INTRODUCTION

\label{introduction}
The increasing process of urbanization worldwide leads to higher levels of transport activity related to cargo distribution and service provision. This phenomenon may generate social, environmental and economic impacts, mainly related to traffic congestion and noise, pollutants and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, as well as a greater risk of traffic accidents (Mckinnon et al., 2010; Oliveira et al., 2015; Muñoz-Villamizar et al., 2017). In order to mitigate these effects, cities need to advance their transformations and allow the innovative exploration of urban freight operations, especially in relation to the development of new technologies (Bjorklund and Gustafsson, 2015) and stimulating the adoption of eletric vehicles (Rezvani et al., 2015; Weiss et al., 2015).
Moreover, the consequence of these problems is potentialized in the last mile distribution. Besides, it is in this stage that the largest share of the logistic cost is evidenced (Roumboutsos et al., 2014). Therefore, suppliers and stakeholders are encouraged to minimize their transport costs while attempting to reduce the social, environmental and economic impact of their operations, meanwhile maintaining a satisfactory level of service (Rodrigues et al., 2015). Consequently, they quest for solutions through a greater cooperation and integration of their activities, adopting new technologies and resources efficiently (Steadieseifi et al., 2014).
According to the Urban Freight Research Roadmap (ALICE / ERTRAC Urban mobility WG, 2015), the future of urban cargo transportation will be influenced by the advent of new technologies, and thus it becomes essential to develop strategic initiatives and researches which contribute for a better understanding of this phenomenon, as well as for identifying opportunities in this field of knowledge. In this context, this paper aims to identify, through a systematic literature review, new forms of operations and technologies in urban freight transport, especially identifying the main type of vehicles used for the last mile distribution of urban freight. The secondary objectives of the paper include identifying the main characteristics of these vehicles, the barriers, opportunities and benefits (economic, social and environmental) related to their use, as well as the range of the distribution operation.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The next section details the methodology and research protocol used for the systematic literature review. Section 3 presents the systematic analysis of the literature that is consistent with the proposed research protocol, with emphasis on the planning, execution and disclosure stages. Section 4 presents the analysis of the results and a theoretical discussion. Finally, in Section 5, the conclusions, limitations and recommendations for future studies are presented, as well as highlights of the research path moving forward.