Making cities circular: Experiences from the living lab Hamburg-Altona

The article argues that to reach circular economy goals urban regions need to identify and understand the challenges and opportunities originating from the differences in spatial settings, and to develop place-based solutions by adequately involving (local) stakeholders. Based on the case study that was conducted in Hamburg within the Horizon2020 project REPAiR, spatial specificities in five different urban areas shall be analysed and strategies that were developed in a co-creative process shall be explored. The results show that the spatial organisation of CE strategies depends on urban structures and stakeholders’ interest and needs to be embedded in the (local) governance setting and a spatial planning system

Urban Regions Shifting to Circular Economy: Understanding Challenges for New Ways of Governance

Urban areas account for around 50% of global solid waste generation. In the last decade, the European Union has supported numerous initiatives aiming at reducing waste generation by promoting shifts towards Circular Economy (CE) approaches. Governing this process has become imperative. This article focuses on the results of a governance analysis of six urban regions in Europe involved in the Horizon 2020 project REPAiR. By means of semi-structured interviews, document analysis and workshops with local stakeholders, for each urban area a list of governance challenges which hinder the necessary shift to circularity was drafted. In order to compare the six cases, the various challenges have been categorized using the PESTEL-O method. Results highlight a significant variation in policy contexts and the need for these to evolve by adapting stakeholders’ and policy-makers’ engagement and diffusing knowledge on CE. Common challenges among the six regions include a lack of an integrated guiding framework (both political and legal), limited awareness among citizens, and technological barriers. All these elements call for a multi-faceted governance approach able to embrace the complexity of the process and comprehensively address the various challenges to completing the shift towards circularity in cities

Classifying New Hybrid Cooperation Models for Short Food-Supply Chains—Providing a Concept for Assessing Sustainability Transformation in the Urban-Rural Nexus

In response to the negative effects caused by structures of the dominant agricultural system and new market opportunities, increasing food supply structures have re-emerged in the urban-rural context of industrialized countries in recent years. These food supply structures often accompany new forms of hybrid cooperation models, including actors and institutions that have not shared resources previously. They form new alliances for sustainable transformation in the agri-food sector. Simultaneously, discourse has arisen in science and practice about the sustainability potential of such hybrid cooperation, referring to a lack of critical systematization and the necessity for creating an assessment concept. From the latter, one could draw conclusions about the transformative potential of such cooperation models and their potential to serve as blueprints for other regions. In this conceptual paper, a classification approach derived from social enterprise literature is elaborated, extended, and evaluated, to design a classification of new hybrid cooperation models that allow comparisons between regions and are sensitive to their dynamics. We show in an application how the classification approach, considering the dimensions “actors”, “resources”, and “actions”, serves to discover patterns in the development of short food-supply chain practices, identifying individual transition paths and, thus, making statements about their sustainability and challenges

Sustainability assessment of organic waste management in three EU Cities : analysing stakeholder-based solutions

This study focuses on a comprehensive sustainability assessment of the management of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste in Ghent (Belgium), Hamburg (Germany) and Pe ' cs (Hungary). A sustainability assessment framework has been applied to analyse social, environmental, and economic consequences at the midpoint level (25 impact categories) and at the endpoint level (5 areas-of-protection). For each case study, the reference scenario was analysed, along with three solutions to improve the sustainability performance, which were selected and developed with the collaboration of local stakeholders. The solutions focus on food waste prevention, collection (increasing separate collection and household composting) and/or valorisation treatment (insect breeding, bioplastic production and improvement of centralised treatment). The results show that food waste prevention results in substantial improvements in all areas of protection when a significant quantity of food is saved. Solutions proposing innovative treatments such as insect breeding do not show clear improvements at the endpoint level, given current technology development level, but appear promising for some categories such as Revenues, Ecotoxicity, Land Use or Particulate Matter if the substituted products compensate the impact of the treatment (e.g., energy and water use). Enhancing the separate collection of organic waste can improve sustainability, but trade-offs may arise, e.g., decreased environmental savings from energy recovery at incineration. For this, the influence of the electricity mix (more or less decarbonised) should be carefully considered in future studies. The application of the solutions proposed to other cities should also consider potential bottlenecks such as legislation barriers, public acceptance, or management costs

REPAiR: REsource Management in Peri-urban AReas: Going Beyond Urban Metabolism: D6.1 Governance and Decision-Making Processes in Pilot Cases

REPAiR will develop, test, and implement strategies for improved urbanmetabolisms in six peri-urban living labs (›PULLs‹) in the case study areas ofAmsterdam, Ghent, Hamburg, Łódź, Naples, and Pécs. In the frame of REPAiR ageodesign decision support environment (GDSE) will be developed and firsttested in the PULLs.In REPAiR’s Work Package 6 “Developing and implementing decision models”decision making processes will be analysed and decision models for all six casestudies will be developed in order to be implemented in cooperation withstakeholders in the six case study areas feeding into the GDSE.The deliverable D6.1 Governance and Decision-Making Processes in Pilot Cases isfocused on the definition and clarification of governance and decision-makingstructures in the two pilot cases of the REPAiR project: Amsterdam, theNetherlands and Naples, Italy. The deliverable is divided into 5 chapters.After a brief introduction to the work done for the drafting of this document(Chapter 1), the second Chapter aims to explain the theoretical background ongovernance and stakeholder analysis and gives an overview on the developmentof EU policies in the field of waste management.The third chapter and the fourth chapters report a description of the pilotcaseworks Amsterdam and Naples they include an overview on the governancesetting, a detailed timelines of the development of the waste governance and thedecision-making framework. This is followed by descriptions of the stakeholderidentification and interviews conducted in the pilot cases.The Amsterdam focus area is located in the Western part of AmsterdamMetropolitan Area. The central idea of the case study is to develop a more circulareconomy. This idea is already quite present among many stakeholders and isformulated as an objective by public stakeholders. Moreover, the public sideencourages the involvement of economic stakeholders into the development of acircular economy. The private stakeholders express great interest in becoming(more) involved into the process. However, the interviews also show that thedevelopment of a circular economy and changes in waste management in theNetherlands can only be reached on a long perspective and that many frameconditions in the waste management sector are long term bound.The Naples focus area is covering parts of the City of Naples and 10 municipalitiesin the north-east of Naples. After the conclusion of the waste crisis in Naplespublic authorities are aiming to improve the waste management on a long termperspective. The interviews show that there are two main challenges linked to thisprocess: firstly, the current change of the administrative system in both Italy andthe Campania region; secondly, the necessity to involve local citizens in thedecision-making process to regain the trust of the population.Chapter 5 illustrates the conclusion of this first step of the project and gives anoutlook on further steps.Version 1.6 This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 688920.Spatial Planning and Strateg

Urban Regions Shifting to Circular Economy: Understanding Challenges for New Ways of Governance

Urban areas account for around 50% of global solid waste generation. In the last decade, the European Union has supported numerous initiatives aiming at reducing waste generation by promoting shifts towards Circular Economy (CE) approaches. Governing this process has become imperative. This article focuses on the results of a governance analysis of six urban regions in Europe involved in the Horizon 2020 project REPAiR. By means of semi-structured interviews, document analysis and workshops with local stakeholders, for each urban area a list of governance challenges which hinder the necessary shift to circularity was drafted. In order to compare the six cases, the various challenges have been categorized using the PESTEL-O method. Results highlight a significant variation in policy contexts and the need for these to evolve by adapting stakeholders’ and policy-makers’ engagement and diffusing knowledge on CE. Common challenges among the six regions include a lack of an integrated guiding framework (both political and legal), limited awareness among citizens, and technological barriers. All these elements call for a multi-faceted governance approach able to embrace the complexity of the process and comprehensively address the various challenges to completing the shift towards circularity in cities.Spatial Planning and StrategyUrban Development Managemen