Supply Chains and Urban Logistics Platforms - Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems - page 4

2.1 Stakes for the Public Sector
This group gathers the institutional actors and the users, integrating the urban
decision makers, the citizens and their representatives. The motives linked to the
research for organization of goods traffic can be classified in three domains:
environmental (quality of life, positive image), economic (general dynamic and
capacity to attract added value activities), functional (fluidity of exchanges and
answer to the needs). All these elements are very frequently connected with each
other—for example, efficient and well-managed flows generate only few nuisances
and reinforce the activity—and are essentially linked to the field of urbanism.
The various members if this public ''sphere'' do not necessarily have the same
vision of the importance of urban logistics and their sensibility is focused
(depending on the case) on a particular problem or another. For the users of public
space (namely citizens and their representatives) the urban goods distribution is
perceived as a hindrance to the improvement of the quality of living. For politics,
police and public technical services, the subject of goods distribution is left aside
to focus on people's mobility, which is both considered as more important in terms
of flows and as a political stake. These tendencies are known 4 under quantitative
and qualitative angles (Ambrosini et al. 1998 ); we can find them in the urban
movement plans in France, which made obligatory the consideration of goods in
conurbation larger than 100,000 inhabitants. In Italy, a few main cities include the
urban goods in their city plan, and the main measures concern cargo consolidation,
access regulation and improvement of the vehicle fleet (Spinedi 2008 ).
In Germany, most of the main cities take into account the urban goods movements
but there are also national rules concerning vehicle performances (emission
standard labelling). The German approach tends to integrate all the stakeholders
concerned by urban goods transports in the research of a consensus for the entire
urban community. All these approaches are usually carried-out on a large
geographical scale (urban areas covering several cities, regions…). Thus a frame
of objectives is displayed at a national or regional level and contributes to a clearer
view of the stakes. The main orientations of the regulations are based on the
evolution of the notion of necessary ''evil'' to a more pertinent approach based on
the research of answers for the next five subjects:
• Rationalizing the urban supply with the ambition to reduce the negative con-
sequences of the multiplication of movements (Taniguchi et al. 2001 ).
• Maintain the commercial activity and craftsmanship in cities, guaranteeing
satisfying conditions for their supplying (Dufour et al. 2007 ).
• Set in coherence the regulation on deliveries inside the urban transport perimeter
(Dablanc 1998 ).
4 Various works carried out noticeably in the «Marchandises en ville» program allowed to
understand the fundamental motives of the public policies.