Symbiotic and Regenerative Sustainability Frameworks: Moving Towards Circular City Implementation

Abstract

Growing in popularity, the circular city framework is at the leading-edge of a larger and older transitional dialogue which envisions regenerative, circular, and symbiotic systems as the future of urban sustainability. The need for more research supporting the implementation of such concepts has been often noted in literature. To help address this gap, this holistic review assesses a range of pertinent sustainability frameworks as a platform to identify actionable strategies which can be leveraged to support and implement circular city goals. This assessment is grounded in a holistic overview of related frameworks across interdisciplinary and scalar domains including circular city, the food-water-energy nexus, circular economy, bioeconomy, industrial symbiosis, regenerative design, and others. Building on these interrelationships, the applied strategies espoused within these publications are synthesized and assessed in the context of circular city implementation. From an initial 250 strategies identified in literature, thirty-four general implementation strategies across six thematic areas are distinguished and discussed, finding strong overlaps in implementation strategies between frameworks, and opportunities to further develop and harness these synergies to advance circular city toward sustainable urban futures.

Circular economy implementation and business performance: The mediating role of environmental performance in the Chinese energy production enterprises

“…This shows that the implementation of circular economy is an important factor to promote the improvement of enterprise environmental performance. This finding responds to the doubts about the actual effects of circular economy and proves that circular economy (Diemer et al, 2022), as a national environmental protection strategy, is not only effective at the regional and other macro levels, but also can play a practical role at the micro level of enterprise management (Horn and Proksch, 2022).…”

Industrial symbiosis and agri-food system: Themes, links, and relationships

“…Industrial ecosystems, eco-industrial networks and ecoindustrial parks have been identified as the physical expressions of industrial symbiosis (Horn and Proksch, 2022).…”

The complexity and interconnectedness of circular cities and the circular economy for sustainability

“…The challenge regarding circular economy implementation emerged as the circular economy has been primarily initiated in the industrial sector and the rising need for compatible models (Camilleri, 2020; Williams, 2019a). A shift from business activities to other city aspects, such as urban landscape design, was proposed (Marin & De Meulder, 2018), and the inclusion of bioeconomy, and regenerative design (Horn & Proksch, 2022). Furthermore, the need for tools to provide a basis for circular city implementation was exposed (Girard & Nocca, 2019), as well as evaluation models and frameworks to examine the success of implementing a circular economy at the city level (Gao et al, 2021a; Rodrigues & Franco, 2019).…”