The Guide for Circular Cities contains a circular city implementation framework that is designed to improve circularity in cities and support stakeholders in implementing circular actions. The framework consists of a four-step methodology that provides a consistent method for assessing, prioritising and catalysing different circular actions. This deliverable is developed in response to the growing sustainability challenges that cities are facing and the emergence of the circular economy concept and its applicability and extension in the city setting. 

The Guide starts with an assessment of the main developmental and sustainability challenges that cities are facing and the ways in which the concept of circular economy can be extended beyond the economic sphere and be applied to different city assets.

It further defines key components of the circular city implementation framework. These components include: city assets and products (i.e. various city infrastructures, city resources, city goods and services available for use in a city); circular city actions (i.e. outcome-orientated actions that can be applied to city assets and products); circular city outputs (i.e. the outputs of circular city actions applied to city assets and products); and circular city enablers (i.e. complementary activities which support or accelerate implementation of circular city actions). Each of these components contains different quality and potential for facilitating circularity in cities. The interactions between these components form the basis of the circular city implementation framework.

Finally, the Guide explains the circular city implementation framework. This framework utilizes four different steps to assist city stakeholders in enacting circular actions. The first step is to establish a baseline for circularity. The second step is to determine the potential of circularity in different assets and to prioritize circular actions based on the availability resources. The third step is to apply city enablers to catalyse different circular actions. The last step is to evaluate the impacts of these actions.

Cities are invited to use this Guide to identify a course of action for improving circularity. The Guide also includes practical recommendations for preparing circular city actions and their implementation. The Guide is complemented with 17 case studies that illustrate the application of the circularity concept based on experiences from cities around the world.