Monthly archives: January, 2023

Barcelona bans ‘dark stores’ and ‘dark kitchens’

Barcelona approved a total ban on dark stores (distribution hubs used by companies that provide grocery home deliveries), joining other European cities such as Amsterdam that announced restrictions in 2022. Reuters reports about it. Dark stores are like retail shops but without on-site sales, just deliveries from them. Quick commerce delivery services expanded across Europe …

Is energy the new gold in real estate?

Is energy the new gold for real estate companies? In conversations about city logistics real estate development, developers often see charging demand for electric vehicles as a chore. It’s inconvenient, takes a long time, and you don’t have a clue. But the charging infrastructure has to get there. And fortunately, many market players are willing …

A toolkit is online to support decision-makers in planning and implementing Urban Vehicle Access Regulations

A toolkit is online to support decision-makers in planning and implementing Urban Vehicle Access Regulations (UVARs). The CIVITAS project ReVeAL aims to help cities in their journey towards people-centered urban spaces by giving urban road space back to people and sustainable mobility. This toolkit was developed and tested within the 6 ReVeAL city pilots during the project’s three and a …

Efficient use of pavements for a more decarbonized Dublin

The project SENATOR aims to create a new urban logistic model to enhance cities’ sustainability.For this purpose, the project will develop a smart network operator as a control tower supported on an ICT Platform that will work as a support tool for decision-making, integration, and planning of all logistics operations. Consequently, it will minimize the …

ICCT: cost-effectiveness of CO2 reduction strategies for heavy trucks

A new paper by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) assesses the cost-effectiveness of different CO2 reduction strategies for the heavy-duty vehicle (HDV) sector. It examines the required HDV technology market share to meet mandated CO2 reduction targets and the corresponding decarbonization cost. The report also proposes HDV CO2 reduction targets up to 2040. The …

Research: towards a smart urban e-waste system

Efficient electronic waste (e-waste) management is one of the strategies to save materials, critical minerals, and precious metals with limited global reserves. The e-waste collection issue has gained attention in recent years due to low collection rates of e-waste. Shevchenko et al. (2021) aim to search for solutions in the e-waste collection sphere with close-to-zero transport and …

Research: identifying barriers and enablers for circular economy business models

Circular economy business models (CEBMs) are identified as essential levers in the transition to a circular economy (CE). In recent years, a growing body of research has examined the barriers and enablers to these models; however, the available empirical evidence still needs to be improved while sector-specific assessments are lacking. A recent study aims to enrich the …

Industrial symbiosis is essential to the circular transition

The European Commission aims for a full circular economy (CE), which will reuse all resources in 2050. Implementing circular urban supply chains is a major economic transformation that can only work if significant coordination problems between the actors involved are solved. This requires, on the one hand, the implementation of efficient urban collection technologies, where process …

Road safety: trucks versus bikes

Over a third of traffic fatalities and over two-thirds of seriously injured traffic in the Netherlands are cyclists. The death rate of cyclists (the number of traffic fatalities per distance traveled) is more than eight times higher than that of motorists but more than three times lower than that of motorized two-wheelers. Almost three-quarters of …