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The study of the city as a living organism in constant transformation is especially linked to the investigation of its metabolic flows and their impacts on urban systems. The interplay of urban metabolic flows with the natural and anthropic landscape, including the built environment and its discarded parts, is connected in various ways. Urban Metabolism has been mainly studied by environmentalists and engineers so far, but it is recently acquiring growing significance also for urban planners, architects, and policymakers to determine and evaluate the impacts of human transformation on the human-natural ecosystem. Considering the urban landscape and the metabolism of its resources as an integrated system requires the recognition of which materials, methods, approaches, and general issues should be considered in planning and design for the transition toward a Circular Metabolic Urban Landscape. The process of transition to circular cities should necessarily involve actors from different research fields. Thus, this study aims at systematizing the recent and constantly evolving knowledge on this topic. This chapter presents a Systematic Review of the recent scientific literature by analyzing the production of the last 10 years on Urban Metabolism and Circular Economy in the context of spatial design and planning. The criteria set as a guide were made explicit through the coding of the selected papers by employing ATLAS.ti and grouping the subjects coded in five main clusters: theoretical issues, UM-specific topics, planning and design research, interdisciplinary studies and research and applications, and open issues. A semantic network links the cross-disciplinarity topics. The challenges and research topics to consider for a Circular Metabolic Urban Landscape are then considered as a set of links in the recent scientific literature selected.

Nowadays, the circularity concept dominates the debate on resource management in cities and territories. The idea is often used as a vehicle towards a more sustainable socio-ecological transition, based on the circular economy (CE) framework. Unlike other sustainability frameworks, CE originates in ecological and environmental economics and industrial ecology. It focuses on developing an alternative economic and technological model for production and consumption, avoiding natural resource depletion and redesigning processes and cycles of materials (closed-loops). However, when CE is translated to cities and territories, its environmental, economic and design agency is often neglected. On the one hand, it demands to acknowledge the need for a relational understanding of space, place and actors involved and, on the other, to explore the spatial specificity of CE. Therefore, there is a need for a broader theoretical discourse on the CE’s territoriality as the predominant. Research on circular urban and territorial development demands more than merely upscaling industrial ecosystems diagrams and generating circular businesses. Consequently, what is the role of territory in the CE conceptualisation in the urbanism literature? How to interpret territories through the lens of circularity, which tools, methods are needed? Therefore, territory, its role and meaning in the CE contribution to urban regeneration is the key focus of this text.

Urban manufacturing and manufacturers play a vital role in delivering circular economy ambitions through processing materials, providing skills and technology for repair or reconditioning goods and the capacity to deliver innovative technology. The transdisciplinary approach of Cities of Making (CoM) puts forward three ways of addressing manufacturing, and by extension, circularity, within urban areas. Central to triangulate the facilitation of urban manufacturing are the perspectives of (1) material flows and technology, (2) spatial design (3) people and networks. The integration of the three pathways requires convergence while retaining the richness of the three perspectives. The challenge is to find a common language that provides a comparable, operative framework for exploring possible solutions. The CoM framework of integration followed three main principles: (1) reducing the complexity of information, (2) reducing the complexity of combinations of possible solutions, and (3), applying an accessible, applicable instrument for the solutions. The resulting pattern language is co-created in a transdisciplinary setting and is also an instrument for the transdisciplinary application. The low threshold accessible system of solutions allows actors from different disciplines to access patterns developed in the context of another discipline and laypeople who are affected or interested to co-create.

Advancing circularity in metropolitan areas involves planning, co-designing and implementing spatially explicit interventions with a multitude of stakeholders who are required to work with waste and resource management information. For the stakeholders, understanding information on these flows of resources and materials, and the spatial implications of these flows across the territory, is crucial when proposing new interventions and assessing the effects of these interventions. Spatial decision support systems constitute potential tools for supporting groups of stakeholders involved in the collaborative process of shaping the future of urban areas while achieving sustainability and increased circularity. This chapter focuses on the digital representation and portrayal, and the use of different types of information in a digital spatial decision support tool aimed at helping decision-makers through stages of the collaborative process that starts at problem identification and status quo understanding, and finishes at the proposed circular economy strategies for a metropolitan area. The way in which information is modeled and presented in the tool is largely based on the geodesign methodology, and is specific to individual stages of the planning process. The tool presents information relevant to a peri-urban area through different mediums: web maps and charts to describe the study area, Sankey diagrams linked with dynamic flow maps to portray its resource flow streams, and the integration of the above to portray and assess the scenarios developed jointly by the stakeholders. The tool was implemented in an interactive web application and applied to the collaborative process of developing spatial strategies for advancing circularity in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. A series of interconnected workshops were held with stakeholders, who used the tool to guide them through the stages of the co-development of the strategies. Stakeholders were presented with spatial information about the study area’s current resource and waste management situation in the form of web maps and the spatial distribution and dynamics of resource flows. This chapter describes how all this information was portrayed, presented, and used within the interactive web application at the collaborative workshops.

In this first chapter of the Book “Regenerative Territories. Dimensions of Circularity for Healthy Metabolisms”, the relation between circularity and space is explored. The main focus is the development over time, and in particular the way how spatial planning and strategies respond to new unpredictable urgencies and opportunities related with territorial metabolisms. In relation to space and time, 5 grand rules are explored as necessary to implement the transition towards Circularity: (1) The Circular Economy paradigm shift requires a socio-ecological perspective and looking beyond boundaries; (2) Circular Economy is based on systems thinking and territorial metabolism; (3) a Circular Economy calls for a renewed approach to the public domain and stakeholder involvement; (4) amplifying the definition of Circular Economy with the inclusion of wastescapes; and (5) Planning the Circular Economy as an open collaborative system. The paradigm shift of contemporary planning towards circularity is aimed to facilitate the capacity of cities to be adaptive and flexible to the speeding up of the biggest changes in the present-day society. Therefore, the relation between the various spatial scales is strictly interlinked to the time scales, as well as to the metabolic processes and Life Cycles of Territories. In this perspective, the “existing city” is a non-negotiable common heritage, the result of a “selective accumulation” of material and immaterial traces produced by the slow and progressive anthropic work in the territory. Contemporary spatial planning looks beyond boundaries. This concerns both the physical boundaries between areas or countries, both the boundaries of the various scale levels of solutions, of the interrelated networks, of the public space and, particularly, of their reciprocity. It induces the scrutinization of the underlying social needs and the finding of instruments that allow the spatial planning and renewed infrastructure to fit the changing social objectives such as sustainability and liveability. The territory of the Circular Economy is the city, as a complex and multidimensional organism. However, the most problematic field for experimenting with “circular planning” is the peri-urban territory consisting of urbanized areas, crossed by differentiated phenomena of settlement expansion beyond the limits of the countryside, which identifies rural and open space, traditionally coinciding with the limits of the city. A circular planning for the regeneration of the peri-urban identifies the waste spaces, the decay of the territory, the obsolescence and end of life of buildings, functions and urban parts now inadequate, namely wasted landscapes (wastescapes). The latter are both the result of metabolic transformations of the territory and generator of prospects and potential for rebalancing the material welfare of the city.

Port and city authorities all over Europe and beyond are striving with finding solutions able to combine sustainability with economic growth. Several global urgencies in fact, such as climate change, energy transition, the exponential changes in the scale of ports and ships and last but not least the economic and health shock related to the coronavirus pandemic, are challenging the spaces where ports physically meet their cities, generating processes of caesura within the urban patterns with consequent impacts on the quality of life. In port cities, infrastructures and energy flows overlap with city flows and patterns that change with different rhythms and temporalities. This discrepancy creates abandonment and marginality between port and city. This today is no longer sustainable. New approaches and solutions that look at integration and circularity rather than separation are necessary.Circularity has been widely discussed in the literature. However, the concept still remains very controversial, especially when it comes to port cities where new definitions are needed in particular to better understand the spatial dimension of circularity. The Rotterdam therefore case study stands exemplary. Here, the concept of the circular economy refers mostly to the theme of obsolete industrial buildings and marginal that are reinserted again within the urban metabolism. The case of Rotterdam points out that the competition of the port today goes through the quality of its relationship spaces and the ability of the different actors involved in the planning process to hold together economic growth and environmental sustainability. The areas along the river are in fact the most fascinating places in the city and today they are ready for a different use. In order for the city to become an attractive place to live it is necessary to build new, innovative and sustainable spatial visions. This will lead to scenarios of sustainable coexistence between port and city. Therefore, these two agendas (sustainable port and city attractiveness) came together in the area known as Makers district (M4H) which, together with RDM campus, represents the Rotterdam testing ground for innovation.Therefore, this chapter, by arguing that ports will play a crucial role in the transition towards more circularity investigates how to make it happen and how to transform the challenges of the port into opportunities for a territorial regeneration towards new forms of integration. In order to answer the question, the case of Rotterdam is presented to analyse a model of urban regeneration where different planning agencies—mainly port authority, municipality, universities and private parties—work together at different scales to define a sustainable coexistence of interests. The research, which draws data on existing literature and policy documents analysis, firstly introduces the spatial and governance structures of the city of Rotterdam as part of a bigger metropolitan region. Secondly, it analyses the case of “Stadshavens strategy” as an emblematic example to overcome conflicts and path dependencies at the intersection of land and water. Finally, it concludes by highlighting some limitations and path dependencies that could make the transition to new forms of the circular economy very difficult in the future.

Cities are like “heterotrophic organisms” because they are dependent on inflows of air, water, food, matter, and energy. Unlike nature, they pollute their own habitat through the production of waste outflows and emissions, extending beyond their own footprint. Data on the ecological footprint of cities have quantified, emblematically, the imbalance between in- and outflows but also what remains: polluted air, water, and soil. The rapid growth of urbanization is a matter of serious concern, but as a part of new development, it can be turned around with an approach in which cities become an “autotrophic organism”.In 2012 Taranto, a coastal city in Southern Italy with an important commercial and military port, was declared as the city “with the highest risk of environmental crisis” in Italy due to a large industrial area developed in the proximity of a highly populated urban settlement.The cause of pollution, a steel production plant, directly employs approximately 12.000 people and another 8.000 contractors indirectly, making it Taranto’s main economic driver.The conflict between economy and environment in the city of Taranto, make it a peculiar case study to be approached with the concept of a Democratic Landscape. This concept reads the territory beyond the natural environment, also recognizing the wellbeing of the inhabitants.After the analysis of a Democratic Landscape in relation to the concept of an “autotrophic organism”, this contribution explores the transformation by regeneration of the ecosystem and the economic regime. In redeveloping a city like Taranto, changing its function from a heterotrophic organism to an autotroph organism, the approach of the so-called “linking open-loop system circularity” is more appropriate. It more adequately describes the system than what is commonly understood for circularity at the building scale of “reduce, reuse, recycle of resources”. Circularity as an attitude brings together many elements that can be considered generic for each project: it can be about recycling or reuse, cutting costs or time, and output of CO2 through reducing material inflow and the transport of materials.In the context of the Democratic Landscape and an autotropic organism, the approach of “linking open-loop system circularity” is tested on two scales in Taranto. One, on the large scale, proposing multiple reuses of agricultural crops after remediation and two, at the local scale, in rebuilding a portion of the city by reusing the demolished buildings materials.The need to rethink and redesign the flow of resources such as building materials, water, food, and energy is essential to the future sustainability of cities. It involves thinking about how to use existing resources rather than dispose of them as in the linear model. It also means establishing new economic models in order to make a sustainable city, flows of intelligent growth and the creation of an identity for a communal sense of belonging. Together, these create a democratic, autotrophic landscape that can sustain a future.

Per ridurre la perdita di vite umane e limitare i danni ambientali ed economici causati da emergenze epidemiologiche come la recente diffusione del virus SARS-Cov-2 e dell’infezione Covid-19, è fondamentale promuovere una cultura del rischio e della prevenzione. Un maggiore benessere psicofisico in ogni fase dell’emergenza può essere garantito attraverso la riorganizzazione del welfare materiale e immateriale, potenziando le capacità di accoglienza dello spazio urbano, programmandone una fruibilità sia ordinaria che emergenziale. La recente pandemia ha, infatti, fatto emergere criticità interdisciplinari legate alla forma degli insediamenti urbani e periurbani, ai comportamenti individuali e alle condizioni di vita ad essi connessi. In particolare, nei territori fragili, è evidente la crisi di un sistema – quello pubblico – le cui strutture materiali ed il cui ruolo vanno oggi riformati complessivamente a partire dai concetti di iper-prossimità e priorità d’uso, in forme ridefinite dagli abitanti stessi. Ripensare le aree urbane nella prospettiva della ‘15-minute city’ pone l’attenzione sull’attuale dotazione, distribuzione e accessibilità di spazi e servizi pubblici. Appare ineludibile un'integrazione tra gestione dell'emergenza ed adattamento delle strutture pubbliche con particolare riferimento a quelle sottoutilizzate o in stato di abbandono, anche attraverso l’inclusione di nuovi attori nelle politiche di gestione dello spazio pubblico attraverso l’empowerment.

In Europe, the concepts of urban metabolism (UM) and circular economy (CE) have been made operational in several research projects and practical applications. However, although in the last years policy interests and scientific literature about UM and CE have been growing significantly, these concepts remain open, and their applicability is not univocal, especially concerning CE applied in urban systems. This paper analyses how three EU funded projects developed the interrelations amongst the fields of UM and CE. Different dimensions and scales of circularity were investigated, namely: (i) the potentials to create networking among different sectors to recycle waste at the regional scale; (ii) the importance of regenerating wastescapes; (iii) the accounting of resource flows that compose UM; (iv) the direct involvement of stakeholders in the management of resources. Keywords: circular economy, urban metabolism, regenerative city, Bulletin of the Calza Bini Center, Vol 19 No 1 (2019): The Circular Economy Model: from the Building Functional Reuse to the Urban System Regeneration

The paper focuses on the impact generated by the un-ement of wast on both natural environment, and urbanization process, and on the opportunity to invert it by regenerating Wasted Landscapes, i.e. underused, polluted and abandoned sites, especially lo-cated in peri-urban areas. This is one of the aims of the REPAiR project, funded in 2016 by the European Commission within the Horizon 2020 framework, developed by University of Na-ples with TU Delft as Lead Partner. The implementation of multi-scaling/multi-disciplinary ap-proach, for testing out collaborative decision-making, has seen so far the research of a scien-ea in the context of the Metropolitan Area of Naples. The selection of the peri-urban areas has also been tested through Living Labs, aimed at designing eco-innovative solutions towards circularity., Ri-Vista, Vol 16 No 1 (2018): Special Issue

Il saggio attiene alle innovazioni del progetto urbanistico contemporaneo relative ad una nuova sensibilità per gli orientamenti teorici e operativi collegati ai principi dell’economia circolare, con la conseguente messa a sistema delle risorse territoriali inutilizzate o sottoutilizzate, ai flussi di “waste” che – in una visione estensiva – riguardano anche i territori della dismissione e dell’abbandono, i cosiddetti “wastescape” – paesaggi di scarto – e la razionalizzazione dei cicli di rifiuti. La prospettiva di lavoro mira a integrare competenze tradizionalmente confinate in campi disciplinari differenti, al fine di migliorare i processi di gestione, ponendoli in sinergia con quelli di bonifica, nel senso più ampio, e di riqualificazione territoriale e paesaggistica. A partire dalle attività di ricerca in corso di svolgimento nell’ambito del progetto di ricerca Horizon 2020 “REPAiR”, lo scritto prova a sintetizzare alcuni dei risultati sinora conseguiti, aprendo al contempo a una fase di concreta sperimentazione operativa. In particolare, con riferimento ai processi di rigenerazione attivabili nell’area metropolitana di Napoli, ci si interroga sulle ricadute che questi nuovi principi, orientamenti e metodi, potranno avere sugli strumenti e i processi di rigenerazione territoriale.

REPAiR will provide local and regional authorities with an innovative transdisciplinary open source Geodesign Decision Support Environment (GDSE) developed and implemented in Living Labs (LLs) context, in six metropolitan areas namely Naples, Ghent, Hamburg, Pécs, Łódź and Amsterdam. LLs are physical and virtual environments, in which public-private-people partnerships experiment an iterative method to develop innovations, that include the involvement of end users. In LLs different areas of expertise from diverse partners are needed for a good development of the activities, with the aim to meet the need of the stakeholders by innovation. The innovation concept here is used in the sense of a difference between an existing entity (a product, a policy, a service, etc.) and customers’ expectations. The elements of innovation can be technological factors, better working conditions or methods of entity delivery, etc., because to innovate means to be creative, learning from mistakes. This means also to learn and share information about what went wrong, in order to use it in upcoming phases. LLs are approaches and instruments, at the same time, to improve the innovation capabilities and competitiveness of territories. Thanks to the LL approach, policy makers can face the many socio-economic challenges of their territories, improving social inclusion. Typically useful for the interpretation of complex real life environments, LLs are recognized as users-friendly instruments and processes to promote open innovation in several European regions. In this way complex solutions are identified, tested and transformed into prototypes (Innovation Alcotra, 2013). In other words, an LL is a “user-driven open innovation ecosystem” (EC, 2009) that utilizes the fruitful participation of business, citizens and governments in the research process; this approach is helpful in order to better define the current behaviors and user patterns. Co-creation, one of the main and transversal components of an LL, is the process that produces a product or a service as a result of a cooperation between the collaboration of end-users and other stakeholders that work in the common environment of LL (Innovation Alcotra, 2013). Cities as complex systems, characterized by Urban Metabolism and increasing challenges, demand co-creation (Gemeente Rotterdam, IABR, FABRIC, JCFO, & TNO, 2014). LLs identify sustainable activities that are coherent with the territory and competitive in some ways if compared with global economies, and put them in contact with the ones that already exist in the same area. In REPAiR, Living Labs are organized in six peri-urban areas across Europe, as stated above, as decision support environments where representatives of universities, governance, corporations, local communities and, in addition, individuals make decisions that are based on their role and expertise. In this framework, design professionals, information technologists and scientists give contributions and support the decision-making process related to what to do and how to do that in each case study area. In order to make a decision that must be site specific, it is necessary to identify and compare several opportunities and alternatives that should be developed in the Peri-Urban Living Labs (PULLs), after the knowledge and evaluation of the current situation of the place. The different disciplines involved in the PULL have different methods that can interact, to imagine and select change models that work at different scales simultaneously.

This research presents REVERSE LAND as a way to add to the definition of 'waste' to include 'Wasted Landscapes' (WL). In contemporary territories, different kinds of WL are in evidence, such as brownfields, derelict lands, drosscapes, polluted industrial landscapes, terrain vague, vacant land, friches, interscapes, underutilised areas, 'in-between' surfaces left over by the dominant economic forces of urbanisation, abandoned and/or contaminated sites, degraded and interstitial entities. WL can be open spaces as well as constructed objects such as, buildings or infrastructures at the end of their life-cycle. WL are considered to be problematic but can also be viewed as a starting point with the potential for future re-cycling of contemporary European territories.