit network to transport goods from main warehouse to these new fulfillment centers, causing less congestion and carbon emissions.

Second part of our proposal is to change the ways in which the Amazon lockers are perceived and used by the public, as the last mile delivery nodes in the online shopping experience. At their current typology, these lockers are not situated to provide any level of social interactivity and not a significant component of urban environment. As part of our proposal, we introduce new location logic for the new lockers; locate them in walking distances from metro stations, where they can benefit from a larger foot traffic and better accessibility from the new fulfillment centers via new freight lines using the existing metro lines. In this way, they can gain a much more urban character by being located around higher concentration of activities. Secondly, we introduce different typologies for these new lockers that are meant to enhance the integration of these with everyday life experience. Combining the lockers with other uses (such as using them in parklets, or as part of small pop-up cafes, or next to EV charging stations), we aim to make the new lockers as much more visited, flexible, temporal and social components of the daily life in Washington, D.C. Our vision is that people would not only go to these lockers to pick up their packages, but they would also be enthused to get involved in another activity at the same time, making this a much more activity.

We have chosen Georgetown neighborhood as a pilot area for urban locker project, due to its central and diverse context. We envision that various typologies of the urban locker can be installed in the area; for instance, existing stores rent part of their space to host the urban locker periodically, so that they can not only benefit monetarily, but also attract people to their establishments through increased foot traffic. This could be particularly favorable strategy for brick and mortar stores in the area that are in dire straits. Another alternative is to integrate the urban lockers with urban furniture and parklets, in order to enhance the quality of streetscape and pedestrian experience.

Commerce plays an important role shaping the environment around us and has helped generating social interaction between people for centuries. The ultimate goal of this project is to bridge between the convenience of online shopping and social interactivity of physical retail .This proposal aims to strength the urban life quality which seems to be missing in current e-commerce process.