Beyond wastescapes

Abstract

Wastescapes are the result of unsustainable linear growth processes and their spatial consequences within the context of urban metabolic flows and related infrastructure. They represent the operational infrastructure for waste management and include Drosscapes, generating complex relations with the servicing and surrounding territory. In particular, the peri-urban areas are spatially affected by these processes. This often leads to ineffective use and/or abandonment because they are currently impossible to use, demanding impactful (and often expensive) regeneration and revalorization to make them usable again. Being part of the urban metabolic process, wastescapes are in a continuous state of dynamic equilibrium. They can be considered crucial areas from a metropolitan perspective because they have the potential to become innovative spatial contexts or resources in a Circular Economy (CE), which aims to overcome the crises of both resource scarcity and spatial fragmentation. However, common and shared definitions of wastescapes are still missing at the European policy level, as only classical categories of material waste are generally mentioned. Wastescapes can be considered as 'potentiality contexts' where developing, testing, and implementing Eco-Innovative Solutions (EIS) can be done. By doing so, wastescapes can help start transitions towards a CE. This can be achieved by using Peri-urban Living Labs (PULL), which have the potential to be the virtual and physical environments in which experimenting the collaborative co-creation process for developing EIS can be done. Doing so will allow for the improvement of waste management and for the revalorization of wastescapes in collaboration with all potential stakeholders.