Circular City: Urban and Territorial Perspectives

AbstractThe United Nation’s 17 Sustainable development Goals (SDG) can be considered as the lighthouse of the great challenges which humanity will be confronted with. Many of these goals are related to our behaviors and our “take, make, and dispose,” namely, the linear dominant economic model that, in the last centuries, is leading to an ongoing increase of resource consumption and, consequently, a huge generation of waste. In fact, the rate of both natural resource consumption and waste generation are urgent issues, especially in the urban and peri-urban areas that will require proper solutions. The city is and will be even more in the future the most affected and the major drivers of resource consumption since it is expected that by 2050 more than 70% of the population will live in urbanized areas, and cities will grow in number and size. It means that land, water, food, energy, and other natural resource are increasingly necessary, but because resources are limited, it is required to change the linear consumption model in a new circular model of use and consumption where waste is avoided. In the last few years, emerged that waste management practices are improving according to the European Waste Hierarchy guidance, but there is still a wide possibility of improvement. This chapter explores, on one hand, what means the circular city, and on the other hand how to build it suggesting some policy recommendations. Considering urban and peri-urban areas as the space of material and people flows, thus optimizing the space used by flows and improving their interactions, it will be possible to construct another step toward circularity. In that view, the circular city acquires an urban and territorial perspective that can be managed with the urban and territorial tools, measures, policies, and plans, able to link also issues like climate adaptation, resilience, and sustainability. Finally, we argue that important work must be done in the immediate future in order to re-think and re-design urban spaces, urban practices, and infrastructures, thus shift from linear to circular city.