City logistics research streams: a systematic literature review

2016

City logistics is one of the significant branches of supply chain management, dealing with the logistics and transportation activities in urban areas. This research area has known an exponential growth of publications for the last five years. This paper presents a systematic literature review, which is the result of surveying more than 200 papers and research works published during the past five years. We identify the top contributing authors, countries and key research topics. The most common keywords used in city logistics literature are referred and allow us to propose six research clusters in which scholars could be encouraged to contribute.

Purpose. The last decades have witnessed an increased interest in urban logistics originating from both the research and the practitioners' communities. Sustainable freight transports today are on the political, social and technological agenda of many actors operating in urban contexts. Due to the extent of the covered areas and the continuous progress in many fields, the resulting body of research on urban logistics appears quite fragmented. From an engineering management perspective, this paper presents a systematic literature review that aims to consolidate the knowledge on urban logistics, analyse the development of the discipline, and provide future research directions. Design/methodology approach. The paper discusses the main evidence emerging from a systematic literature review (SLR) on urban logistics. The corpus resulting from the SLR has been used to perform a citation network analysis and a main path analysis that together underpin the identification of the most investigated topics and methodologies in the field. Findings. Through the analysis of a corpus of 104 articles, the most important research contributions on urban logistics that represent the structural backbone in the development of the research over time in the field are detected. Based on these findings, this work identifies and discusses three areas of potential interest for future research. Originality/value. This paper presents an SLR related to a research area in which the literature is extremely fragmented. The results provide insights about the research path, current trends and future research directions in the field of urban logistics.

2017

The urban population is expected to continuously grow by annually by 1.84% (World Health., 2016). Consequently, logistics providers will have to provide quality and reliability of services in areas with high congestion. The main objective of urban logistics is to optimize and organize logistics processes and transportation activities taking different factors into account (Benjelloun & Crainic., 2008). So far, analysis of urban logistics problems has rather focused on managerial, engineering techniques or technical aspects than on activities and interaction between the stakeholders. However, the interactions between stakeholders is key for increasing the efficiency with in complex systems (Rose et al., 2016; Stathopoulos et al., 2012; Österle et al., 2015). Therefore, this article presents the analysis of a systematic literature review focusing on challenges related to collaboration among the stakeholders in urban logistics. The paper consists of four sections, starting with the intr...

Urban Transport XIII: Urban Transport and the Environment in the 21st Century

Although the interest in urban freight transport is growing, it is commonly seen as an area in which there is, for several reasons, a lack of research, especially if you compare it with the amount of research that deals with passenger transport. The attention of governments especially for urban goods movement has increased over recent years and with that the number of studies in the urban goods movement field. However, the practice of city logistics policies is not very often the result of detailed analyses and evaluations. This is reflected in similar types of regulations repeated through the different cities regardless of their characteristics, the same schedules for time windows and load zones, and the failure to recognise different types of urban distribution which require different types of regulations. Apart from copying regulation frameworks, however, cities hardly share information, knowledge or cooperation. The lack of national or regional bodies dealing with city logistics, as there exist for urban passenger traffic, is significant. In this paper we will address the main research contributions in city logistics and try to illustrate how the research contributions are (not) related to the daily practice of policymaking and town planning. Finally we will end with the conclusion that a real gap exists between research and practice and provide some explanations, conditions and directions for setting up new research projects.

2010

City logistics studies the best solutions for urban freight distribution with high environmental objectives. However, most actions are started by public authorities without taking into account the impacts of the new organizational schemas in the existing distribution enterprises' organization. This paper shows how city logistics approaches can meet the goals of Sustainable Development. In order to define the notion of sustainable city logistics, the main aspects of each sphere of sustainable development, respectively economic, environmental and societal, have been investigated. The main aspects of each sphere are described in order to unify the concept of sustainability related to city logistics. Then, we present the successful experience of Cityporto, the urban delivery service for the city of Padova (Italy), started in 2004 that uses low-pollution lorries. So, the service is considered as less polluting as a conventional approach, and is allowed to enter the city centre (including the Limited Traffic Zone) without hour limitations. The study is based on the findings from an exploratory qualitative approach, based on a documentary analysis and a case study research from several interviews that involved three internal stakeholders of Interporto di Padova (the company which manages the intermodal platform of Padova, in charge of Cityporto) and one member of Padova's Municipality (which promote the project). The results of the case study show that environmental aspect is one of the foundations of the project, but the economic continuity has to be first ensured. Indeed, the preservation of this service on the long term is subjected to its solvency. Moreover, its success is associated to the recognition by employees and customers. With regard to the collected information, it is possible to propose a balanced scorecard, where three axes emerged in connexion with economic, environmental and social dimensions. From this qualitative analysis, a discussion about the sustainability of city logistics solutions is made as conclusion. The article provides a contribution to the evaluation and measurement of city urban logistics using a success story that has been developed from the practitioner perspective. This experience could provide a basis for further practices in Italy and other European countries. Moreover, the relations between city logistics solutions and sustainability are conceptualised and illustrated by the case study, highlighting the main elements for sustainable performance identification and evaluation in this field. In conclusion, this paper conceptualises city logistics in relation with the Sustainable Development, setting the main objectives and steps of urban planning for freight distribution and logistics issues. But above all, it provides an understanding of the key success factors in a sustainable urban distribution organisation that can become a pivotal position in the upstream supply chain.

Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management, 2023

This paper addresses the problem of chaos in defining the essential elements of the urban logistics system. The extensive literature on the subject focuses on selected elements of this system, treating it as something vague and describing it selectively. The variety of definitions in the literature, their contradiction and fragmentation are not conducive to a scientific discussion. The study aims to unify the approaches to urban logistics and urban logistics system and summarise the knowledge about their elements. To achieve this goal, extensive literature was collected and analysed as of July 30, 2022 to show the scope of the urban logistics system comprehensively. The search and analysis procedures were based on a mix of a few systematic literature review approaches. The research results order the definition apparatus, clarify basic terms in urban logistics and allow for improving the quality of subsequent planned research studies on the urban logistics system to minimise research biases and misunderstandings in the future.

Supply Chain - Recent Advances and New Perspectives in the Industry 4.0 Era [Working Title], 2022

This article is discussing the basic trend and challenges in city logistics operations. The role of each actor in city logistics has been highlighted. The actors have enabled city logistics to generates the main benefits for the city logistics operations need to focus. Critical trends and challenges that contributed towards city logistics development has shown that city logistics efficiency need to be addressed to ensure sustainable impact to the cities. Different approaches in making the city logistics operations were implemented to ensure that the customers get their possession according to the stipulated time. The usage of new technology has also assisted in enhancing the efficiency of city logistics deliveries. By providing the right strategies, the objective of achieving sustainable city logistics can be obtained.

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, 2023

The Handbook on City Logistics and Urban Freight (HCLUF) you are holding in your hands is characterized by three very specific features that make it, at least from the editors' perspective, unique. In fact, the HCLUF is not only comprehensive in terms of topics investigated and interdisciplinary in the way those topics have been discussed, interpreted, and reported, but also systematically planned, executed, and coordinated. This Handbook is comprehensive in terms of topics investigated since it delves into all those characterizing aspects that are typically treated in various books but never in a single one. In more detail, HCLUF takes a deep dive into modeling, operations, planning, stakeholder engagement, and innovation. Furthermore, HCLUF adopts an ambitious methodological approach in dealing with the topics examined. In fact, the multidisciplinary approach characterizing this Handbook and differentiating it substantially from similar books present on the market is essential when dealing with such a complex subject. The editors believe that taking different perspectives enriches the overall knowledge needed to develop effective and efficient intervention policies capable of modifying the functioning of the entire system so as to pursue those objectives that, at first sight, might appear contradictory, such as economic growth, sustainable environment, and social inclusion. In fact, HCLUF has benefitted from the contributions coming from colleagues and practitioners with heterogeneous methodological backgrounds, such as business administration, economics, engineering, geography, management, operation research, political science, statistics, and urban planning. Finally, HCLUF was systematically planned, executed, and coordinated, thus resulting in a highly structured book comprising a hierarchical organization within each section where the authors, acting as ideal weavers, have drawn the methodological weft through the thematic warp, thus producing a high-quality cloth/book. This is testified and illustrated in what follows. On 26 June 2019, Edoardo Marcucci received an invitation from Edward Elgar Publishing to consider editing a handbook on city logistics and urban freight. While this was considered a nice event, pleasing the ego of one of the authors of the book you are now holding in your hands, since an internationally highly qualified publishing house was asking him to consider such an endeavor, at the same time, given the knowledge he had acquired in similar experiences in the past, he was also aware of the effort needed to perform this activity. Naturally inclined to cooperate, Edoardo informed both Valerio Gatta, a colleague at Roma Tre University, and Michela Le Pira, a colleague at the University of Catania, about this opportunity. He asked them both about their opinion and interest in getting involved. It took some time to make a decision, especially since, back then, there were several edited books appearing on the market that were covering some relevant issues concerning urban freight transport and city logistics.

2013

From urban freight transportation to city logistics Before the 80’s, the urban traffic due to freight transportation did not had an important impact to road congestion and air pollution in urban areas. Moreover, public authorities ’ actions in urban freight transportation policy and planning were limited to specific measures to deal with emergencies. With urban traffic increasing, and the raise of congestion not only in big but also in medium cities, some public administrations were confronted with the problem of urban freight distribution, that was managed traditionally only by the transportation carriers. In the 90’s and the beginning of the 21 th century, with the contribution of public administrations and other support funds, several studies and pilot tests have been made to learn how to organise urban freight distribution in order to decrease traffic and pollution derived from this sector. Most of these studies are oriented to support public authorities in decisions related to ...

2015

In this paper, we propose a framework aiming to provide a preliminary assessment and comparison of cities on the most important dimensions related to city logistics, thus preparing the ground for stakeholder engagement and solution design. The framework is also designed to overcome some of most relevant issues in city logistics research, such as lack of data and stakeholder engagement. First of all, the framework takes into account the different characteristics of a city: physical, infrastructural, social and economical features. Next, the framework analyses thestate of city logistic features, such as: access conditions, parcel solutions, low impact vehicles adoption, land use,and infrastructures. The dimensions considered in the framework are drawn from the literature. The framework has been tested on two European cities representatives of mid-sized towns that have initiated to redesign their urban logistics systems: Bergamo (north of Italy) and the city of Luxembourg. Despite of t...