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Despite large bodies of research related to the impacts of e-commerce on last-mile logistics and sustainability, there has been limited effort to evaluate urban freight using an equity lens. Therefore, this study proposes a modeling framework that enables researchers and planners to estimate the baseline equity performance of a major e-commerce platform and evaluate equity impacts of possible urban freight management strategies. The study also analyzes the sensitivity of various operational decisions to mitigate bias in the analysis.

The model adapts empirical methodologies from activity-based modeling, transport equity evaluation, and residential freight trip generation (RFTG) to estimate person- and household-level delivery demand and cargo van traffic exposure in 41 U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs).

Evaluating 12 measurements across varying population segments and spatial units, the study finds robust evidence for racial and socio-economic inequities in last-mile delivery for low-income and, especially, populations of color (POC). By the most conservative measurement, POC are exposed to roughly 35% more cargo van traffic than white populations on average, despite ordering less than half as many packages. The study explores the model’s utility by evaluating a simple scenario that finds marginal equity gains for urban freight management strategies that prioritize line-haul efficiency improvements over those improving intra-neighborhood circulations.

Presents a first effort in building a modeling framework for more equitable decision-making in last-mile delivery operations and broader city planning.

Urban areas are responsible for significant amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but cities can have quite different values of carbon footprints. The purpose of this paper is to identify the determinants of urban GHG emissions in order to explain these differences.

Seven global cities – Bangkok, Chicago, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Milan and New York City – have been included in the paper's sample. These cases have been chosen in order to represent a variety of characteristics and contexts of developed and developing countries and according to data availability. A first level of analysis regards local GHG emission inventories, which attribute emissions to activity sectors. Sectorial emissions are then evaluated to quantify the relevance of several determinants: climate conditions, urban form, economic activities in place, state of technology, mobility and housing infrastructures and costs, and income and life style.

Determinants show different weights in influencing behaviours at city level, and ultimately depend on economic, technical, social and cultural factors. Beside a significant role of climate conditions, urban density appears as the main determinant in shaping residential emissions from direct fuel consumption, whereas, for electricity, consumption patterns and technological features of power generation play a major role. For ground transport, urban form affecting mobility patterns and technological features of the vehicle stock stand out as the most significant determinants.

The paper provides a deep insight into urban GHG emission values, making use of a comprehensive set of urban data and highlighting several areas which could possibly be targeted in cities' GHG reduction policies. An enhanced and widened set of data could improve the paper's results in a significant way.

With the increasing urbanization rates in emerging countries such as the ones in Latin America and the Caribbean, urban logistics solutions and initiatives are widely needed. Urban planners often consider only passenger transportation and leave freight transportation unattended, thus increasing externalities and degrading the transportation of goods. This chapter presents three urban logistics solutions, which intend to tackle problems related to urbanization and last mile delivery operations challenges by evaluating location models for loading and unloading bays, urban transfer centers location models, and freight trip generation models. The presented solutions were proposed by several researchers of the Institute of Innovation in Productivity and Logistics CATENA-USFQ over the last four years and remain theoretical at the moment. However, we present estimated results of potential implementations in three districts of Quito: Historic Center, Entertainment District, and Corporate District. This chapter not only presents the mentioned urban logistics solutions in Quito but also gives an overview of the followed methodology, which can be replicated in countries and cities of similar characteristics of the region.