Urban Logistics: Establishing Key Concepts and Building a Conceptual Framework for Future Research

Abstract

The world is rapidly urbanizing, causing businesses to rethink venerable principles related to logistics and distribution. As populations urbanize and customer service expectations escalate, firms seek new ways to serve urban customers but are often frustrated by numerous complexities inherent to the urban context. Through a systematic literature review, this research combines concepts and theories from multiple nonbusiness disciplines in order to provide a foundation for understanding the urban environments within which logistics activities increasingly occur. In doing so, our review serves as a genesis for urban logistics theory development. The research identifies three distinct urban logistics stakeholder groups, each of which influences, directly or indirectly, urban logistics operations, and then uncovers four urban environmental characteristics that impede the implementation of traditional logistical systems and processes. Our analysis thereby enables managers to develop new logistical strategies that are suited to specific urban environments.

Collaborative urban transportation: Recent advances in theory and practice

“…Logistics and transportation enable economic development, but they are traditionally quite inefficient in urban areas. As shown in Rose et al (2017), urban areas are characterized by the interplay of different stakeholder interest in close quarters, and, as highlighted in Kin et al (2017), megacities add growing sustainability challenges. Further obstacles include low load factors, empty trips, long dwell times at loading and unloading points, and large numbers of deliveries to individual customers (Cepolina and Farina, 2015).…”

Prioritizing the Strategies to Enhance Smart City Logistics by Intuitionistic Fuzzy CODAS

“…For the evaluation of SCL strategies, 6 evaluation criteria have been defined in accordance with a detailed literature review [5,9,12,14,15] and expert opinions:…”

“…Step 7: The negative ideal solutions of benefit-type and cost-type criteria for each alternative are calculated with Eq. (14). The result is provided in Table 7.…”

Reverse Logistics and Urban Logistics: Making a Link

“…Additionally, some opportunities for research are identified: network design, omni-channels logistics, delivery systems, stakeholder cooperation, and sustainability. Finally, Rose et al [62] developed a systematic literature review, from different academic disciplines, highlighting the gaps regarding the defining features of urban logistics and proposing a framework of urban environmental factors affecting logistics operations. A remarkable contribution of this investigation is the definition of the concept of urban logistics in which an explicit mention to the existence of reverse flows occurring within urban systems is made.…”

“…A remarkable contribution of this investigation is the definition of the concept of urban logistics in which an explicit mention to the existence of reverse flows occurring within urban systems is made. This way, according to Rose et al [62], urban logistics is defined as "that part of supply chain management that plans, implements, and controls the efficient, effective forward and reverse flow and storage of goods, services, and related information between the point of origin and point of consumption in order to meet customers' requirements, as influenced by complex interactions among densely populated social systems and associated infrastructure".…”