City Logistics and Smart Cities: Models, Approaches and Planning

Dear Colleagues,

City logistics aims to optimize the logistics and the transport activities in urban areas, considering their interaction with other traffic components with the support of new technologies. These activities must consider the sustainability and livability of the urban context (e.g., environmental impacts, safety). The issues connected with the recent increase in online purchases, also influenced by COVID-19, posed new problems to solve and new challenges to face. Therefore, it emerges that city logistics require the development of integrated and dynamic solutions, for example, those based on information and communication technologies (ICTs) and intelligent transport systems (ITSs). To support these solutions, simulation models, design approaches, and planning must be implemented. The aim is to identify, simulate, and optimize all the activities that characterize city logistics and its impacts on the city.

Therefore, the purpose of this Special Issue is to gather new research in this field, considering the challenges resulting from the use of new technologies. The topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

• Discrete models in city logistics;
• Planning urban freight distribution;
• City logistics management and control;
• Travel cost and learning processes;
• Vehicle routes optimization in urban areas;
• Forecasting end consumer choices;
• Forecasting urban freight flows;
• ICTs and ITSs for city logistics;
• Analysis of the impacts of city logistics;
• Green vehicles;
• Shopping trips;
• New services for city logistics (crowd shipping, parcel lockers, etc.)

Dr. Antonio Polimeni
Dr. Orlando M. Belcore
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Smart Cities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• city logistics
• urban freight distribution
• green urban logistics
• e-commerce
• green vehicles
• city logistics management
• light freight vehicles
• freight vehicle route optimization
• city logistics planning