https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/21/how-our-home-delivery-habit-reshaped-the-world

The great trick of online retail has been to get us to shop more and think less about how our purchases reach our homes. By Samanth Subramanian

A decade ago, the British department-store chain John Lewis built itself a long warehouse, painted in gradations of sky blue. The shed, as it is called in the industry, cost £100m and covered 650,000 sq ft. Windsor Castle could easily fit inside it. John Lewis named the shed Magna Park 1, after the site where it stands: a “logistics campus” of warehouses, roads, shipping containers and truck bays east of Milton Keynes. Magna Park 1 was intended to supply the company’s stores around southern England, but almost as soon as it was finished, John Lewis realised that it wasn’t enough. The pace of e-commerce was flying, and Magna Park 1 opened in the midst of a spell in which, between 2006 and 2016, the share of John Lewis deliveries going direct to customers rose 12-fold.