Planning for Urban Freight Transport: An Overview

Urban freight transport is essential to the functioning of cities, but is also an activity that affects the urban environment and communities. Yet, freight is often overlooked in discussions of urban transport, in contrast to passenger modes. Much freight research emphasises questions of operations and network management but is less attentive to the links between freight transport and urban development. New efforts are needed to improve understanding of the link between urban freight and cities. This paper presents a broad discussion of the links between urban freight transport and urban planning through an overview of the literature in the field. The paper discusses key problems confronting planning and policies for urban freight transport in relation to its importance, impacts, interrelationship between stakeholders, institutions, influencing factors and challenges. The paper proposes a revitalised agenda for planning for urban freight and identifies key directions for further research, particularly around the land-use, environmental and institutional dimensions of urban freight management. By identifying major underdeveloped areas of urban freight research, the paper offers guidance as to key issues that will need to be addressed as freight grows as a proportion of the urban transport task.