How to create truly environmentally sustainable and socially just circular cities?

Key policy highlights

CE strategies in Amsterdam, Glasgow and Copenhagen focus on economic competitiveness and technological innovation and thus fail to address the full social, political, and ecological implications of a CE transition.

To improve social justice outcomes, circular cities should encourage policies that redistribute unused building stock (e.g. through speculation and vacancy taxes) and promote non-profit cooperatives (e.g. through public procurement practices).

To improve ecological outcomes, circular cities should establish policies that create compact multi-functional neighbourhoods and reduce the need for motorised transport, as well as policies that conserve and restore biodiversity.

To improve political legitimacy and equity, circular cities should democratise decision-making through various mechanisms, such as participatory budgeting processes and deliberative assemblies, that can determine the course of the circularity transition in an inclusive manner.

🌎 Despite the green credentials that the cities of Glasgow, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen have, their circularity policies are not as progressive as you might think. 🤔

🏙 By focusing on economic growth, technological innovation and competitiveness, their policies might actually increase resource use and socio-ecological impacts. 😬

🙈 These cities also do very little to reduce incumbent unsustainable industries and promote social justice and redistribution in a fair and equitable manner. 🦖

To address these limitations, we propose 4 key recommendations:

👨‍🔧 Circulating money, wealth, knowledge, and power throughout the local economy in democratic and redistributive manners by creating and supporting non-profit cooperative production, banking, and housing systems (of the social and solidarity economy). 👩‍🏭

🌿 Implement post-growth urban planning approaches by creating compact multi-functional neighbourhoods (with fair and widespread access to urban infrastructure and services), by redistributing and preventing the unfair and unsustainable accumulation of housing stock, and by conserving and restoring biodiversity. 🏞

✌ Fostering a socio-cultural transformation away from capitalist hyperconsumerism and hypercompetitiveness and towards slower, healthier, and more convivial ways of life through community-owned media sources, restrictions on advertisements, environmental education and promotion of non-materialist values and community ethics. 🌹

🙋‍♀️ Establishing and facilitating participatory mechanisms for the development, governance, and implementation of circularity policies (such as participatory budgeting processes, citizen assemblies and deliberative councils). 🙋‍♂️

For more information, see the open-access paper here: https://lnkd.in/eBYFViFH