CIVITAS Policy Note – Smart choices for cities “Making urban freight logistics more sustainable”
Within the consortium of the CIVITAS WIKI project, TRT was responsible for drafting this Policy Note, focusing on the topic of urban freight logistics.
Freight distribution is a vital part of life in modern cities and plays a relevant role within the whole urban mobility system. Although urban freight systems have not received much attention to date, actual demographic trends showing an increasing urbanization, together with the pervasive role of information and communication technologies and the consistent growth of e-commerce are bound to pose further challenges to the urban freight system. Among the different components of urban mobility, urban freight logistics is in fact traditionally considered as the least sustainable because of its evident negative impacts (generating noise and pollutant emissions, increasing congestion and posing a threat to the safety of road users).
That is why it is necessary to encourage the reflection upon these issues, the sharing of experiences and best practices between cities and the raising of awareness among decision-makers in order to trigger alternative, and more sustainable, approaches to urban freight planning.
Authors: Tito Stefanelli, Caterina Di Bartolo, Giuseppe Galli, Enrico Pastori, Hans Quack, Ivan Uccelli (infographics)