This paper provides a review of the current trends in city logistics and underlines the diversity in which urban freight distribution takes place. Urban freight distribution is prone to a wide array of externalities, namely congestion, pollution and community disruptions, which city logistics tries to mitigate. Based upon the main challenges that have been identified, the paper looks at the city logistics strategies and policies that have been implemented with various degrees of success. Since city logistics is dependent on the specific urban land use form, pattern and function in which it takes place, the paper suggests a typology to classify global cities by their city logistics systems and underlines the need for performance metrics.