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Circle Economy and ICLEI have partnered up to initiate the go to knowledge hub of case studies about the circular economy in cities. The Cities Collection is a repository of case studies that demonstrate the role of cities in the circular transition, and includes policies, business cases and research articles. Cases in the Collection flow into an ecosystem of digital products which support users in transitioning cities to circularity, for example [Ganbatte](https://ganbatte.world/cities/) and <a href="https://circulars.iclei.org/" target="_blank">ICLEI Circulars</a>, both part of the <a href="https://circulars.iclei.org/circle-lab-for-cities/" target = _blank">Circle Lab for Cities Programme.</a>

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Circular Cities

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Business case

Impact on the availability of resources as well as their effect on living organisms, ecosystems, and components of the environment.

Ecological Impact

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

Providing public and private education and support services at any level or for any profession, and governmental and public administration services, including judicial, regulatory, and legislative activities, taxation, defence, public order and safety, immigration services, foreign affairs and the administration of government programmes

Education and Government Services

Producing transportation equipment for the movement of goods and people by air, rail, sea, and land, including airplanes, spacecraft and military equipment, ships, boats, rail locomotives and rolling stock, motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers, and related equipment, as well as repair services for such equipment

Transportation Equipment

Ensure renewable, reusable, non-toxic resources are utilised as materials and energy in an efficient way

Prioritise regenerative resources

Replace energy sources with less impactful alternatives and enact energy efficiency measures

Regenerative energy

Converting fossil fuel based operations to electric

Electrification

Other

'Manage' influences the use and function of physical and material elements within the urban environment. 

Manage

Infrastructure

Develop regenerative infrastructure

Develop infrastructure to support sustainable lifestyles

**Harmonize with nature** by promoting infrastructure, production systems and sourcing that allows natural ecosystems to thrive




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Regenerate

Prioritize solutions that use the power of functioning ecosystems as infrastructure to provide natural services to benefit society and the environment; consider nature-based replacements for grey infrastructure.

Prioritise renewable resources 

The demand for transport is rising globally—but current modes are heavily material- and fossil-fuels-intensive. Emissions from the transport system could grow by 60% by 2050, and transport is the number-one user of oil worldwide. GHG emissions result not only in warming global temperatures, but also in ocean acidification, which has severe consequences for entire ecosystems and further destabilises our climate. The transport system also drives land-use change and biodiversity loss through the development of infrastructure—also releasing harmful pollutants into the ocean. Key circular solutions:

- Embrace and enable car-free lifestyles
- Invest in high-quality public transport
- Rethink unnecessary air travel
- Electrify remaining vehicles

🚌 Mobility Systems

Businesses

Governments

Regenerate strategies phase out hazardous or toxic materials and processes and substitute them with regenerative biomass resources. A circular economy aims to mimic natural cycles—by shifting to more regenerative farming practices, for example—while also maximising the share of circular biomass that enters the economy. Regeneration can happen both at the systems level (by designing regenerative processes) as well as at the product level (by switching synthetic to organic fertilisers, for example).

Impacts

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Industries

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A framework of policy instruments that enabled and encourage the transition to the circular economy

Policies

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A framework of policy instruments that enable and stimulate the transition to the circular economy

The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

Urban Opportunities

The Circular City Actions Framework provides urban changemakers with five complementary strategies they can use to start working towards a more circular system. 

The framework is action-based to provide users with concrete strategic directions and showcase the desired outcomes of each strategy. 
The framework consists of five complementary **strategies**, under which **sub-strategies** provide further detail. Finally, each sub-strategy consists of a diversity of tangible **solutions** which are framed in relation to key thematic areas. 

Note: solutions are currently focused on:
- 🍏 **Food systems**
- 🏢  **Built environment**
- 👕📱  **Consumer goods**
- ⚡ **Energy Systems**
- 🚌 **Mobility Systems**
- 💧 **Water Systems**

More thematic areas are coming soon...

'Click through each of the five strategy cards below to explore the framework and circular economy case studies in more depth!'



This framework was developed in collaboration with ICLEI, Metabolic and Ellen MacArthur Foundation with support from the MAVA Foundation. Read more about it [here]( https://circulars.iclei.org/action-framework/). 



Circular City Actions Framework

An action-based framework for local governments working towards circular cities

Thematic Areas

City Stakeholders

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Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

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Amsterdam

The City of Amsterdam now has the highest density of vehicle charging stations in the world, passing the 1,000 milestone in 2014 with an aim of 4,000 in operation by 2018. The city also hosts the world’s first fully electric taxi company and introduced a subsidy scheme that has helped get 750 vehicles on the road Read more at:

Electrification of city mobility

Impact on the ease of innovation, and facilitating uptake of innovations

Innovation

Operating networks and software that enable the exchange and broadcasting of information, such as entertainment and internet software, television, cable, satellite or radio broadcasting systems, and cellular, wireless and/or fixed-line telecommunications services

Software and Communications

Providing air, water, rail, and land transportation and related services for the distribution of goods, such as air freight, air courier and logistics services, maritime freight, marine courier and logistics services, rail freight, rail courier and logistics services, land freight, land courier and logistics services, including package and mail delivery and customs agents, as well as storage and warehouse facilities

Logistics Services

Employing artificial algorithms and robotics to identify, enable and/or implement circular strategies (eg. effective resource use & logistics planning, circular business models & design)

Advanced robotics, artificial intelligence

Utilising data and models to to identify, enable and/or implement circular strategies (eg. effective resource use & logistics planning, circular business models & design)

Data analytics, modelling

Connecting products and services into the internet of things to identify, enable and/or implement circular strategies (eg. effective resource use & logistics planning, circular business models & design)

Internet enabled, connected operations

Installing sensors to gather data from products and services to identify, enable and/or implement circular strategies (eg. effective resource use & logistics planning, circular business models & design)

Sensors, monitoring systems

Developing or utilising online platforms to enable circular economy opportunities through information, product or service offering

Online platforms

MIT has signed an agreement to engage in research collaborations with the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) in the Netherlands. The collaboration’s flagship project, led by researchers from multiple departments at MIT, will be to develop a fleet of autonomous boats for the city’s canals.
Based in Amsterdam, the AMS Institute brings together a consortium of public and private partners to tackle complex urban challenges such as water, energy, waste, food, data, and mobility. MIT joins with two research institutions in the Netherlands — the Delft University of Technology and Wageningen University and Research Center — as the core academic partners who will use the city as a living laboratory and test bed.
An interdisciplinary team from MIT has assembled to lead the collaboration’s first project: ROBOAT, an effort to develop a fleet of autonomous boats, or “roboats,” to investigate how urban waterways can be used to improve the city’s function and quality of life.
The ROBOAT project will develop a logistics platform for people and goods, superimposing a dynamic infrastructure over one the world’s most famous water cities. “This project imagines a fleet of autonomous boats for the transportation of goods and people that can also cooperate to produce temporary floating infrastructure, such as on-demand bridges or stages that can be assembled or disassembled in a matter of hours,” says Carlo Ratti, professor of the practice of urban technologies in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP).
In addition to infrastructure and transport, ROBOAT will also deploy environmental sensing to monitor water quality and offer data for assessing and predicting issues related to public health, pollution, and the environment. “Water is the bearer of life. By focusing on the water system of the city, ROBOAT can create opportunities for new environmental sensing methods and climate adaptation. This will help secure the city’s quality of life and lasting functionality,” says Arjan van Timmeren, professor and scientific director at AMS, who also envisions a multitude of possibilities for a network of roboats, from real-time sensing similar to the MIT Underworlds project to retrieving the 12,000 bicycles or cleaning up the floating waste that ends up in the Dutch city’s canals each year.
Joining Ratti from MIT as co-principal investigators are Daniela Rus, professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); Andrew Whittle, the Edmund K. Turner Professor in Civil Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; and Dennis Frenchman, the Class of 1922 Professor of Urban Design and Planning and director of the DesignX program in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning.
At AMS, Van Timmeren and Stephan van Dijk, research program manager, will coordinate the involvement of another 12 groups of researchers from TU Delft and Wageningen UR. Along with the City of Amsterdam, Waternet, the public water utility of Amsterdam and surrounding areas, will participate in the research.
The first prototypes of autonomous boats, or “roboats,” are expected to be tested in Amsterdam in 2017. The project’s initial phase will last for five years. 
With nearly one-quarter of the city covered by water, Amsterdam is an ideal place for developing ROBOAT, according to the researchers. The canal system was once the key functional urban infrastructure of the city and today still plays a major role in recreation and tourism. Amsterdam’s waters, including bridges, canals, and the IJ river and its docks, offer plenty of opportunity to help solve current issues with transportation, mobility, and water quality.
With 80 percent of global economic output generated around coasts, riverbanks, and deltas and 60 percent of the world population living in these areas, researchers anticipate that outcomes from the ROBOAT projects could become a reference for other urban areas around the world and a source of international entrepreneurial initiatives and start-ups in which autonomy enters the marine world.


Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Roboat is a 5 year research project and collaboration between the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The ROBOAT project will develop a logistics platform for people and goods, superimposing a dynamic infrastructure over one the world's most famous water cities. The project imagines a fleet of autonomous boats for the transportation of goods and people that can also cooperate to produce temporary floating infrastructure, such as on-demand bridges or stages that can be assembled or disassembled in a matter of hours. In addition to infrastructure and transport, ROBOAT will also deploy environmental sensing to monitor water quality and offer data for assessing and predicting issues related to public health, pollution, and the environment. Read more at:

Autonomous boats

Policy case

Scalability

Minimise waste through diversion: Instead of sending waste to landfill, it is redirected into other industrial processes for handling, treatment, recycling, recovery, or reuse in various forms. 

Minimise waste through design: At the outset of a process of project, plan and design such that there is zero waste or minimal waste during production, use, and at end of life. 

Minimise Waste (SDG12)

Providing specialist services to support consumers, businesses, andgovernments

Professional Services

Utilise waste streams as a source of secondary resources and recover waste for reuse and recycling

Use waste as a resource

Use digital, online platforms and technologies that provide insights to track and optimise resource use, strengthen connections between supply chain actors, and enable the implementation of circular models



Incorporate digital technology

'Inform' increases the overall levels of awareness and builds the necessary skills and knowledge around the circular economy to foster long-term change.

Inform

Data, knowledge & information sharing

 Develop research, structure knowledge, encourage innovation networks and disseminate findings with integrity


Strengthen and advance knowledge

Redesign systems to lay the foundation for circular activities and enable the transition to a circular economy 

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Rethink

Includes a variety of actions (e.g. campaigns, information sharing, public events) that encourage city residents and visitors to build sustainable practices into their daily lives

Enable sustainable lifestyles

Cycle strategies aim to cycle and reuse materials at their highest value: they maximise the volume of secondary materials re-entering the economy, ultimately minimising the need for virgin material inputs and therefore also narrowing flows. Of course, virgin materials will always be needed to a degree: all materials degrade and can’t be cycled infinitely, use energy, and require blending with virgin materials to maintain strength and functionality.

Cycle

  Metabolic delivered a number of recommendations, including the need for more data on building materials in the city for urban mining, and a combination of a top-down and bottom-up data collection approach. Following on from this, Metabolic and the MRA are continuing to implement circular solutions, such as monitoring of e-waste.  

Metabolic’s overarching mission is to transition the global economy to a fundamentally sustainable state.

A new economic model is necessary: one that ensures the wellbeing of all people and allows organizations to thrive without transgressing the safe boundaries of the earth’s natural systems.  And we don’t have much time. Metabolic advises governments, businesses, and NGOs on how to adapt to a fast-changing global context, while creating disruptive solutions that can dramatically shift how the economy functions. We crunch data, provide strategies and tools, build pilots, and create new ventures that develop scalable solutions to critical problems. Core to achieving our mission is the transition to an economy that is regenerative and ‘circular’ by design.

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Metabolic 

The city of Amsterdam and its Metropolitan Area, together with Metabolic, developed a monitoring framework to track progress towards a circular economy. This framework consists of three pillars of indicators: primary indicators provide insight in the raw material use of a region; dashboard indicators cover issues such as recycling, energy and biodiversity; transition indicators reflect the degree of institutional renewal of this system.

Developing a monitoring framework to track progress

Amsterdam is one of the few cities in the Netherlands with a network of air
quality monitoring points in the city. Data gathered from these points
analysed to provide extensive information to authorities and residents.
Improving and ensuring air quality is of crucial importance for the city of
Amsterdam since air pollution is the third biggest health risk after smoking
and the combination of bad diet and sedentary lifestyle. It is estimated that
due to air pollution life expectancy for Amsterdam residents is reduced by one
year.



Read more at:

<https://www.amsterdam.nl/parkeren-verkeer/luchtkwaliteit/luchtkwaliteit-
buurt/>