Co-producing Transitions Towards Circular Cities and Regions

Description

Circular Economy is a new sustainability paradigm, involving a shift away from linear make-make-waste economic model, generating excessive carbon emissions. Circular economy promises not only to reduce waste generation and materials consumption, but also to contribute to efforts to mitigate climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Consequently, urban circularity policies and strategies are emerging across the world. However, they tend overlook the spatial implications of ‘going circular’ and the potentials that circular economy brings to rethink regional and urban economies, regenerate degraded urban and peri-urban areas, and promote social cohesion and bottom-up community activity. There is thus an urgent need to debate the role of spatial planning in facilitating urban and regional circular economy transitions and identifying the opportunities, challenges, leaders and catalysts for this change.

Building on the ongoing Policy Expo project “Going circular: unlocking the potential of regions and cities to drive the circular economy transition”, funded by the Regional Studies Association, this session proposed a stimulating roundtable discussion and co- creative engagement of the audience to bridge those gaps. The audience was actively engaged in a debate with six storytellers representing different disciplines, from both academia and practice. The focus was on the spatial needs and impacts of circular economy; questions around governance, planning and policy levers; and means to bring about societal shifts and seize the potentials of circular economy to drive urban sustainability transitions. The interactive part of the session aimed at generating stimulating ideas to promote circularity and identifying circular innovations from diverse locations.

Period	5 Oct 2022
Event title	58th ISOCARP World Planning Congress
Event type	Conference
Location	Brussels, BelgiumShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International