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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

Impacts on the social fabric of the community and well-being of the individuals and families.

Social Impact

Impacts on the financial condition of a company, as well as the the economicconditions of its stakeholders and on economic systems at local, national, andglobal levels.

Economic Impact

Impact on the quantity or quality of jobs, and shifts in the labour market

Jobs

Impact on the health and happiness of human populations

Well-being

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

Innovation

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

Societal Services

Producing building materials and providing services to create residential and non-residential infrastructure and real estate


Construction and Infrastructure

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

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

Prioritise regenerative resources

Work together throughout the supply chain, internally within organisations and with the public sector and communities to increase transparency and create joint value

Team up to create joint value

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

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

Regenerative energy

Industry peers to industry peer collaboration to create joint value and identify synergies

Industry collaboration

Employ technologies to gather and analyse data to provide insights on resource use

Data and insights

Putting in place purchasing guidelines for procurement departments and evaluating suppliers on circular economy principles

Circular procurement

Engaging in discussions with industry stakeholders to share circular economy best practices and push the industry towards greater circularity

Guidance, dialogue with industry stakeholders

Participating in government programmes that support and advance the circular economy

Government programmes

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

Other

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

Manage

Infrastructure

Develop infrastructure to support sustainable lifestyles

 Spatial Planning

Living labs

Compact city development

Do better with less by using and supporting infrastructure, processes and products that are designed to minimize material, water and energy use and waste generation from production to end of use


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Reduce

Ensure that infrastructure and built assets in the city are designed and upgraded to be as resource-efficient as possible.

Design infrastructure and the built environment for resource efficiency

Put enablers in place that allow circular businessesto grow, thrive and innovate (e.g. incubators, start-up funding, partnerships, innovation deals, business capacity building and testing groundsfor new business models).


Support circular and resource-efficient business innovations

Cities consume about 75% of global energy and emit between 50% and 60% of global greenhouse gases (UN-Habitat). To reduce the negative impact of their energy consumption, cities need to shift away from fossil fuels and move towards renewable energy sources. Such a shift will help cities work towards their climate change mitigation and adaptation action plans. Renewable energy technologies such as wind, water, solar, and geothermal can also help improve access to energy in vulnerable and marginalised neighbourhoods through, for example, decentralised, off-grid solutions.

Renewable energy technologies can harvest the energy in nature’s processes, such as wind, and solar radiation and geothermal heat, that can be replenished within a human lifespan. In contrast, fossil fuels are materials that are not replenished within a human lifespan and are combusted for energy, losing the fuel material and resulting in emissions.

Local governments can develop sustainable energy plans, considering different energy resources and requirements, to develop a robust strategy for the development of renewable energy technologies and infrastructure throughout the city. They can also institute specific legislation and tax systems to regulate energy production and consumption, incentivise research and development of cleaner, more efficient technologies. Via Power Purchase Agreements cities can buy renewable energy from green energy providers and fix the price in order to provide security to financial institutions to finance renewable energy infrastructure. Furthermore, increasing awareness and facilitating capacity-building on planning urban sustainable energy projects can help the uptake of clean energy across the city by different stakeholders—from citizens to businesses and institutions. Facilitating collaboration, then, will be crucial, since private companies operate most of the world’s energy systems.


⚡ Energy Systems

The built environment, including housing, commercial buildings, and the necessary infrastructure for mobility, is essential for our livelihoods, but:
- the extraction of minerals used to produce construction materials is responsible for a quarter of global land use change,
- approximately 40% of global GHG emissions can be attributed to buildings’ construction, use and demolition, and
- construction and demolition processes drive nearly one-third of all material consumption. 

Making the built environment more circular must prioritise a heavy reduction in material use—while also closing the loop on materials and bringing secondary and renewable material choices to the fore. Our four key solutions for the built environment are:
- Make the most of what already exists: Make the most of existing materials by reusing, repurposing, upgrading and renovating following circular approaches. Where new builds are needed, use secondary materials and be as efficient as possible with urban planning solutions that follow circular design principles so that buildings can be reused, repurposed, and easily disassembled in the future.
- Be as energy efficient as possible: From the design phase, utilise circular strategies to create material- and energy efficient buildings. Couple these designs with a rollout of clean energy solutions, and prioritise energy-efficient appliances and retrofitting. 
- Utilise secondary materials: Maximise the high-value reuse of buildings and components where possible. Ideally, enable the utilisation of construction and demolition outputs and ensure that as much of it as possible is recycled to avoid the need for virgin materials, such as sand and gravel.
- Prioritise circular materials and approaches: Transition to using renewable wood, timber or cross-laminated timber instead of steel and concrete, or move to other locally available materials. Utilise mainstream modular construction and prioritise lightweight frames and structures to reduce cement and steel use, as well as green roofs where possible.



🏢 Built Environment

Businesses

Governments

Circular solutions do not occur by themselves, they require innovative businesses, multi-stakeholder collaboration and an enabling regulatory environment.

Circular and resource-efficient ecosystems are networks of local entrepreneurs and initiatives that innovate circular products and services. Such innovations can support the development of new and circular energy systems. The benefit of these ecosystems is that they encourage close collaboration of multiple businesses so that they can mutually benefit from each other. Another advantage is the potential to gain increased exposure to both investors and consumers through being part of a larger system.

Local governments can support the creation of such ecosystems by, for example, providing rent-free access to the facilities and locations for entrepreneurs and initiatives that are developing circular innovations. Cities can increase their influence even further by establishing their own incubator or accelerator programs in which they support a cohort of businesses with promising innovative business models. Simultaneously they can stimulate these, and other, businesses by incorporating their goods and services in their public procurement strategy. Furthermore, they can help the businesses gain exposure by showcasing them at city-level events both domestically and abroad.

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⚡ Circular and resource-efficient business innovations

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).

Regenerate

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

Policy Instruments

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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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  Skip to main content             The City Council decided in 2013 to make one of the new area construction sites, Kalasatama, a model district of Smart City development. Today Smart Kalasatama, a brownfield district in Helsinki is a vivid Smart City experimental innovation platform.  The former harbour and industrial area (175 hectares of waterfront) is owned by the city. Kalasatama district will offer a home for approximately 25,000 residents and jobs for 10,000 people by 2035. Currently, there are 3,000 people living in the area. Smart Kalasatama is developed flexibly and through piloting.The vision of Kalasatama is that smart services save one hour of citizen’s time each day. One of the core ambitions of Smart Kalasatama is to provide an urban lab and a vibrant testbed of smart and sustainable new solutions and services. The goal is a smart and sustainable district, that is achieved through experimentation and co-creation. For example the Agile piloting programme addresses small startups and SME’s offering them valuable possibilities to connect their services to the city infrastructure, and thus pilot and co-create their services in real-life context. During the past two years, the model of agile piloting has been widely adopted in all departments of the City of Helsinki and in a number of other major cities in Finland. Over 60 agile pilots have run in Finnish cities following the model created in Kalasatama. Sharing economy is active in Kalasatama. People share cars and parking spaces with the help of digital applications. Smart locks in new buildings enable the citizens to use many spaces in Kalasatama for different activities. First estates are already connected to smart grid, and all the rest of the area to be built will benefit of the grid. The smart grid enables real time smart metering, electric vehicles network and new storage solutions for electricity. A solar power plant already exists in the neighbourhood and the whole district is connected to the energy efficient district heating and cooling grid in the area. Kalasatama is a pioneer for Helsinki’s climate targets, and showing the road to a more sustainable urban everyday life.          

    How to make cities more liveable, resilient and healthy, as neighbourhoods “edible” and inclusive? Join the Nordic Smart City networks webinar to hear about latest insights from Nordic Cities.      Agile piloting has proved to be a flexible and functional way to experiment innovative solutions in an urban environment and to increase co-operation between the city, startups, and residents. The Pocket Book for Agile Piloting shares the experiences from Smart Kalasatama and Jätkäsaari Mobility Lab in Helsinki and condenses the key learnings in a pragmatic and easily digestible way.      Experiments expand to urban infill areas Malmi, Mellunkylä, Malminkartano-Kannelmäki area and Pasila. The project will be realised in 2020–2023.      Forum Virium Helsinki is seeking an autonomous courier, and service design to support its implementation in last meter pilots in REDI. The open call will remain open until 16 April 2020.      MA student Michel Nader from Aalto University did a series of 10 videoblogs about Smart Kalasatama to find out what a smart city is and how people see it.       During the Kalasatama smart city tours, visitors learn about urban solutions of the future and smart life in Helsinki.   


In autumn 2013, Helsinki started the Smart Kalasatama project with the objective of making Kalasatama a model area for smart urban development, the smart city district of Helsinki, which would be developed together with residents, companies, the City and other operators. Kalasatama has seen the promotion and piloting of solutions of the future that streamline everyday life and support climate goals.
“The Smart Kalasatama project brought together City officials, companies, residents, and researchers. The basis of Kalasatama’s smart approach has been a smooth-flowing everyday life. For this reason, it was key that the collaboration  between parties was close and new solutions were tested in genuine urban environments,” explains Programme Director of the Smart Kalasatama project Kerkko Vanhanen from the City of Helsinki’s innovation company Forum Virium Helsinki.
The Smart Kalasatama project introduced agile piloting and showed how a city can be developed through experimentation.  Next, the best learnings and solutions observed in the Smart Kalasatama project will be applied in Pasila and the urban renewal areas of Mellunkylä, Malmi and Malminkartano-Kannelmäki.
Several innovation projects and 25 agile pilots were implemented in the Kalasatama area, with themes launched within these, such as a sharing economy for spaces, green infrastructure, and a food carbon footprint calculator, lined up for Helsinki to promote in further projects in the future.
The report illustrates the development of Kalasatama as an innovation platform and showcases the key urban development themes of the project, including:

Smart living
Smart infrastructure
Green infrastructure
Everyday well-being

Find out more in the publication Smart Kalasatama – a district for experimentation



Forum Virium Helsinki launched the Smart Kalasatama project in 2013 with the aim of making Kalasatama a model area for smart urban development, the Smart City district of Helsinki. The area was, and continues to be, developed flexibly and through trials in collaboration with the area’s residents, companies, the City and other operators.
The aim was to create a district so resource-wise that it would save residents an hour of their own time a day. At the same time, new urban services and innovations would be created, as well as opportunities for new business. ICT technology and open data supported the creation of services.
During the project, several different services were tested and developed. Some of the solutions tested are now commonplace in Kalasatama. The work of Smart Kalasatama continues with projects such as B.Green, which develops green infrastructure. For example, the area has been the setting for experiments in the design of green areas with residents using augmented reality and for mapping trees with drones.
Similar development work is now being expanded. In addition to the smart districts of Kalasatama and Jätkäsaari, the Helsinki Innovation Districts project is working in areas already built in Malmi, Malminkartano-Kannelmäki, Pasila and Mellunmäki.
Low-threshold trial area
The Smart Kalasatama project was based on making everyday life smoother. The trials focused on service design, user orientation and joint planning that involved the residents. Kalasatama will continue to function as one of Helsinki’s urban laboratories, consisting of the area itself, the cooperation networks operating there and the Kalasatama Urban Lab joint development space. Consequently, you will continue to see experts with smart city guides on the streets of Kalasatama, exploring the solutions in the area and marvelling at the district being built.


Helsinki

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Municipality of Helsinki

Smart Kalasatama is an Urban Living Lab for speeding up smart city development in Helsinki. The district grows through co-creation and experimentation in close co-operation with stakeholders including residents, companies, city officials and academia.

Smart Kalasatama

From 2013 onwards, the City of Helsinki transformed one of its previous brownfield districts, Kalasatama, into a smart city experimental innovation platform to co-create urban infrastructure and services with local stakeholders. While the project was finished in 2021, the area continues to be developed flexibly through trials. in which new, resource efficient solutions are being implemented and people's well-being supported. The city chooses the projects based on a novel procurement approach, which is based on early-stage pilot projects without a known outcome, which were selected based on the expected well-being it could bring to residents. New technologies are expected to facilitate more efficient handling of resources, but require new innovation and development.