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City is the place of the largest concentration of economic and social activities, and the delivery of goods is a prerequisite for the maintenance of urban life and business activities for achieving wealth and development of the city. Logistics systems and processes that enable the realization of commodity flows support employment and generate income, but may also have negative impacts on all essential functions of the city. Therefore, logistics plays an important role in the competitiveness of urban areas and should be an integral part of the city's economy. From the perspective of sustainable development, i.e. social, environmental and economic efficiency, logistics processes primarily urban freight transport, are far from optimal. The growth of road freight transport and traffic congestion, air pollution and other negative impacts on the environment, inefficient use of land and the rising costs of delivery of goods affect the definition and exploration of different initiatives of city logistics. This paper describes the initiatives that do not require large infrastructure investments and do not change the existing urban context, but can improve its sustainability.

City logistics is a field that attracts increasing attention of professionals and scientific community and international organizations. Research on problems of urban areas' logistics gives different results and practical solutions. City logistics flows are characterized by partiality, spatial dispersion of generators, diversity in terms of the logistics chains structure, frequency of a large number of smaller shipments, dynamism, stochasticity etc. Problems and the complexity of logistics in urban areas as well as significant decline in the quality of life in modern cities have caused the development of initiatives and concepts of city logistics which should allow the sustainable development of urban areas. The first part of this paper presents the problems of city logistics and impact of logistics activities on urban areas in terms of economic, environmental and social sustainability. The second part presents city logistics initiatives that involve the change of urban area context, in order to improve its sustainability.