Development of an urban typology framework for supporting sustainable freight planning: A case of Japanese municipalities

As the logistics environment changes dramatically in cities around the world, various freight-related issues have emerged. To address these issues, responses from the public sector are becoming increasingly important, especially at the local government level. However, knowledge and experience in urban freight/city logistics have not been sufficiently accumulated at the local level, making it challenging to address local freight-related problems. In this paper, we present an urban freight typology based on data from 688 local government units across seven metropolitan areas in Japan. Unlike previous typology studies that primarily rely on fine spatial units and estimated freight demand indicators, the proposed framework adopts a municipality-level perspective and incorporates observed freight demand data alongside socio-economic, land-use, and transport system characteristics. Using factor analysis and an agglomerative clustering approach, we identify seven urban freight factors and nine clusters. The results confirm that each cluster effectively captures freight characteristics specific to local governments. Furthermore, to demonstrate the practicability of the proposed typology, we analyze the relationship between clusters and vehicle stop frequencies, and, using the case of the Kanto metropolitan area, identify clusters preferred for locating extremely large logistics facilities. Statistical validation showed that the typology explains substantial variation in vehicle stop density and the spatial distribution of large-scale logistics facilities, supporting its usefulness for freight planning and policy analysis.