Toronto's Last Mile Delivering to Communities in Public Urban Spaces

Abstract

Streets shadowed by skyscrapers, copious amounts of cars trying to navigate through the downtown core, and, communities that grow in density everyday –Toronto is lacking the infrastructure to accommodate the contemporary rise of e-commerce parcel delivery. Goods moving to the ultimate destination, the ‘last mile,’ is not only credited to be the most expensive, inefficient, energy consuming phase in parcel delivery, but also contributes to the well-being of those in the city. As Toronto transitions from conventional markets to online shopping, every location in the city has become a last mile destination point. The resulting new and unaccustomed elements are transforming the basic physical and organizational structures in communities. These societal changes and increased demands on transportation and distribution networks are affecting systems of social comfort like safety and activity in neighbourhoods. This thesis explores the impacts that delivery will continue to have in dense urban communities, addressing the need to rethink the daily interactions between delivery, people, and their relationship to street and building design. The architecture proposed to recognize society’s shift in delivery is based on a freight on transit concept, where Toronto’s subway stations are redesigned to act as a distribution network and are spaces for community delivery transactions. This new form of public space incorporates both functioning and sustainable interactions of micro-mobility delivery and self-collection lockers. Ongoing urban issues of travel, environment, and safety in communities due to delivery needs to be addressed. The proposed design hopes to not only mitigate the ‘last mile’ problems in the urban context, but create public spaces that redefines metropolitan delivery, bringing a new narrative to Toronto’s Last Mile.