Interaction with City Logistics Stakeholders as a Factor of the Development of Polish Cities on the Way to Becoming Smart Cities

Abstract

The growing population of cities means that they face many new challenges in improving their economic, social and environmental efficiency. These themes are relevant to the increasingly popular worldwide concept of smart cities. A smart city is a city that is friendly to people and the environment, in which people live better, safer, and healthier. From the point of view of management sciences, they are a result of creative development and the implementation of various solutions that should involve various stakeholders. The quality of life of city residents is largely influenced by logistics solutions, including the movement of both people and cargo in the city. This issue is directly relevant to the aim of this article, which is to try to determine the degree of cooperation between the city and city logistics stakeholders in the context of identifying gaps in the inclusion of logistics areas in the strategies of Polish cities. Both the role of stakeholders in actively shaping city strategies and the inclusion of logistics aspects in strategies are areas discussed in recent years in the literature in the context of smart cities. Our approach combines these two areas by pointing to their importance in the development of cities towards smart cities. In our stakeholder research, we focus on city logistics stakeholders, as the identified gaps in strategies relate only to logistics aspects. We conduct our research in Polish cities. In assessing the cooperation of Polish cities with their stakeholders and identifying gaps in the inclusion of logistic aspects in the strategies, we used an original questionnaire that allowed us to survey 280 Polish cities. To analyse the stakeholders we used statistics. To analyse the questionnaires, we used descriptive statistics, while gaps were identified by relating the results to the developed template. Both the problem of gaps and the problem of stakeholders were also considered on a voivodeship scale. The research results indicated a low level of cooperation between local authorities and key city logistics stakeholders. Moreover, logistic aspects were found to be insufficiently included in the city strategies of Polish cities (a high level of gaps was identified for most of the examined areas). This indicates the low awareness of local authorities regarding the shaping of cities’ logistics systems and a lack of activity in this area. The results provide city managers with information on how to develop cooperation with stakeholders and which logistic areas to include in the formulated strategies. Undertaking these actions is a condition for the development of Polish cities towards the “smart city” concept.