Crowd-based city logistics

Cities are drivers of economic development, providing infrastructure to support countless activities and services. Today, the world's 750 biggest cities account for more than 57% of the global gross domestic product (GDP) and this number is expected to increase to 61% by 2030. More than half of the world's population lives in cities, or urban areas, and this share will continue to grow. Rapid urban growth has posed both challenges and opportunities for city planners, not least when it comes to the design of transportation and logistics systems for freight. But urbanization also fosters innovation and sharing, which have led to new models for organizing movement of goods within the city. In this chapter, we highlight one of these new models: crowd logistics. We define the characterizing features of crowd logistics, review applications of crowd-based services within urban environments, and discuss research opportunities in the area of crowd logistics.