**1. Introduction**

The city logistics has become an important development in urban freight development. With the numbers of trucks keep on increasing, the congestions become much worst and the environment also become deteriorate. City logistics enable to achieve the efficiency of delivery system in the city center. One of the main focus of city logistics is sustainability. Green logistics and reverse logistics are the main focus of the concept. City logistics need to serve varieties of customers which stays in different kind of environments. Other types of facilities available in the cities also need to serve. The complexity of city environment has made the logistics services much more complicated and difficult to arrange [1]. Delivering perishables item to the city center would require the delivery being done in a short period of time. Frequent and adequate delivery services must be made available to ensure that the citizen can be served properly. Logistics delivery in the cities need to adhere to the restriction of truck movement during a specified time. Even though such regulation may restrict the delivery process, but it needs to take into considerations for the logistics delivery to be much more efficient and effective. City logistics have to plan strategically in order to achieve the economic gain in sustaining the environmental aspects of the cities.

In 2020, the urban world populations are 56%. More than half of the world populations is residing in the city area. Almost 68% of the upper middle-income group is staying in the urban area. European Union enjoy among the highest population in the urban area with 81% of its populations. However, in developing countries, the populations that lives in the urban areas is around 35–45% of the populations are residing in the urban areas. The world bank data shown that many people are preferring to stay in the urban area hence the city logistics has become important to fulfill the needs of its residents [2]. The rapid growth of cities in the world has contributed towards the increase challenges in logistics operations. It was argued the big cities population has made the logistics operations much more difficult than other cities [3].

## **2. Actors in city logistics**

Actors involve in city logistics can be categorized as follows: (a) shippers, (b) freight carriers, (c) receivers (d) residents, (e) other road users and (f) administrators [4]. The actors can be further divided into private and public sector. The public sector usually is the government administrators either the national or local government. The shippers, freight carries and residents can be considered as the private group [5]. Each of these actors has their own interest and responsibilities. There are differences between these actors and it need to be considered in planning for the city logistics activities. Shippers can be categorized as retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers. Shippers would require a high frequency of deliveries in order to meet the objectives of the company. In order to meet the objectives, shippers would require a quality service from the freight carriers. Shippers would inform the required delivery time however the service providers would determine the timing and routing for the delivery. The service providers need to consider many factors especially the delivery windows set by the receivers and also to adhere any restrictions imposed in the city center. It is a complex task for the service providers since they have to fulfill the needs of both suppliers and also the receivers [6]. The service provider would focus on reducing the operating costs while making any delivering and collecting of cargo in the city center. Even though obtaining a high profit might be the main objectives of services providers, they would not compromise with the service quality provided to their customers. The citizen who stays in the cities would definitely would like to experience less trucks operations in the city thus would be able to reduce the congestions and also the pollution in the cities. The citizen would love to control the externalities for a sustainable city. The receivers would set an agreement with the service providers in determining the time for delivery to their premises. The main determination of the receivers is to receive the goods on time, with reliable, cheap safe and door to door service. The government need to establish policies that not only acceptable to the citizen but also to the shippers and also service providers. The government have to consider all the actors before implementing those policies since it would have impact to the actors. On the hand, the actors and the government involve have to work together to ensure that the city logistics operations would be at the acceptable level of service and costs, so that it would remain competitive and also sustainable for the cities. Addressing the environmental impact such as congestions and pollution need to be the main concern of the actors in ensuring a sustainable city logistics operation.

The main focus for every actor in relation to the city logistics are totally different form one and another since every approach taken have contribute to the logistics activities [7]. The public sector main focus would to reduce the pollution, congestions and also to improve the road safety in the city centre since many freight vehicles moves in the city [8]. The shippers would focus on service efficiency and reliability [9]. As for the receivers in the city center mainly would

#### *Sustainable and Efficient City Logistics DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104413*

like to have a comfortable and sustainable living environment with less hassle in moving in the city. The freight carriers need to reduce the cost of the deliveries and at the same time developing new distribution network for more efficient operations [10].

With the different stakeholders in the city logistics operations, it is important to discuss the objectives while planning for city logistics operations. The objectives can be divided into (a) public objectives and (b) private objectives [11]. The public objectives are concerned in ensuring the public needs are being taken care and the city logistics operations would affects their quality of life. The public objectives also looking into the economics sustainability. The private objectives which usually covers the need of the shipplers and service providers would be focusing on the operations efficiency and also ensuring the they would be albe to increase their profits. The different objectives have made it difficult to developed a policy which would fulfill the interests of all stakeholders [12]. To develop the right strategies, all the stakeholders have to work together in finding and implementing strategies that would benefits all stakeholders. They must be involved in every stage of strategies development so that whatever understanding and concern they have can be embedded in the strategies. By working together, the public and private objectives can be comprehended to ensure the urban mobility environmental sustainability and economic sustainability can be achieved. The stakeholders have an effect towards each other. Hence it is critical to ensure the balance between the different requirement of each actor.
