City baseline card: Riga

Riga’s city baseline card discusses its unique challenges in integrating urban logistics within its UNESCO-protected historic city center. It highlights infrastructure gaps, regulatory uncertainties, and the absence of a defined urban logistics framework.

Riga’s case highlights the difficulty of advancing sustainable urban logistics in a city with both infrastructural gaps and heritage-related restrictions. The absence of a defined logistics framework, what counts as “urban logistics,” its boundaries, and regulatory scope, makes planning fragmented. Moreover, the lack of a logistics infrastructure network (e.g., no urban consolidation centre) limits the ability to test and scale new delivery models.

Challenges faced

The UNESCO-protected historical city centre restricts the ability to introduce new facilities or infrastructure.
Few existing logistics assets: Riga has no UCC and limited logistics service infrastructure.
Lack of clear definitions and regulations for the scope of urban logistics, making it difficult to design coherent policies.

Riga’s ambitions
Riga aims to create a comprehensive and interconnected urban logistics system that can:

Collect and use real-time data to monitor flows and understand the situation on the ground.
Provide a usable platform for businesses engaged in last-mile logistics.
Link actions directly to monitoring indicators to support data-driven policymaking.

Tools and approaches considered

Follow-up interest in multiple knowledge elements (KER2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12), indicating a strong focus on strategic planning and regulatory innovation.

Service 5: On-street loading zones planning tool.

Service 6: Active UVARs and City Regulations tool.