Project
CREATE - Embedding advanced urban material stock methods within governance processes to enable circular economy and cities resilience
CREATE supports urban transformation towards a circular economy by analysing material stocks in urban construction, developing future material flow scenarios, and establishing governance strategies. It focuses on large infrastructures like buildings, roads, and water systems. A trans-disciplinary consortium will combine quantitative modelling, qualitative research, and governance design. Existing tools will be improved and integrated with digitalisation technologies to inform decision-makers. Stakeholder engagement and co-creation will occur in three urban living labs and six fellow cities. Best practices and governance interventions will lead to tailored arrangements and an upscaling strategy for Europe.
Background
The construction sector is the world largest consumer of raw materials and responsible for 25 to 40% of the global GHG emissions. In a context of an ongoing urbanisation where the use of resources will grow, cities have a key role to play in the management of the waste of the building environment. The circular economy applied to the built environment appears as a potential solution to reduce the CO2 but also decrease the environmental impact of a construction, the waste production and the energy consumption. This ambition has been translated into policy strategies on various scales since 2015 and the municipalities, as well as the stakeholders of the construction sector and urban planning, must work to implement this goal concretely. In that context, they need another way to work together and use new data and tools to support the decision process to enable circularity.
Description
The project aims at supporting urban transformation processes towards the circular economy by making an inventory of the existing material stocks within urban construction, developing reliable scenarios for future expected material flows, and providing governance arrangements on how to approach the circular economy transition. The project will focus on the largest urban infrastructures and communal assets, namely buildings, municipal roads, water, and waste water pipes. A truly transdisciplinary consortium will work with a mixed research design that integrates quantitative modelling with qualitative study and design of governance aspects. The project will further improve already existing, validated, and applied tools and arrangements and combine them with new digitalisation technologies to inform decision-makers and enable a circular built environment. This will be achieved by engaging with a wide range of stakeholders in a co-creation process with three urban living labs and six fellow cities in five countries, which will result in numerous capacity building moments throughout the entire project. A thorough analysis of best practices of cities steering the circular economy transition together with new governance interventions will result in concrete proposals of tailored governance arrangements for the participating cities including a concrete proposal for an upscaling strategy for Europe.