This dissertation advances a theory of logistics urbanism to analyze how Chicago—long a strategic hub in continental trade—has been reshaped by the spatial and political demands of the modern logistics economy. As the designated Inland Port City of North America, Chicago has undergone a freight-driven transformation enabled by massive investments in intermodal terminals, highway corridors, and warehousing zones. These developments represent what this dissertation calls the transport fix—an infrastructural solution to capital’s crises of circulation and accumulation. Yet, logistics urbanism is more than infrastructure; it is the materialization of the space of flows, whereby abstract global supply chains are concretized in local urban geographies through the construction of physical transport nodes, labor regimes, and regulatory environments.
This dissertation deploys a multi-method research design—including GIS mapping, IPUMS-based labor analysis, ethnography, and participatory action research—to investigate the uneven impacts of logistics growth. Drawing on U.S. Census microdata from IPUMS, it demonstrates the sharp racial and class stratification within Chicago’s Transportation, Distribution, and Logistics (TDL) sector, where Black, Latino, and immigrant workers are overrepresented in the lowest-paid, most precarious positions. These patterns of racialized labor exploitation are deeply spatialized: GIS mapping reveals the clustering of logistics infrastructure near communities of color, making them disproportionately vulnerable to environmental harm, especially diesel emissions from heavy-duty truck traffic.
To confront these conditions, this project includes community-based research that conducted a citizen science project measuring truck volumes in residential areas. By generating counter-data, residents challenged state-led narratives of logistics as a neutral economic good and illuminated the lived costs of infrastructural expansion. These struggles reveal the state as an arena of conflict, where environmental justice demands clash with development imperatives and freight industry priorities.
By integrating theoretical insights from racial capitalism, critical urbanism, and political ecology, this dissertation contributes an original framework for understanding how infrastructure, labor, and resistance intersect in the making of logistics cities. It positions logistics urbanism not as a technical inevitability, but as a contested political project with far-reaching implications for racial equity, environmental justice, and urban futures.
