Supply Chains and Urban Logistics Platforms - Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems - page 3

URBAN ECONOMY

Human and
material means

What involvment ?

Road network

PUBLIC SPHERE

FOR PRIVATE SPHERE

System
governance

Welcoming the
operators

Flows
management

Platforms
building

What dynamic ?

SUPPLY-CHAINS

Fig. 1 The urban system through the urban logistics angle (adapted from Boudouin and Morel

2002 )

In every case, logistics by its importance in terms of consumed surfaces,
generated traffics and employment created is a major component of the urban
planning. This is widely verified for the supply chains set up by industrials and
distributors that led, since 1980, to create large platforms in key places of the
territory (buildings larger than 5000 m 2 represent more than 40 millions of square
meters in France according OBLOG 2007 ). These tools designed to link the
production and the commercialization, are located in the peripheral zones of the
conurbations, where the offer was physically, functionally and economically
acceptable.
The last (or first 1 ) link of the supply chain connecting these large logistics bases
to the urban customers has only been taken into account lately. The reflections on
this subject only started in the years 2000 with institutional actors and profes-
sionals concerned by this link, the most disturbing in the research for quality and
representing one quarter to one third of logistics costs. 2 Today, the city as a
geographical and economic space is the centre of attention for decision makers of
the private and public sectors, considering that the performance of the logistics
system depends also greatly on the coherence of the decisions taken by these two
categories of actors (Fig. 1 ).
The urban logistics spaces, also known as ULS, 3 are in the core of the goods
distribution device, as they are interfaces between interurban and urban, private
and public, producer and consumer.

1 When operating pick-ups.
2 High variations exist according to the products, organizations, chains, but this average value is
generally accepted.
3 This designation covers all the equipments designed to optimize the urban goods deliveries
through the use of transhipping (Boudouin 2006 ).