Check out the episode:

You can find the transcript through this link.

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Are you interested in last-mile freight planning?

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Debate of the article titled The state of sustainable urban last-mile freight planning in the United States from 2024, by Thomas Maxner, Giacomo Dalla Chiara, and Anne Goodchild, published in the Journal of American Planning Association.

This is a great preparation to our next interview with Anne Goodchild in episode 466 talking about urban freight and last-mile delivery opportunities and challenges.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how we can improve urban freight despite the vague urban guidelines. This article argues for better data collection and private-sector collaboration to effectively decarbonise the urban delivery sector.

Find the article through this link.

Abstract: The transportation sector is the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. To articulate how cities may combat rising emissions, municipalities throughout the country have produced climate action and sustainability plans that outline strategies to reduce their carbon footprints from transportation. At the same time, last-mile delivery—also known as urban freight—is becoming an increasingly important component of urban transport emissions due to the rise of e-commerce. However, few cities are overtly pursuing policies to reduce emissions from this subsector. In this research we used content analysis to determine the extent to which major cities (based on population and growth) were considering or actively developing sustainable urban freight practices. We developed a simple contextual scale to compare the comprehensiveness of planning trends between cities. This content analysis also identified the strategies those cities are considering. Our findings show that fewer than half (45%) of the studied cities have considered last-mile freight in sustainability planning at all. Of those, only 17 (29%) have articulated an intent to dedicate resources toward achieving that goal. We found that urban freight planning is still in its infancy in terms of actions taken by municipal agencies. Though some cities have comparatively comprehensive plans dedicated to the industry, most are just now scratching the surface. Those cities lacking dedicated last-mile freight plans can learn from those other cities initiating pilots and collecting data from the industry. We point out also, though, that urban freight planning requires an understanding of the stakeholders, namely, delivery companies, and the first step for many cities is to initiate communication and collaboration with the private sector to better understand the environmental impact of urban freight in their city.

Connected episodes you might be interested in:

• No.451R – Defining the interface between city logistics and urban design: a systematic literature review
• No.452 – Interview with Ron van Duin about urban freight

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