The penny seems to be dropping in the Panattoni UK marketing department, and the field is opening up for innovative approaches. Someone has realised that Logistics has remained backstage for far too long. It deserves a Hollywood upgrade to reflect the stellar status of each major development. Cue Panatonni’s promo film of a little girl skipping from Panattoni’s Swindon Park to the City of London…
Sure, this Swindon park may be ‘common knowledge’ to sheds brokers who can wax lyrical about industrial estates they’ve inspected over the years, or those who enjoy exchanging anecdotal info as they sip beach drinks at the annual Cannes Property Conference.
But why does the scale, importance, and strategic relevance of the UK national logistics network seem to elude many citizens? How can such swathes of space dedicated to critical UK logistics infrastructure go largely under the radar? According to the Association of Warehouses in its 80th anniversary, 2024 is even the year of logistics!
And while it’s neither the Association’s nor brokers’ fault, the simple fact remains: Logistics is barely up there in the public consciousness. Could this also reflect why the Commercial Real Estate sector struggled to notice the obvious and physical advancement of e-commerce and its webs of distribution (and impact on retail)? Without proper maps both threats and opportunities are missed.
There are a number of reasons why logistics and industrial sheds have remained ‘off the grid’:
‘Central Business Districts’, yes – ‘Golden Triangle’, what?
Ask anyone on the street what a ‘Central Business District’ means, and odds are they will have a sense of what it is. Then ask if they know what the UK’s ‘Golden Triangle’ means… and you’ll get blank looks.
For over half a century, the mainstream press and our national consciousness have grown up with the importance of Central Business Districts – impressive clusters of office buildings lining the busiest streets. They are physically unavoidable to every tourist and cyclist as they take the urban landscape in.
Language also illustrates that “CBD” is part of our everyday vocabulary from schools to workplaces. Contrast this to the notion of the ‘Golden Triangle’, the prime area for UK logistics where most of the population is within 4 hours reach. It’s as little known to average Joe as the mention of ‘Exothermic Anomalies’ in pub convos about Elon Musk’s latest space rockets.
Unlike CBDs, Logistics and its critical contribution to the UK economy is still not readily visible in mapping terms. Perhaps it’s going the way of the Shipping sector – a vast global sector of 24/7 activity that keeps our economy afloat working day and night but goes by largely unknown. While this is understandable for select and niche ports that face international seas. Logistics parks are closer to home. Close to our schools, our towns, attract large vehicles, often take advantage of existing major motorway public infrastructure junctions, and even surround major hospital grounds.
They are becoming a greater part of civic life and transparency is paramount for public debate and sustainable decision-making.
Groundscraping Scale Hidden in Plain Sight
Panatonni’s video shows a visualisation of Swindon Park against a backdrop of a City of London graphic. They could make even more of the fact that this comparison is not visually misleading. Swindon Park is destined to be over half the size of the City of London.
Again, office clusters are readily visible. But a flat sprawling new park is more difficult to digest in terms of scale, even by its local populace. It is also not part of the daily/shared commute experience of workers employed nearby. These estates are often subject to private or cul-de-sac type layouts, and therefore avoid daily 3rd party traffic.
Mapping is a challenge
One of the biggest illusions is that Google Maps is correct or even broadly faithful in relation to our urban and country landscape. However, Google is often highly unsuitable for scanning the English countryside for large estates. Take this example of one of the largest logistics areas in the country:
Figure 1 displays mostly greenery instead of greys associated to paved and urban environments. And even one of the largest distribution hubs, the “Royal Mail Superhub”, is just a lonely pin set in seemingly green pastures.
But when you switch the layer to Google’s outdated satellite photos, there is clearly a vast area comparable to the City of London covered in concrete.
Figure 2 shows more established park areas around the M1 junction and further development up north – much of which is not perceivable in the normal Google maps mode.
While it is impossible to have perfectly accurate maps –even if you’re Google–, it is clear that there are substantial limitations for researching the leading asset class of our times.
Maps and the art of cartography
Institutional clients mention that they don’t get much more than a pin on a map these days. From a cartographic perspective, Google’s cultural phenomenon of the inverted raindrop provides little information beyond a precise location. There is no context. No sense of scale or how it relates to other sizeable Logistics areas in the UK.
This is something we are working on at DealViews:
This is an ongoing project, but it is already showing individual Logistics Parks that are 1x, 2x, ~3x the size of the City of London within the feted ‘Golden Triangle’.
Follow DealViews on LinkedIN and check DealViews.com for more updates as these maps develop. Dashflow is a proud supporter of this initiative to bring more informative and professional maps online for institutional investors of Commercial Real Estate.