Abstract
The contradiction between the contribution of city logistics (CL) to sustainable urban development and its negative externalities is increasingly prominent. Policy supervision measures and the green logistics initiative are also in conflict with the management goal of logistics enterprises. Innovative solutions for CL have attracted increasing research attention worldwide. However, the description of the global research network in the field of CL, research trends, and the discussion of advanced theories and practices have not been systematically reviewed so far. Especially in the past three years, there has been an explosive growth of relevant literature. In this paper, the method of combining scientometric analysis and thematic discussion was adopted to systematically review 513 important works in the literature from 1993 to 2018, aiming to provide a holistic understanding of the status in quo, trends and gaps of CL research, and to further analyze prominent problems. The study has made statistical analyses of the publication year profile, journal allocation and research methods of the included literature, and constructed four kinds of visualized bibliographic information timeline maps for the authorship network, international collaboration network, keywords co-occurrence network and research topic clustering. Then, the three themes summarized by clustering are discussed, mainly focusing on CL strategies and policy, green supply chain management, planning methods, and advanced concepts and practices. Finally, the research gaps framework and agenda were reported. This study contributes to summarizing the research and development of city logistics on the whole, and can also serve as an explorative manual to support sustainable urban freight activities and innovative research.
Highlights
City logistics (CL) is a vital facilitator of the supply chain vitality, economic development and business prospects, which ensures the continual and stable operation of large-scale freight transport activities between suppliers and consumers in urban areas [1,2]
CL supports urban economy and sustainable development, but its negative externalities continue to deteriorate with the growth of demand
The initiative of incorporating urban logistics planning into the scope of urban planning is gradually recognized and valued by practitioners
Summary
City logistics (CL) is a vital facilitator of the supply chain vitality, economic development and business prospects, which ensures the continual and stable operation of large-scale freight transport activities between suppliers and consumers in urban areas [1,2]. The rapid increase in demand for urban distribution services caused by the development of e-commerce and the upgrading of urban consumption capacity has placed a great burden to urban mobility (e.g., congestion, low accessibility and inefficiency) [3], the environment (e.g., visual intrusion, greenhouse gas emission and resource waste) [4], social welfare (e.g., noise, accident and public health), and governance (e.g., informal freight sector, land scarcity and uncontrolled sprawl) [5]. Strong interactions between freight transport and sustainable urban development have aroused widespread social awareness. Stakeholders have initiated numerous green logistics initiatives to reduce the negative externalities and improve the sustainability of CL, such as eco-friendly transportation technology, green supply chains, and resource reduction plan [5]. An exploratory scientometric analysis of the existing CL literature is conducive to a holistic understanding of the current research state and future directions
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