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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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Article / Report

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)

Contributing to the improvement of biodiversity including species diversity, total number of protected species, and ecosystem health

Biodiversity

Producing agricultural products and processing them into food and beverageproducts for consumption

Agri/Food

Producing and gathering crop and animal products from land and water through farming, hunting, and fishing

Agriculture

Utilise bio-based, reusable, non-toxic and non-critical materials

Regenerative materials

Engage with the government on circular policies and programmes

Government collaboration

Engage with the local community where facilities or offices are located

Community collaboration

'Mobilise' sets the direction of and builds momentum towards long-term change, while also determining how this direction is determined and governed.

Mobilise

Govern the Transition

Institutional design to enable circularity

**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.

Promote solutions inspired and supported by nature

The food system nourishes populations and employs 50% of the global workforce, but:
- it currently drives a quarter of the overshoot on the climate change planetary boundary due to its greenhouse gas (GHG) production, 
- animal farming alone uses over one-quarter of all land, equivalent to the size of the Americas,
- nearly a quarter of freshwater resources are lost due to rampant food waste, and
- it is the single largest driver of biodiversity loss.

A circular food system must address the whole value chain, from production to consumption to waste management. The four key solutions for the food system are:
- Put healthier, satiating foods first: Prioritise satiating and healthy foods with a lower environmental impact—ideally shifting calories from meat, fish, and dairy towards cereals, fruits, vegetables, and nuts.
- Go local, seasonal, and organic: Prioritise the production and consumption of local, seasonal, and organic produce (sometimes in combination with GMO to reduce pests and disease loss on crops), which can lead to a significantly reduced need for chemical inputs, fuels, and processing services that contribute to environmental impacts.
- Mainstream regenerative agriculture: Scale up agricultural practices that regenerate ecosystems, recirculate nutrients and sequester carbon by design. 
- End avoidable food waste: Minimise food loss and valorise waste following the food waste hierarchy along the supply chain and at the consumer level through better management of transport and storage, more refrigeration and smart planning, and technology at the consumer and food service levels.



🍏 Food Systems

Communities

Governments

Biodiversity is fundamental to maintain the variety of crops and livestock needed to support and preserve ecosystem services that sustain our food system and wellbeing. As cities densify and expand in size, they typically encroach on surrounding biodiverse areas, leading to the progressive degradation of ecosystem services. In turn, this pushes away urban food systems that are dependent on material inputs often sourced outside the urban region. 

Edible green infrastructures are solutions that reimagine cities as productive sources of food, can boost local biodiversity as well as foster social cohesion. These infrastructures can take a variety of forms and are inspired by nature, for example, planting edible trees and plants throughout a city which are free to pick for residents.

Local governments can promote investments in edible green infrastructures (strategically planned multi-scale networks of different kinds of urban green and blue spaces) to create new biodiverse and productive spaces within the urban region, as well as rehabilitating polluted lands to improve soil health and productivity. Urban and spatial planning can also be used to permit these infrastructures, as well as enable residents to create their own. What is more, such solutions can be integrated within urban planning projects, for example, rain gardens and rain barrels, to reduce urban stormwater runoff and risk of floodings while redirecting and reusing urban rain and stormwater to supply urban farmers.


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🍏  Edible green infrastructures

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

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

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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As a multifunctional activity and land use, urban agriculture supports a range of objectives, from urban greening to food security. However, it is often left out of urban policy. As a result of the highly contextual and cross-cutting nature of urban agriculture, there are relatively few comprehensive and formalized regulatory tools to draw from. Different cities around the world are now deciding how to fit urban agriculture into the urban agenda; however, in many places urban agriculture continues to operate in the absence of legitimization due to its relatively mobile and dynamic nature. This article looks at the importance of local and central governments in promoting sustainable urban agriculture. Through participatory action research, it examines the cases of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Copenhagen, Denmark to understand stakeholder interactions, as well as present and future barriers to the conservation of existing urban agriculture and future initiatives. The findings suggest that municipal recognition and institutional support for urban agriculture is an important component in increasing the sustainability of related initiatives. Local and central government plays a role in the legitimization and institutionalization of urban agriculture through the facilitation of multi-stakeholder processes, policy development and the conservation and allocation of land.

 

Dar es Salaam

Copenhagen

Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography

<p>This paper has the aim to identify the role local governments can play in advancing sustainable urban agriculture, looking at stakeholder interactions. Municipal recognition and institutional support were both found to be critical for increasing the sustainability of urban agriculture initiatives.</p>