by Walther Ploos van Amstel
Here’s a roundup of the most relevant city logistics news from the past two weeks: Urban consolidation centers: context matters more than the concept A recent analysis by the Dutch Kennisinstituut voor Mobiliteitsbeleid (KiM), published on 21 March, reviewed urban consolidation centers and reached a key conclusion: their effectiveness is highly context-dependent. In dense urban …
Most discussions of city logistics focus on getting goods to people. The harder, less glamorous challenge is what happens when those goods reach the end of their useful life. Packaging, electronics, batteries, textiles — the volumes are enormous, growing with every e-commerce surge, and the urban infrastructure to handle them sustainably barely exists. A chapter …
Few logistics questions seem more mundane than where to put a parcel locker. Research papers in Urban Logistics Transformation (Springer, 2026) make a compelling case that this is actually one of the most consequential spatial planning decisions a city can make; touching on equity, emissions, local commerce, and the circular economy all at once. Location …
How do we want the ‘liveable city’ to look? And what concrete steps are needed to get there? The delivery van is blocking the pavement. The cargo bike is maneuvering through a narrow alley. The parcel locker is disrupting the streetscape. Familiar scenes in almost every Dutch city. But are these logistics problems or design …
Urban freight is messy, fast-moving, and politically contentious. Deliveries compete with pedestrians for space, logistics providers compete with each other for efficiency, and city planners are left trying to regulate a system they can barely see. Digital twins (virtual replicas of city systems that can simulate, predict, and advise) are increasingly being positioned as the …
Cities are getting busier, more crowded, and increasingly strained by the consequences of e-commerce growth. According to recent estimates, urban freight traffic already accounts for around 25% of traffic emissions in major European cities and occupies more than 30% of available road capacity during peak hours. Without targeted intervention, these figures risk climbing even further. …
Space is the most contested resource in the modern city. Residential buildings, shops, cycling infrastructure, public green space. They all compete for the same finite stock of urban land. Logistics, which keeps it all functioning, has historically lost that competition and been pushed to the periphery. But a growing body of practice across European cities …
Cities are under pressure. More parcels, more delivery vans, less space, tighter climate targets — and a tangle of local regulations that makes collaboration harder than it needs to be. In Urban Logistics Transformation, editors Ani Melkonyan-Gottschalk (TU Clausthal) and Yanying Li (ALICE) bring together a broad group of European researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to …
For decades, package visibility has depended on a driver remembering to scan. UPS wants to change that — and its rollout of RFID sensing across the entire U.S. small-package network is the most concrete step any major carrier has taken to make that happen. As of this week, every UPS delivery vehicle in the country …
For city logistics professionals, the question of where to focus last-mile investment has long been complicated by conflicting evidence. Do urban consumers drive demand for home delivery, or do rural consumers, who have less access to physical stores, rely on it more? A new study tracking US consumer behavior from 2010 to 2023 provides the …