Late in 2025, a whole fleet of delivery robots descended on Chicago, where they clogged sidewalks, injured residents, and prompted a community campaign to ban them from the streets. In at least one major Chicago neighborhood, residents succeeded.
As reported by Block Club Chicago, negative feedback against the delivery bots has become so overwhelming that one alderman has effectively banned expansion into his ward.
Last week, Alderman Daniel La Spata hosted a community meeting with representatives from delivery robot companies Coco and Serve Robotics. The politician was seeking feedback on an operational expansion into the 1st Ward, an area encompassing the neighborhoods Wicker Park and Logan Square. They were met with urgent questions over questions about accessibility, data hoarding, and pedestrian safety, Block Club reported.
Following that meeting, La Spata’s office began circulating an online survey to residents of the 1st Ward on whether the two companies should be allowed to expand operations deeper into the neighborhood. It got roughly 500 responses, nearly 83 percent of which said they “strongly disagreed” that the robots should be allowed to operate beyond the eastern border of Wicker Park.
“That doesn’t sound like a maybe,” La Spata told Block Club. “We’re not pulling back Coco from their current partial service area on the east side of the ward, but there is no appetite for expansion.”
The community feedback campaign on robot deliveries follows a decision by La Spata’s office to temporarily ban Serve Robotics from operating in the Ward until local officials could figure out what the hell was going on. Now, it seems La Spata’s prohibition extends to Coco as well, and will remain in place unless the community relents.
Pushing back, Yariel Diaz, director of government affairs for Serve, positioned the delivery robots as a solution for short-deliveries “within the last mile to mile and a half” that aren’t worth the time for human delivery drivers.
“It is an option for the consumer,” Diaz told Block Club. “It is an option that you’re given when you are ordering from a restaurant that partners with us. It is not a mandate.”
As it happens, Chicago’s walkable infrastructure already provides residents with an innovative, last-mile solution that requires no venture capital or data collection whatsoever: their legs.
More on robots: Delivery Robot Gets Stuck on Train Tracks, Gets Obliterated by Locomotive