City Logistics: Is Deregulation the Answer?

Abstract

Distribution of goods affects city congestion and air pollution; it also increases costs and reduces quality of life. City logistics are aimed at reducing the negative effects of distribution while supporting city development. Over the past two decades, many city logistics initiatives have failed in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. As many actors and stakeholders are involved in the complex organizational process of city logistics, it is important to investigate and understand the causes of these failures. This is the purpose of this article, which considers Italian experiences of city logistics. Evaluation of city logistics initiatives is necessary to ensure success in future implementation, to achieve sustainable urban freight transport development. Multi-agent systems (MAS) have been applied to evaluate different fields, such as supply chain, stock market, freight distribution, and traffic management. We conducted a review on city logistics projects in the main Italian cities with experience in these initiatives, in particular, in the case of failure. Our analysis considered the MAS, which utilizes multiple stakeholders’ points of view with different effects to improve city logistics feasibility. The study considers Italian experiences in city logistics, but other countries may have different backgrounds and different situations. Therefore, predictions may be valid only for Italy and not in other contexts. Our perspective is quite original compared with the existing literature as it focuses on the failures of city logistics projects rather than best practices.