If everything comes to our door, what will draw us outside?
By Nur Aulia Rosni and Yong Adilah Shamsul Harumain
During a visit to China in July, I ordered something while staying in a hotel. I expected to collect it from the lobby. Instead, a small robot entered the lift, travelled to my floor and stopped directly outside my room. It even called me through the guest phone in my room! It was efficient, polite in its own mechanical way and wonderfully convenient.
Yet, after the door closed, another thought remained: if almost everything can come to us, what reasons will we have to go out?
A friend in China told me that many people around her increasingly order their everyday purchases online. When they go to a shopping centre, it may be to eat or spend time with friends rather than to buy necessities. Her comment was a personal observation, not a national statistic, but it raised an important urban question.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that online sales of physical goods accounted for 26.1 per cent of the country’s total retail sales in 2025. That is a very large share, but it does not mean that most shopping has disappeared from physical places. What it does suggest is that the relationship between digital convenience and urban life is becoming impossible for planners to ignore.
When we order online, movement does not simply disappear. Some of them change hands. Instead of every customer travelling to a shop, couriers, vans, motorcycles and increasingly robots move goods towards customers. Some personal shopping trips may be reduced, but cities must manage more parcel deliveries, loading activity, collection points and competition for limited kerb and pavement space.
The change also reaches land use. Traditional shops may become showrooms, experience centres or collection points. Shopping centres may rely more heavily on food, entertainment and events. At the same time, warehouses, dark stores, parcel lockers and small distribution hubs may need to move closer to residential neighbourhoods to meet expectations for rapid delivery.
Buildings are changing too. Hotel lifts communicate with delivery robots. Apartment lobbies need secure parcel storage. Streets must accommodate delivery riders without pushing pedestrians aside. Technology that appears effortless on a phone screen is supported by a large and very physical urban system.
This does not mean that technology is making everyone antisocial, nor should delivery services be treated as the enemy. They help older people, people with mobility difficulties, busy families and anyone needing urgent supplies. Convenience can remove unnecessary journeys and give people back valuable time.
The more important question is what we do with that time. If our neighbourhoods offer welcoming parks, libraries, sports areas, cafes and community spaces, convenience may allow people to spend less time running errands and more time with others. Online communities can offer real friendship and support, but they cannot provide every benefit of sharing a physical neighbourhood. If the only offline alternatives are home, work and expensive commercial venues, convenience may make withdrawal from public life much easier.
This is where land-use planners, transport planners and urban designers must work together. We need space for efficient logistics, but also lively local streets. We need safe areas for deliveries, but also uninterrupted pavements. We need technology-friendly buildings, but also neighbourhoods that reward walking, meeting and exploring.
A truly smart city should not be measured only by how quickly a product reaches our door. It should also be measured by whether technology improves human life beyond that door. The best city of the future will not force us to leave home for every small necessity. It will give us much better reasons to leave.
The authors are Senior Lecturers at the Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Malaya, and may be reached at nurauliarosni@um.edu.my