Given the great importance of urban systems for economic growth and development, the demand for urban logistics and transportation has increased significantly in recent years, favouring the development of just-in-time concepts and gradually expanding into complex supply chain networks. However, urban logistics has widely known operational efficiency issues, such as fragmented flows of goods, a high frequency of deliveries, short delivery times, and a high level of uncertainty regarding demands and returns. Urban logistics accounts for 40% of all CO 2 emissions from road transport and up to 70% of other pollutants from the transport sector, revealing patterns that are not sustainable. Therefore, collaboration between various logistics service providers, technology providers, retailers, urban planners, policy makers and consumers is needed to jointly design urban logistics solutions that best meet the needs of future businesses, consumer demand and urban planning concepts. At the same time, this will generate sustainability effects along supply chain networks to create an innovative urban logistics ecosystem, transforming entire urban systems. The overall goal of this sustainability transformation is to co-design and implement a sustainable, resilient, smart and connected urban logistics and mobility system of the future, which integrates society’s regional and global food, energy and mobility supply mechanisms by aligning the interests and needs of business, the political sphere and civil society. Therefore, a clear focus should be placed on the interactions between different disciplines to establish a holistic innovation ecosystem in urban logistics at strategic, tactical and operational levels. To this end, the Centre for Logistics and Traffic (ZLV) has defined five major thematic clusters to identify research areas for the transformation of urban logistics ecosystems: (1) innovative smart and sustainable urban logistics ecosystems, (2) urban supply chains, (3) sustainable urban governance, (4) circular economy, and (5) digital technologies and their application potential in the logistics sector. Not only are these fields, which are strategically important for an integrated urban logistics ecosystem, jointly approached from an academic perspective, but realistic solutions are also being designed and implemented with the ZLV’s network of political and industrial decision-makers.