Mapping Amazon's logistical footprint on the Ruhr: How a tech company is influencing cities, cluster politics and climates

Today, the networks of digital platforms are deeply intertwined with our everyday topographies. One of the giants of the industry is Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce company. Over the past decade, it has become our neighbour, employer and critical public infrastructure provider – a standard in modern city life. For the Ruhr metropolis in Germany, Amazon epitomizes a transformative force for shaping the historically industrial region into a warehouse for Europe. It brings with it the promise of turning the region into a service sector hub. With its extensive logistics and delivery operations, however, Amazon is building onto already existing (public) infrastructures, past and present: Drawing on the example of the logistical cluster at the Westfalenhütte in the north-east of Dortmund, a 612.000-resident city in Western Germany, this paper maps out how deeply rooted in (and dependent on) industrial histories ‘innovative’ contemporary developments by tech companies are. From the ground to the cloud, it reveals the various layers of public local infrastructure that Amazon is settling on to, profiting off of – or even taking over.