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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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This collection features a selection of case studies, based on the global *Circularity Gap Reports*, that can mitigate climate breakdown by reducing virgin material consumption, waste and greenhouse gas emissions. The latest **[Circularity Gap Report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023#download)** reveals that the global economy is now only 7.2% circular and outlines how circular solutions across four sectors can bring global planetary boundaries back within safe limits. 

In the six years of the *Circularity Gap Report*, the global economy has extracted and used unprecedented amounts of materials. The first edition of the *Report *in 2018 found that global circularity was 9.1% and it has decreased every year since—leaving a Circularity Gap of over 90%. If this trend continues, we will have to find more and better solutions to combat the negative effects of climate change. This is why we have identified case studies from across the globe—based on the needs of society and planetary health—that serve as real-world examples of the circular economy in action.

Circle Economy is a not-for-profit organisation working to accelerate the circular transition. Through the *Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative*, our mission is to deliver an annual global Circularity Metric that measures the state of the world economy and identifies key levers to transition to global circularity. With nature as our guide, we work alongside cross-sector stakeholders from academia, businesses, NGOs and governments to provide a powerful combination of practical and scalable interventions that transform circular opportunities into realities. 


To learn more about these interventions to accelerate the circular transition, read the latest [Circularity Gap Report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023#download), as well as previous editions of the global [Circularity Gap Reports](https://www.circularity-gap.world/global).

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Global Circularity Gap Report 2023

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Business case

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

Increase Awareness

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

Producing transporation equipment and providing services for thetransportation of goods and people

Transportation and Logistics

Societal Services

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


Construction and Infrastructure

Account for the systems perspective during the design process, to use the right materials, to design for appropriate lifetime and to design for extended future use

Design for the future

Participating in government programmes that support and advance the circular economy

Government programmes

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

Manage

 Spatial Planning

Compact city development

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

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

Communities

Governments

The mobility choices and behaviours of residents and businesses can vary greatly depending on the structure and design of the city. A sprawling city covering large areas with wide highways and no bike lanes discourages cycling and increases dependence on private vehicles, which contribute significantly to resource demand and GHG emissions. Meanwhile, a more compact city with mixed use developments, accessible public transport and extensive and appealing pedestrian and cycle networks enables and encourages walking, cycling and other non-motorised, low-carbon forms of mobility. Combined with urban planning that incentivises higher densities along major public transport routes, transit-oriented development can help to slow the outward expansion of cities into the surrounding countryside. 

Compact city planning can help local communities build and create more efficient, safe and viable cities. This concept includes ideas such as the 15-minute city or ‘complete neighbourhoods’, whereby all of the basic needs and services of a resident can be accessed within 15 minutes by walking, cycling or public transport. This concept has also attracted attention as a way to reduce inequality by ensuring that all neighbourhoods have access to affordable mobility options.

Local governments can support the development of compact and low-carbon cities by integrating such concepts into the city’s urban plans, and ensuring that all residents are easily able to conduct their day-to-day lives using non-motorised or public transport. Cities can also ensure that necessary and facilitating infrastructure is provided, such as cycle lanes, pedestrianised areas and public transport options, to enable the shift away from dependency on personal vehicles.


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🚌  Compact city planning and development

A considerable resource footprint is taken up by our need for mobility. In particular, two resource types are used: the materials to build transport technologies and vehicles like cars, trains and airplanes; plus, predominantly, the fossil fuels burned to power them.



Mobility

- Telecommuting
- Reduced cargo shipping (for example, due to more local consumption)

Saving: 2.41 Gt emissions and 1.96 Gt material use

🚗 Reduce travel

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

The framework consists of 21 complementary interventions, across six scenarios - one for each of the six societal needs we model. These interventions can mitigate climate impact by curbing GHG emissions

Note: interventions are currently focused on:
- 🏠 Housing 
- 🍎 Nutrition
- 🚗 Mobility
- 👚📺 Consumables
- 👩‍⚕️👨‍⚕️ Healthcare
-  🔊 Communication

These 21 interventions are spread across six societal needs and wants, with a set of solutions. Within these solutions are strategies on ’how to get there'.  

The framework moves beyond incremental action and provides solutions that will require behavioral change (dietary shifts towards less meat consumption, for example) and the adoption of state-of-the-art technologies in the industry to mitigate emissions in hard-to-abate sectors (such as steel manufacturing). It illustrates how continued globalisation can benefit from the uptake of digital solutions. The combined interventions showcase the mitigation potential that begins where the current country pledges end; illustrating the additional impact our interventions can bring to the NDCs. In short, the interventions provide input for a more profound fundamental transformation than the more current pathways that make up the vast majority of NDCs. 

Together, the combined interventions can almost double the current global Circularity Metric of 8.6%, bringing it to 17%. 

This results in:
• Shrinking global material use and extraction by 28%. 
• Cutting global GHG emissions by 39%—fully closing the Emissions Gap as defined in our report and taking into account the updated NDCs.
• Allowing the world to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping at 1.5-degrees of warming by 2032.

*This framework was developed in the Circularity Gap Report 2021. Read more about it [here](https://www.circle-economy.com/resources/circularity-gap-report-2021)*






Global Circularity Gap Report

An intervention-based framework for nations and stakeholders working towards circular countries

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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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 To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot. 

 Author | M. Martínez Euklidiadas
For years Paris has been an exemplary city in terms of mobility policies. Initiatives in favor of pedestrianization and public transport led to a drop from 44% to 35% in the use of private vehicles between 1999 and 2016. And that without taking into account the globally-acclaimed pedestrianization of the Seine in 2016. Now, the Mayor, Anne Hidalgo, is planning a “15-minute Paris”.
This new proposal by the Mayor, who has been in office since 2014, aims to convert Paris into a city in which nobody takes longer than 15 minutes to get to work or take their children to school. Under the name of La Ville Du Quart d’Heure (the quarter-hour city), the aim is to decarbonize the economy and make Paris a healthier city.
Cities of the future: Paris plans to become a 15-Minute City
Urban mobility is essential when it comes to facilitating the exchange of ideas and innovation. However, during the last century, we went from urban planning aimed at pedestrians and cyclists to a city designed for cars. Is there any way of going back to a sustainable and healthy model? Hidalgo believes this is possible, by prioritizing bike lanes and public transport.

La #VilleDuQuartDHeure, c’est quoi ? C’est la ville des proximités où l’on trouve tout ce dont on a besoin à moins de 15 minutes de chez soi. C’est la condition de la transformation écologique de la ville, tout en améliorant la vie quotidienne des Parisiens. ⤵️ #Hidalgo2020 pic.twitter.com/lcQbPAjdxj
— Anne Hidalgo (@Anne_Hidalgo) January 21, 2020 Despite today’s technology enabling people to work from home and work flexibility allowing people to move between cities and countries, the truth is that a large number of journeys to work still take one hour of travel time and are highly dependent on the carbon economy.
Paris is not the only city in the world that collapses every morning when many parents are taking their children to school. Those that are not parents also block the roads, but this group is particularly interesting because it is the result of inadequate urban growth.
For decades cities have supported parents being able to use their private vehicles to take their children to the school gates, which increases the intense traffic (cars searching for a place to park), urban noise, pollution and the consumption of fossil fuels. However, it also fosters segregation by economic level and encourages obesity.
La Ville Du Quart D’Heure — A people-friendly city
Having an active life is essential in order to improve our overall health and that includes walking, moving. This is why Anne Hidalgo’s policy is to build a city intended for people, not cars. The truth is that commuting by car can have a negative impact on health, as demonstrated in the draw held in Peking to determine who could use their cars.

Those that won, moved 50% less by walking, cycling or on public transport and they all gained an average of 2 kilograms. Those over the age of 50 even gained an average of 10 kilograms. Similar results can be found across the world and in all types of cities.
That is why the 15-minute city is such an attractive and noteworthy scheme for citizens. A local government that facilitates walking children to school also facilitates sport, it is seen as an example of social integration and it is also a successful policy for shopping. Because in fact, pedestrian streets encourage shopping, and this has been demonstrated by initiatives such as Madrid Central.
Converting streets into decarbonized mobility spaces
Until now, Hidalgo’s policies have proved to be highly efficient and effective. In 2019 alone, Paris managed to reduce car traffic by 8%. The city council’s new star measure is expected to reduce it even further.
For Parisians, their health depends on it, since urban pollution is related to a whole host of diseases, and not just typical lung diseases, which are often mentioned. Since 2018, we know that a high exposure to urban pollution during pregnancy reduces the cognitive capacity of school-age children, and causes other diseases and deficiencies.
Health studies illustrate that in cities such as Madrid, which we used as an example earlier, 39% of hospital admissions due to heart problems and 13% of breathing problems are directly related to traffic intensity. Cities such as San Sebastián, New York, Boston or New Orleans, have already begun mass pedestrianization.
Pollution is also the reason why the British justice system has paralyzed plans to extend Heathrow airport, declaring it illegal, as it does not comply with the Paris Agreement of 2015 (COP21). It seems that cities are starting to move towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
Turning streets into spaces of carbon-free mobility

As well as improving health by eliminating pollution, improving health by promoting mobility, increasing local consumption thanks to pedestrianization or reducing atmospheric emissions, which accelerate climate change, reducing the number of private vehicles on the streets will also result in safer streets.
The graph above shows the “progress of road traffic victims in Paris”. The graph shows a direct relationship between both the gradual abandonment of private vehicles in favor of other means of transport and the different speed reductions in the French capital. Going from maximum speeds of 80 km/h to 70 km/h in access areas in 2014 was a success.
This has also led to a friendlier city with more quality time for its citizens. Not just because this will save travel time, resulting in more time that they can spend with their loved ones or enjoying their hobbies, but because the time gained will have the aforementioned benefits and less noise pollution.
Is it actually possible to transform Paris into this kind of sustainable city?
Despite certain opposition to the change, the truth is that Parisians are socially and environmentally responsible. Proof of this is that Anne Hidalgo has supported the same strategy for six years and to date all the proposals, even those that remove vehicles outside of certain areas, have been well-accepted.

Paris is an ancient city full of history, which means, as with other European cities, it has grown organically in an onion-like or layered manner. One simply has to look at the capillarity of the subway map to confirm that a car-free city is possible. At the moment, the proposals include hundreds of new kilometers of bike lanes.
In a few years, when technologies such as autonomous mobility reach Paris, the last owners of internal combustion vehicles will no longer be interested in owning a means of transport that it detrimental to their neighbors, entails a significant personal economic cost and when mobility will be extremely restricted. Paris is a beacon of hope, but behind it are hundreds of other similar projects.
Images | Rob Potvin, Annehidalgo2020, Paris Metro 

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Paris

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City of Paris

In the EU, the proper recycling of all building glass waste could avoid 925,000 tonnes of landfilled waste every year and save around 1.23 million tonnes of primary raw materials annually. The most effective use is to turn glass into new glass products: it can be recycled in this ‘closed loop’ indefinitely. In a refurbishment project by Tishman Speyer, one of the first large-scale flat glass recycling operations in the UK was performed successfully. The UK Green Building Council used this opportunity to produce a how-to-guide for the recycling of glass facades.

Glass facade recycling into new glass

Policy case

The Amsterdam Circular Strategy 2020-2025 outlines how the City of Amsterdam aims to achieve its ambition to become 50% circular by 2030 and to achieve a fully circular city by 2050. The strategy focuses on three value chains: food and organic waste streams; consumer goods and the built environment and details ambitions and courses of action for each.

Amsterdam Circular Strategy 2020-2025

The City of Paris has championed the idea of a 15-minute city within its urban design; whereby everything that residents need can be reached within 15 minutes, either by foot, bike or public transport. This forward-thinking approach to urban design rethinks the driver of urban consumption, and cuts the need for fossil fuel-powered transportation, while improving the quality of life for its residents.&nbsp;Taken together, the new trees and cycleways, community facilities and social housing, homes and workplaces all reflect a potentially transformative vision for urban planners: the&nbsp;15-minute city.&nbsp;15-minute concept was developed primarily to reduce urban carbon emissions, reimagining our towns not as divided into discrete zones for living, working, and entertainment, but as mosaics of neighborhoods in which almost all residents’ needs can be met within 15 minutes of their homes on foot, by bike, or on public transit. As workplaces, stores, and homes are brought into closer proximity, street space previously dedicated to cars is freed up, eliminating pollution and making way for gardens, bike lanes, and sports and leisure facilities. All of this allows residents to bring their daily activities out of their homes (which in Paris tend to be small) and into welcoming, safe streets and squares.

The 15-minute City in Paris

nuTonomy is a company that develops software to enable autonomous vehicles. The company spun out of MIT in 2013, has been operating autonomous taxis in Singapore since 2016, and is testing autonomous vehicles in Boston in the United States in a partnership with ride-sharing company Lyft. Read more at:

Autonomous vehicles

The Resource Efficient House is an innovative project managed by Zero Waste Scotland as part of Resource Efficient Scotland, the Scottish Government funded programme that helps businesses, the public and third sectors save money by using resources more efficiently. Constructed off-site by means of structural insulated panels (SIPs) the modular and flexible Resource Efficient House is an airtight, highly insulated building designed to reduce home energy costs and achieve net zero carbon emissions. A range of green technologies have also been incorporated and in terms of energy efficiency the house is set to meet enhanced 2016 Scottish Building Standards Gold performance requirements. The whole lifetime of the House has been considered to ensure minimal construction waste and support the effective reuse or recycling of construction materials at the point of property deconstruction in 2015.

Innovative resource efficient house

Marseille's Territorial Climate Plan 2012-20 is organized around 5 headings: energy saving on public lighting; fuel saving on public fleet of vehicles; development of photovoltaics; optimization and reduction in user travels and conservation of natural resources, especially water and fossil fuels.

Territorial Climate Plan 2012-2020

The climate action plan is part of the Athens Resilience Strategy. Mitigation actions include, among others, raising public awareness for rational energy use and no- and low-cost measures at households. Actions for adaptation include: 1) Green and Blue infrastructure - maintaining and increasing green spaces, but also alternative ways of greening (e.g. vertical green techniques and inclusion of water use in urban planning); and 2) Built Environment - using sustainable materials (e.g. cool pavements, materials with low embodied energy, and bioclimatic design to reduce air temperatures and improve microclimatic conditions). Mitigation actions include 1) reducing energy consumption in municipal buildings and facilities and 2) reducing fuel use in buildings and the municipal fleet.

Climate Action Plan

The network holds more than eighty member companies in and around Vienna, specialised in high quality repair services. The member companies have to meet defined criteria to ensure quality standards in repair services. The network members carry out more than 50.000 repairs per year, which corresponds to about 750 tons of waste prevented every year. The Repair Network Vienna was founded in 1999, and has since then been a pioneer in developing quality standards for repair services and highlighting the importance of repair and reuse for a sustainable and resource-efficient economy. The Repair Network Vienna is supported by the Executive City Councillor for the Environment and Vienna Public Utilities, the Municipal Department 48 (Waste Management, Street Cleaning and Vehicle Fleet) and the Municipal Department 22 (Environmental Protection). The Repair Network Vienna is a project of Eco Counselling Vienna.

Support to Repair Network Vienna

A major obstacle to repairing broken goods is that many people lack the skill to repair things themselves and don't consider it worth the effort and cost to get them professionally repaired. Vienna's Repair Network provides resources and assistance to help people to repair their goods and get their goods repaired. They are a network of 23 small repair companies that offer specialised know-how and accessible repair. Furthermore, they offer repair workshops and cafés where people can learn how to repair their own goods, and get access to the tools and the knowledge required to do so. This should not only extend the life of products, but also create more emotional connection between consumer and product.

Enable repairing, sharing, and reusing: Repair Network Vienna

A public/private consultancy project has launched a low-cost housing development in Mbekweni, South Africa. The aim was to deliver low-cost housing that was sustainable and inclusive, allowing those without skills or jobs to ‘learn and earn’. Workers used industry waste to create building materials, and other materials like bricks were recovered from demolition and reused. The buildings, long and narrow in shape, have an additional loft floor and small rentable roof space. Upper internal structures were made with local timber—allowing for easily taught construction processes, thus facilitating women to participate in building. Other design features, such as heavy insulation, keep out heat, and rainwater collection tanks, solar water geysers, food gardens and vine sun-shading improve food security and living conditions for the residents.

Low-cost housing in Mbekweni

In Paris, the Sogaris Paris company will work with the city to reduce the footprint of logistics through consolidation of goods flows into the urban centre by rail or waterways, with clean vehicles conducting last-mile deliveries.

Paris and Sogaris partner for cleaner logistics 

Paris launched a compost support program in 2010. Parisians who want to set up composting systems in their apartment building courtyards are invited to fill out an application asking the city to approve their proposal. If the candidate has met certain qualifications, and obtained the agreement of the building’s superintendent and the support of at least 10 residents/participants, the city will sign off on the compost project. Collective compost bins on the ground floor of buildings. Moreover, in 2012, the City, together with the pioneering ‘master-composter’ Jean-Jacques Fasquel, delivered a training session for city-dwellers on how to install and use a community compost facilities in urban neighbourhoods, and which products can go into the compost. Today, several 600-litre wooden compost containers and around 100 “master-composters” like Jean-Jacques Fasquel to train local authorities’ staff and the public are present in the city. In particular, there are three types of compost bins suitable for different types of homes but also for schools: collective compost bins on the ground floor of buildings, neighborhood compost bins, and individual compost bins (vermicomposters). In 2015, approximately 300 tons of waste were avoided thanks to collective composting on 422 collective composting sites and six neighbourhood compost bins. In 2016, 256 condominiums, 186 schools and 35 administrative sites committed to composting their waste.

Promoting community composting and community composters

A governance committee was set up in 2015 to promote methodologies for circular practices. The City of Paris’ Environmental Department is in charge of overall coordination to drive the circular economy strategy. 16 departments (out of the 20 city departments) are carrying out actions from the roadmap specifically connected to their skills, and all departments are involved as partners. Many additional players include: government authorities, business, associations, NGOs, academia and research support to define and lead the actions. Following many circular economy stakeholder meetings, the Paris Circular Economy Strategy was launched in 2017 and 30 concrete actions are now being implemented.

Collaborating for a city-wide circular economy strategy

The Promenade Plantée is a linear park spanning 4.7 kilometres built atop a disused railway line in the east of Paris. Starting from Bastille, the first part of the walkway is elevated on the Viaduc des Arts before crossing the Jardin de Reuilly. It finally goes down to ground level and through tunnels as you approach the eastern ring road.