Abstract

An entire paper could be written on the question: what do we mean by that ambiguous word planning, in any particular context? That question must be answered at the outset, because it is central to this paper: here planning will centrally mean land-use planning, that is, the codification and control of land use in new development and redevelopment according to plans that then form the basis of development control decisions; but it is impossible to confine discussion to this narrow definition, because land-use planning inevitably reflects wider urban policy concerns in the fields of economic development, social and community policy, housing policy, transportation planning, and environmental policy, to name only a few of the most important. Tracing these interrelationships will indeed prove the central theme of this discussion. Document type: Book

Abstract

hough the interest in urban freight transport is growing, it is commonly seen as an area where there is, for several reasons, a lack of research, especially if it is compared with the amount of research that deals with passenger transport. The attention of governments especially for urban goods movement has increased over recent years and with that the number of studies in the urban goods movement field. However, the practice of city logistics policies is not very often the result of detailed analyses and evaluations. This is reflected in similar types of regulations repeated through the different cities regardless of their characteristics, the same schedules for time windows and load zones, and the failure to recognize different types of urban distribution which require different types of regulations. Apart from copying regulation frameworks, however, cities hardly share information, knowledge or cooperation. The lack of national or regional bodies dealing with city logistics, as there exist for urban passenger traffic, is significant. In this paper the authors address the main research contributions in city logistics and try to illustrate how the research contributions are (not) related to the daily practice of policymaking and town planning. Finally the paper ends with the conclusion that a real gap exists between research and practice and the paper provides some explanations, conditions and directions for setting up new research projects.