The 4th VREF Conference on Urban Freight presented current issues influencing urban freight research and discuss the interactions between planning, design and business to achieve scalable innovations in the management of urban freight flows that support the goal of achieving liveable cities. The central topic of the 4th VREF Conference was Urban freight and liveable cities: Interactions between planning, design and business for scalable innovations.
The conference helped to maintain and extend the network of urban freight researchers which has become increasingly international. This version of the VREF conference had more than 80 parallel presentations with research contributions about urban freight from over 20 countries.
The Urban Freight Platform (UFP) is an initiative supported by Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF) on urban freight research based in Gothenburg, Sweden. The UFP works as a facilitator of academic research on urban freight within the context of the logistics competence centre Northern LEAD at University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology.
This year the conference has received support from ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability that led two plenary sessions: one workshop featuring the launch of the EcoLogistics Report 2021 with high-level speakers and one roundtable on improving last-mile deliveries. ICLEI is a global network of more than 1,750 local and regional governments committed to sustainable urban development.