4.5 Fast Read | Toolset for local authorities on sustainable urban logistics

E-commerce is reshaping our cities, creating both opportunities and pressing challenges for urban mobility, space, and sustainability. Local authorities stand at the frontline of this transformation, yet often lack the tools, capacity, or frameworks to fully address the logistics flows reshaping their streets. This Toolset for Local Authorities provides a practical, evidence-based resource to help cities navigate these complexities.

Organized around four key levers —

• Planning sustainable urban logistics
• Regulating delivery practices
• Supporting last-mile solutions
• Engaging stakeholders and citizens

— the Toolset translates insights from co-creation workshops in Milan, Utrecht, Oslo, and Antwerp, 15 municipal interviews, and targeted desk research into actionable strategies. By integrating perspectives from different policymakers across European cities, it highlights both what is possible and where current approaches fall short.

The content goes beyond theory. It demonstrates how planning tools like Sustainable Urban Logistics Plans (SULPs) can embed logistics into long-term city strategies, how regulatory levers such as low- and zero-emission zones can accelerate decarbonisation, how cities can facilitate parcel lockers, micro-hubs, and clean fleets to make last-mile delivery more efficient, and why trust-based collaboration and citizen engagement are essential to building lasting solutions.

Across the chapters, readers will discover concrete examples: Rotterdam and Paris integrating logistics into urban planning, Utrecht pioneering a zero-emission freight zone, Barcelona trialling digital kerbside management, Gothenburg designing multifunctional “mobility hotels,” and Brussels leveraging Green Deals to align public and private actors. These practices showcase the spectrum of approaches while also revealing persistent barriers—political, institutional, financial, and cultural—that cities must overcome.

The Toolset is both a practical guide and a source of inspiration, offering local authorities a way to rethink how urban space, regulation, innovation, and engagement can come together to make city logistics cleaner, more efficient, and more people-friendly.