An essential part to align in-city and urban distribution with hinterland and international transport flows, is the establishment of locally organised independent City Hubs (neutral, independent from single transport operators – LSP’s, CEP & COP operators). City Hubs facilitate & coordinate distributed collaborative ecoSystems within densely populated city and urban areas. Combined across cities and national borders, they form an important ecoNetwork, through which they can standardise a number of operations and procedures, allowing larger shippers and LSP’s to operate in similar ways with same procedures across different cities. They have the following roles to ensure an efficient and smooth operations for e-commerce, retail, pharmaceuticals, hotels, restaurants, campuses, waste management, … as well as in-city deliveries of larger and heavy construction materials for the construction & renovation industry

• collaborating with city and/or region Urban Planning and policy makers at local and regional government authorities, such as on infrastructure requirements & improvements (main & micro hubs + street & route facilities, mobile hubs, parking areas, …),
• promoting the dialogue for organised and collaborative in-city & urban distribution by a diversity of CEP & CPO sectors
• realise Cities as Logistics Hubs for F/L-M and in-city distribution (deliveries, pick-ups and returns, reverse logistics, storage, and collaboration with CEP & CPO sectors)
• enable continuous growth of healthy e-commerce and in-city distribution of RMR & FGI , waste management and other services
• ensure efficient flows of goods and sourcing in and out of cities, from/to Long-Distance Multimodal Cross-border hinterland transportation for regional and international destinations & origins (sourcing) via DC’s, ports, and maritime transportation

The establishment of well-functioning city hubs, facilitate ecological awareness (e-commerce, delivery services and consumers), as well as operational efficiencies with important social, environmental, and economic impact across supply chain segments and transport modes for all actors and stakeholders.

• Physical internet (Pi – π): realising the physical & digital flow of goods moving in the supply chains, allowing for interoperability efficiencies & optimisation of goods in the operational flow
• Ecological Consciousness: physical & digital connectivity and services enable shippers, LSP’s (Logistic Service Providers), city hubs, receivers and any other supply chain actor and governmental authorities to calculate and positively influence and control the environmental footprint for any given operator and shipment / package between any legs in the supply chain segments.

SLP Alliance enables distributed collaborative ecoNetworks between shippers, LSP’s, City Hubs, City Hall, CEP & CPO service providers, enabling continuous growth and healthy e-commerce with in-city and urban distribution. This ensures efficient flows of goods and sourcing in and out of cities from/to hinterland and maritime transportation for regional & international destinations and origins.

The SLP Alliance commits to leverage results and products from the Open Logistics Foundation and EU federative platforms to:

• realise decentralised intelligent physical and digital standardised interconnectivity
• facilitate Open Distributed Technology with open API’s & FENIX Connectors based on EU Mobility Data Space , approved upon standards for data -elements & -models, and the semantic approach for trusted authorised data sharing by FEDeRATED , as well as proceedings set forth by EMSWe , eFTI4EU and future data sharing acts by the EU Commission
• leverage and contribute to products from global standard organisations, such as UNECE UN/CEFACT , GS1 , ISO, UPU, ASTM, CEN and GEFEG fx²⁴ .
  Several SLP Alliance members participate in and/or represent one or more of these organisations and initiatives.