Delivering to future cities - Mega trends driving urban logistics

Frost & Sullivan
January 2013

Over the past two decades delivering goods into the cities has become a challenge with cities getting overly congested and traffic jams resulting in expensive logistics bottlenecks. In fact, studies show that the cost of congestion now in terms of time wasted in traffic and fuel consumption is off the roof, almost 200% more than what it was in the 1980s. And congestion is only a part of the urban delivery problem. Pollution, lack of parking bays, and warehousing costs are all restraints that are contributing to the economic cost of urban logistics.

There is already a paradigm shift in how products are being manufactured (3D printing) and retailed (transition to online channels) today and the common denominator, supply chain, at all stages of a product's lifecycle must quickly adapt to the changes as well. While it will take another decade or so for 3D printing to become mainstream, the growing market of online retail has already significantly impacted the industry. In order to understand these shifts, it is important to understand the megatrends that directly influence them.

Mega trends and Urban Logistics

We see four main Mega trends that will impact urban logistics - urbanisation, connectivity and convergence, bricks and clicks and multimodality (high speed rail).

Ir al reporte

Challenges for urban freight in Mexico city

Freight Transport for Development
May 2011

Foto: Omar Omar

This case study aims to show what freight transport related challenges policy makers in metropolitan areas are facing. It shows that interaction and cooperation within the institutional framework is very important and that a complex institutional framework jeopardizes good governance. The case study describes institutional challenges, environmental challenges and infrastructure related challenges. It also summarizes a number policy measures that could potentially improve the situation in Mexico city.

Bajar documento

Urban Freight in Developing Cities

Bernhard O. Herzog
SUTP
November 2010

This new GTZ Sourcebook module describes the importance of freight transportation in the context of urban development and provides detailed information on available options to meet current and future challenges for urban goods transport in rapidly growing cities of the developing world.

The module has been written by Bernhard O. Herzog, expert in the field of freight operation and fleet-management with more than 30 years experience in the field of transport planning and logistics.

The publication contains 62 fully illustrated pages 51 figures, 19 boxes and 8 tables. Additionally it provides further reading and links on additional aspects of urban freight.

Bajar documento

Bajar documento (in english)