By Ginia Bellafante author of NYT’s “Big City” column, July 22, 2022.

“On the first morning of the week’s enervating heat wave, Gale Brewer, who represents much of Manhattan’s West Side in the City Council, was canvassing a stretch of upper Broadway, conducting a stealth experiment. For months now, she has been on a tear about the proliferation of mini-warehouses arriving in residential neighborhoods, committing sins against the city’s already precarious streetscape, and now she was on a mission to prove that they were violating the law.

“Dark stores,” as they are known in the dystopian lingo of e-commerce, cache the groceries and other products brought to you by instant delivery services that have recently exploded in cities around the world. Whatever their relationship to the law, they stand, most disconcertingly, in opposition to the civic covenant that promises access and fluidity as the hallmark of public space, not Fritos and White Claw left at your door in 15 minutes.

In New York, all but the smallest warehouses are permitted only in parts of the city zoned for manufacturing. When they appear on ordinary streets, they have to let people shop in them, and even though the city made the rules very clear to the industry in a bulletin issued last month, Ms. Brewer suspected many were not following along. So she felt a certain vindication when she arrived at a facility operated by Gorillas on Broadway and 102nd Street and was sent on her way. “I said, ‘Can I walk around?’ and they said, ‘No, order on the app,’” she told me.”

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/nyregion/instant-delivery-services.html