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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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Policy case

Impact on increased knowledge and understanding as a result of the case study

Increase Awareness

Impact on the health and happiness of human populations

Well-being

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

Agriculture

Engage with the local community where facilities or offices are located

Community collaboration

Using <a href="https://echa.europa.eu/information-on-chemicals" target="_blank">materials that are not toxic or hazardous</a>.

Non-toxic materials and inputs

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

Inform

Conduct research

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

Manage

Infrastructure

Develop regenerative infrastructure

Raise awareness and run information campaigns about  strategies for and impacts of the circular economy in different contexts.

Communication and awareness

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

Increase efficiency and promote local economic growth by shortening supply chains and connecting local producers to consumers.


Support local low-impact circular economies

As cities have expanded, they have conventionally pushed space for agricultural activities to the peripheries and surrounding rural areas, and have become reliant on globalised supply chains. Cities can nevertheless have a home for organic urban and peri-urban agriculture. 

Organic urban and peri-urban agriculture refers to production of food that happens either in or near the city. It includes organic farming at any scale, and can also refer to small holders, various forms of private urban farming initiatives, and community initiatives (vegetable gardens). Organic urban and peri-urban agriculture can support food security in the city, boost biodiversity, as well as stimulate local economies and community participation.

A local government may stimulate and enable organic urban and peri-urban agriculture by making spaces in and near the city available for markets, growing spaces and waste processing through spatial planning. Communities may be engaged through the use of making information and tooling available, alongside making spaces in neighbourhoods available and accessible to different people through spatial planning. Local governments can support local food services businesses in sourcing and obtaining locally grown organic crops. 


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🍏  Organic urban and peri-urban agriculture

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

Urban food transportation is a crucial component of both food and mobility systems, and significantly influences the level of urban sustainability and the total carbon footprint of foods. Cities can reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with food transportation, commonly known as “food-miles”, through various urban logistics measures. These measures require the participation of multiple actors, from city users and inhabitants, to urban food suppliers, logistics providers and carriers, and distributors. 

Local governments can optimise the distribution of food to small retailers and consumers, reducing the associated environmental and social impacts generated by the urban food deliveries, for example, carbon emissions, congestion, mobility, and food loss. 

They can do this by incentivising the use of environmentally-friendly vehicles by, for example, using spatial planning to reserve spaces, regions and lanes in the city for low-carbon modes of transport. Local governments can also use Information and Communications Technology (ICT) tools and local businesses to explore the challenges and barriers for food logistics in the city, and to identify how the city’s spatial planning can be optimised to reduce food loss and waste.


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🍏  Optimised food logistics

With the continued growth of urban populations, cities are commonly facing a key challenge: how can we feed our residents with sufficient healthy and sustainable food? 

More resource-efficient methods and technologies for urban agriculture present opportunities to cultivate the urban landscape, for example through hydroponics and aquaponics systems. Resource-efficient systems can require less space, be more water efficient, and minimise inputs of artificial fertilisers and pesticides, and could be key to secure a sustainable and healthy future for cities.

Resource-efficiency in urban farming methods could mean prioritising renewable energies, for example, solar/wind energy, biogas, making efficient use of different resources, for example, reuse or recycle of heat, water, nutrients and/or spaces, applying cutting-edge emission reduction technologies, and reusing waste or by-products from urban sources, for example,  industries and households. 

Local governments can leverage land use and spatial planning tools to create and maintain a resource-efficient infrastructure including concepts like aquaponics, indoor agriculture, vertical farming, rooftop production, and edible walls. As well as support innovation in new urban agriculture technologies through in-kind and financial support for start-ups. 


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🍏  Resource-efficient food production

Businesses support the innovation and implementation of circular strategies. Yet innovations and startups that close loops and facilitate reuse often face additional challenges, due to the lack of infrastructure that supports circular initiatives for example physical and digital infrastructure to support reverse logistics.

Sustainable business ecosystems connect circular businesses around common problems and provide coordinated support, education and financing opportunities for these businesses to operate and scale together. This solution stimulates the local economy, which can promote local circular job opportunities in the future, and provides an attractive and supportive environment for more circular businesses to start up and scale the city.

The local government may partner with innovation ecosystems and circular domain experts to create training modules and facilitation programmes for small businesses, making knowledge resources available to small businesses looking to go circular. Local governments may also provide financial support - either directly or in partnership with financial institutions - to target and stimulate ecosystems around specific circular business models. 


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🍏  Sustainable food and agriculture business ecosystems

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

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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   Dodoma’s Foodway will create productive and regenerative food spaces across the rapidly expanding city. The community garden in Msalato, implemented by INTERACT-Bio, marks the start of this forward-thinking vision and will serve as a model for others.  
   INTERACT-Bio is mainstreaming the benefits of urban nature into urban planning. The project seeks to find better ways to use and manage urban nature in fast-growing cities and the regions in Tanzania, India and Brazil. It is implemented by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability.
The Dodoma community farm is one of three demonstration projects in Tanzania aiming to showcase how, if nature is embedded into urban planning, it can enhance human well-being and provide socio-economic opportunities whilst addressing wider issues such as environmental degradation and climate change.  
   WHAT IS A FOODWAY?
Foodways, a novel approach to land use pioneered by Inhabit Earth, are corridors of productive landscapes that form a living partnership between human communities and natural systems, each continually regenerating the other. Through principles of regenerative agriculture, foodways enable communities to have a greater degree of ownership of their food security.
  
   WHAT IS REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE? 
Regenerative agriculture is based on the ideas and ethics of permaculture: “people care, fair share and Earth care”. Permaculture uses practical and holistic solutions to imitate and cultivate the diverse closed loop systems seen in nature – systems that thrive for many years and produce no waste. The concept is often applied to food systems, but permaculture offers the opportunity for people to transition to live in a more eco-friendly and sustainable way. Permaculture is grounded on 12 principles that guide people on how to adopt sustainable practices. Permaculture ecosystems and natural systems differ in that the majority of species in the cultivated and re-designed ecosystems are intended for the use of human consumption.
Regenerative agriculture is considered to be a form of permaculture by some, as it focuses particularly on the health of the soil and ecological system as a whole. There are a number of principles also applied in regenerative agriculture practices and one of the potential benefits is the contribution it can make towards combating climate change. Permaculture and regenerative agriculture are often applied in transformed landscapes and settled areas and agricultural lands, where regeneration and rehabilitation of the environment may be needed.  
   INTRODUCING THE MSALATO COMMUNITY FARM
The project identified Msalato as an urban area in need of regeneration and rehabilitation. The aims of the Msalato Community Farm are to:
1. Develop a community farm with the capacity to produce food and materials that meet (and eventually exceed) the needs of residents, with a vision that it will contribute and add value towards a creating foodways across Dodoma and its bioregion and to build community; enhance the local environment; and create resilience in the face of the threats of climate change and biodiversity loss
2. Inspire a larger movement in Dodoma towards food security and food sovereignty, emerging from the bottom up and supported from the top down; and regenerates the land, the people and forms part of a larger purpose
3. Enable the community to build their capacity to grow regenerative livelihoods on various levels; understand their potential to contribute to the project and the larger vision of establishing a foodway across Dodoma and becoming more resilient.  
   A COLLABORATIVE EFFORT – WHO IS INVOLVED?
The development of the Msalato Community Farm in Dodoma has been made possible by collaboration and contributions of many. It is funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety through the International Climate Initiative (IKI) which is funding the INTERACT-Bio project INTERACT-Bio is managed and coordinated in Tanzania by ICLEI Africa, ICLEI Cities Biodiversity Center and the UFZ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research. The implementation on the ground is being undertaken by BORDA Africa, Nipe Fagio and Inhabit Earth, with the support from the Dodoma City Council and the residents of the Msalato Community.
To make sure the voices that matter are heard, BORDA Africa, Nipe Fagio and Inhabit Earth have been engaging and working closely with the Msalato community members to regenerate the ecology of the Msalato site, to create a vibrant and productive landscape.  
        Image 1: A Google Earth aerial image of the Msalato site (demarcated by the red points)  
        Image 2: A photo taken during the site visits depicting what the site looks like on the ground  
   WHAT HAS BEEN DONE? 
The project kicked off in February 2020, but the Covid-19 pandemic brought about some unforeseen challenges and delays to the inception of the project. With ongoing uncertainty, ICLEI Africa and the implementation team adapted their initial approach in order to get the project moving. Through correspondence with the Dodoma City Council, via letters and emails, the team made a request for a short list of possible sites for the project. In August 2020, the Dodoma City Council provided ICLEI Africa and the implementation team with a short list of sites. BORDA Africa and several city representatives visited each site to gather information, evaluate the sites and take photos. This information was presented to ICLEI Africa and the rest of the implementation team and the most suitable site, Msalato, was selected for the demonstration project.  
   About the site: 
The Msalato site is a government owned site situated approximately 15km outside the Dodoma City Centre and covers roughly 4 hectares. The site was previously used for agricultural activities, such as growing cash and food crops (millet, maize, cassava, ground nuts and sun flowers). Residents of the Msalato community live around the site, with a secondary school in close proximity. Socio-economic activities in the area comprise of small business centers and an agricultural and livestock market on Saturdays. There is also future potential in the area, as this part of the city is believed to be earmarked for the development of the new Dodoma international airport, due to the quick access to the city centre via the paved road.   
   Following the site selection, the BORDA Africa and Inhabit Earth team starting conceptualizing the design for different components of the community farm using the regenerative agriculture concept and a Google Earth aerial image. The design of the different components was then presented at a workshop with the Msalato community members, city council representatives and other relevant stakeholders. The workshop was held in March 2021 and was an opportunity for the community, city council representative and relevant stakeholders to contribute towards shaping the design for the site into something they would like to see in the area.  
        Image 3: Group discussions during the community co-design workshop in March 2021  
        Image 4: Participants that attended the community co-design workshop in March 2021  
   BORDA Africa and Inhabit Earth incorporated the discussions from the workshop into the final design for the Msalato Community Farm. The design was finalized in May 2021, with the implementation team then beginning their preparations for the implementation on the ground over a few weeks, beginning at the end of June 2021. The design for the community farm comprises several phases and, as part of the INTERACT-Bio demonstration project and available funding, Phase 1 will be implemented. The community and Dodoma City Council do, however, have the design and when additional funding is secured, will be able to implement the next phases. The concept and idea behind the design is that the community farm has long term sustainability and can expand as and when it is possible.
On-the-ground project implementation began at the end of June 2021, when BORDA Africa, Inhabit Earth and Nipe Fagio travelled to Dodoma and started work at the Msalato site. During this time the site was measured and marked by the team and the earthworks and shaping of the different design components were completed. The Msalato community was also engaged during these activities and some community members provided support in the shaping of components. A water exploration survey was also conducted during this time to evaluate whether a borehole would be a reliable and affordable source of water, as water is a critical resource for plants to become established once planted.  
        Image 5: The Msalato Community Farm design which is being implemented  
        Image 6: The community getting involved in the earth moving and shaping of the different design components in June 2021  
   Later this year, once the team set up a reliable and affordable water course, the community and implementation team will start planting. The water source will enable the community to nurture the plants until they grow and produce and seasonal rains begin. To ensure the project’s sustainability, community members will also be trained on establishing and caring for the different components of the farm during the planting and once the implementation team have completed the first phase of the design. By empowering the local community and encouraging agency, they will take responsibility for the project going forward and train others in the community to ensure its completion when the funds become available, ultimately providing the Msalato community with a beautiful, natural space that not only combats climate change, but also provides health and nutrition to their people.  

             
      

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Dodoma

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ICLEI

German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety

 City of Dodoma

UFZ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research

BORDA Africa

Nipe Fagio

Inhabit Earth

<p>INTERACT-Bio, a ICLEI Program, is implementing Foodways in Msalato, a district of Dodoma, Tanzania. Foodways, a novel approach to land use pioneered by&nbsp;Inhabit Earth, are&nbsp;corridors of productive landscapes that form a living partnership between human communities and natural systems, each continually regenerating the other. Through principles of regenerative agriculture, foodways enable communities to have a greater degree of ownership of their food security.</p><p>The project showcases how, if nature is embedded into urban planning, it can enhance human well-being and provide socio-economic opportunities whilst addressing wider issues such as environmental degradation and climate change.</p>