Urban population growth has permanently increased the commodity demands and freight flow within urban areas. The retail/postal industry is intent on finding appropriate internal approaches and a new business model to respond to the adverse impacts generated by urban freight activities. Usage of emerging transport modes is an efficient solution for these industries. Nevertheless, considerable research has paid less attention to the implementation status of distribution innovations, as well as to their suitability and application restrictions. Concurrently, a comprehensive consideration of various distribution innovations that operate together as a system is lacking. To this end, this paper adopted a literature review method and GE multifactorial analysis. Specifically, this paper reviewed the related articles that were published in the past six years (2013–2018) to define the concept of distribution innovations. In addition, we adopted the approach of GE multifactorial analysis to analyze the application status of distribution innovations from the perspective of academic research and company implementation. Following the suitability assessment and application of restriction analysis, we proposed the concept of sustainable inner-urban intermodal transport (SIUIT) for the retail/postal industry. This paper contributes to the sustainable urban freight literature by exploring possible future research directions of SIUIT.

This paper aims to construct a theoretical research framework for sustainable urban freight transport (SUFT) from the perspectives of future urban development and distribution innovations, and appropriate research methods are discussed, as well. Urban freight transport plays a critical role in the promotion of sustainable and livable cities. According to the literature review, considerable research on SUFT has focused on resolving some specific problems with a short-term perspective. The existence of an urban freight transport strategy is noted, which should be embedded in an overall sustainable development strategy with a long-term perspective (approximately 20–30 years). Nevertheless, considerable research has paid scant attention to the long-term planning of SUFT. Given this, this paper contributes to the closure of this gap. First, this paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) to highlight published papers involving foresight research within the past 16 years (2003–2018). This step contributes to the understanding of research methods that can be used in foresight research. Subsequently, this paper discusses the impacts of both urban development and distribution innovations on future SUFT, and these effects are used to select the appropriate methods to construct the theoretical research framework. Finally, the theoretical research framework of long-term planning for SUFT is developed on the basis of two future perspectives: the trends of urban development and the application of urban distribution innovations. This framework is intended to provide an approach to designing sustainable urban logistics, taking into account urban development and distribution innovations.