The knowledge and solutions generated in CITYLAB are expected to increase efficiency and load factors of freight trips in urban areas, and to reduce the negative impacts of freight activities in combination with achieving more sustainable business models for urban freight operations.
Several ex post EU and global level evaluations have shown that multi-stakeholder deployment is the key challenge in the city logistics innovation process. In CITYLAB, we use Living Labs, which is new in city logistics, as an implementation approach to successful fostering innovation deployment. The concept of Living Labs, compared to conventional demonstrations, creates an experiential environment in which stakeholders such as citizens, governments, industry and research, together aim at achieving a shared long-term goal. Thus, reducing conflicting interests, speeding up real-life developments and deployment of innovations. In this environment stakeholders, can co-design, explore, experience and refine new policies, regulations and logistics actions. This implies a process in which implementations are tried out, supported by dynamic prediction and evaluation tools, and the environment is adapted to make it work. Within this process barriers are directly dealt with to have a maximum impact. It is in this framework the CITYLAB implementations operate, supporting the aim to establish city logistics living labs.
The collaborative environment achieved from planning, implementing and evaluating the real-life CITYLAB implementations is a major leap forward from the traditional city logistics initiatives, where demonstrations aim to “prove” the functionality of a solution within a limited and temporary organisation. Because the Living Lab approach focus more on the city environment, CITYLAB achieves more than demonstrating the feasibility of a short-term test pilot, it also allows absorption by the city.
