Logistics for City and Regional Planning

Abstract

Logistics in transport considers the physical structure of a city as given and tries to optimize the performance of companies or the transportation system within the given conditions. On the other side, companies choose their location under the given conditions and the expected changes and influence the structure of the city and its economy in a continuous way. City and transport planning methods have not considered these effects in their work so far and are therefore influenced by the driving forces of the economy of scale and demand oriented traffic growth. The introduction of principles of logistics into the early stages of land use and city planning would change the “given conditions” and open the path for a more sustainable development, with more pressure for innovation and fairness in the market.