Closing the loop for urban material flows

CityLoops brings together six ambitious European cities to demonstrate a series of innovative tools and urban planning approaches, aimed at closing the loops of urban material flows and increasing their regenerative capacity. Demonstration actions will be implemented in relation to construction/demolition waste, including soil, and organic waste. During the inception phase, a circular city scan methodology and indicators will be developed and implemented in each city, by adapting current MFA and Urban Metabolism methods to include context-specific data and challenges, to adjust planned demonstration actions, provide an evaluation framework for the measures and monitor their progress towards a circular economy. A series of further innovative decision support tools will be developed (such as City Lab, a GIS based city planning tool, and a pre-demolition resource-mapping tool) for specific demonstration actions. In each city, a Local Stakeholder Partnership will be established at project outset, involving citizen groups, businesses communities, and other relevant partners, to guide planning and implementation. In each case, public procurement actions will also be analysed to assess potential supportive measures. As the selected cities are small to medium sized cities (pop. 50,000 – 600,000), Apeldoorn, Bodø, Mikkeli, Porto, Seville and Roskilde/Høje-Taastrup, the tools, approaches and solutions demonstrated should be replicable in a large number of cities across Europe. Replication is embedded throughout the project. At city level, all demonstration cities will prepare scale-up plans. At a regional level Collaborative Learning Networks will be established, consisting of other municipalities, public bodies, and other relevant regional institutions, to prepare regional upscaling plans. At a European level, a series of Replication Zones will be recruited over the course of the project to prepare replication plans. Guidance on replication will also be produced.