This traditional conceptualisation of a UCC is shown above in Figure 2. To better define a UCC for our needs we adopted the following definition of a compulsory centre.

“A compulsory urban consolidation centre (CUCC) is a logistics facility that is situated in relative proximity to the geographic area that it serves, be that a city centre, an entire town, or a specific site, from which consolidated deliveries are carried out within that area. All logistics companies or a subset defined by types of vehicle, goods or timing, with deliveries scheduled for the urban area or site are required to deliver their loads to the CUCC and thereby avoid entering the congested area. The CUCC operator sorts and consolidates the loads from some logistics companies and delivers them to an agreed delivery pattern.”

This fits well with the definition in the Gear Change document: “small historic city centres with narrow and crowded streets [...] compulsory freight consolidation schemes, which seek to ensure that all deliveries (except perishables and items which require specialist carriers) are made to consolidation centres on the edge of the city centre, or the edge of the city, then taken to their final destinations in a far smaller number of vehicles, including cargo bikes and electric vans wherever possible.”

UCCs cannot be viewed and studied in isolation, but rather in the context of the entirety of supply chains that typically cross the geographical boundaries of urban areas. This review shows that there has been almost no account taken of the wider pre-existing supply chain networks, both between cities and over the last mile.

There are few examples of compulsory consolidation centres reported in any of the literature. The primary examples of a compulsory consolidation centre are:

Direct legal regulation: Monaco Vicenza

Controlled Territory: Monaco CC Heathrow CC The Houses of Parliament MOD Inbound Logistic Centres

Receiver procurement led consolidation: London Borough CC Newcastle University CC Swedish Municipal co-distribution

Construction consolidation centres: Potsdamer Platz Hammarsby Sjöstad The University of Amsterdam Utrecht guidance London CCCs

This semi-systematic review covering academic, expert, project, governmental and ‘grey’ literature strongly suggests that the top-down compulsory imposition of an Urban Consolidation Centre (UCC) works only in clearly controlled domains, and only two cities have made this a direct legal regulation, Vicenza, and Monaco. Vicenza was resisted strongly by local and global carriers acting as one. After two court cases the city’s approach was (more or less) upheld by the supreme court in Italy; it was not challenged at the EU level; the global carriers are reported to have stated they will oppose such a scheme again anywhere. Despite the judgement holding precedence for Italy, no other Italian cities have tried such a model. [51–53]