Impact of Urbanization on Material Handling and Logistics

According to UN, as of 2014, the percentage of the world urban population was 54 percent, which is expected to increase to 66 percent come 2050. Increasing number of people in cities is inevitable and some additional terms and trends have already emerged to define these. Some of them are ‘Mega City’, ‘Mega Region’, ‘Mega Corridor’ and ‘Mega Slum’. There can be observed some problems in terms of logistics with the development of urbanization even at this stage. Therefore, analysis of urbanization on material handling and logistics and solution of it is a major concern of cities of today world.

It can be stated that some alternatives to traffic problems should be implemented not to slow down deliveries and extend lead times of orders while the number of delivery per unit time and region is increasing inevitably. There are some studies such as Multimodal Deliveries and Self-Monitoring Vehicles to overcome the difficulties of high increase rate of urbanization, but there also must be mentioned some limitations which cities offer because of mostly their physical structure. For example, city distribution centers face difficulties when they want to improve their capacity and ability because of insufficient infrastructure, high operating costs of warehouses and traffic congestion. The list can be extended to include inefficient energy consumption and lack of information sharing. Therefore, the alternatives need to solve these kinds of problems while they are being developed.