In our chapter, we argue that urban soil should be understood and treated as a living, generative substrate. Drawing on interdisciplinary research of soil science, ecology, landscape architecture and urban planning, we explore how “vital soil” can and should become a foundational design parameter in urban environments. We discuss a practical framework, as originally proposed in a design-oriented "designing with and for vital soil" handbook. The chapter argues that only by re-centering the underground, can cities evolve in ways that are biodiverse and climate-resilient. ... Read more

Implementing a circular economy in cities has been proposed by policy makers as a potential solution for achieving sustainability in the construction sector. One strategy that has gained interest by both policy makers and companies is to develop “circular construction hubs”: locations that collect, store, and redistribute waste as secondary resources. However, there is limited literature taking a spatially explicit view, identifying the spatial parameters that could affect the locations of hubs both for now and in the future. This study therefore aims to categorize different types of circular hubs for the construction industry, collect spatial parameters required for finding suitable locations for each type of circular hub, and translate the spatial parameters into a list of data and spatial analysis methods that could be used to identify potential future locations. The study used the Netherlands as a case study, extracting spatial parameters from two sources: Dutch governmental policy documents on circular economy and spatial development and interviews with companies operating circular hubs. Four types of circular construction hubs were identified: urban mining hubs, industry hubs, local material banks, and craft centers. The spatial parameters were extracted for each type of hub from four perspectives: resources (such as material type, business model), accessibility (such as mode and scale of transportation), land use (such as plot size, land use), and socio-economic (such as labor availability). The parameters were then translated into a list of spatial data and analysis methods required to identify future locations of circular construction hubs. ... Read more

Transitioning towards a circular built environment and turning waste into resources have become one of the new sustainability paradigms today. However, a circular transition can be considered a ‘wicked problem’. The multiple dimensions and scales of the circular transition and its substantial spatial implications fit well into the planning approach of Geodesign. The Horizon 2020 funded project “Resource Management in the periurban Areas - Going beyond Urban Metabolism (REPAiR)” implemented an innovative Geodesign approach. Moreover, it explored its capability to support spatial decision-making processes for the circular economy transition of the built environment within urban planning practices. This article aims to understand to what extent a process of Geodesign, which is conducted with the support of a digital tool and a Living Lab approach, can support the creation of localised circular economy strategies and foster the circular economy transition in cities and territories. The analysis explores and compares the results of three European cases -Amsterdam, Hamburg and Naples. It considers the kind of data input required to run the process in every phase, the stakeholders involved and their typology, the specific urban or territorial, planning and governance scales of analysis, and the final output definition after the Geodesign process implementation. The approach outputs constitute a decision support system for easing negotiations between local actors regarding the circularity strategies to implement. The findings reveal an intertwinement between different forms of knowledge included in the process, ranging from sustainability to governance and design, and the actors engaged in planning a circularity transition spatially. However, even using similar starting data, the local information and the starting conditions strongly influence the process and the types of strategies elaborated in each case. ... Read more

Implementing a circular economy in cities has been proposed by policy makers as a potential solution for achieving sustainability in the construction sector. One strategy that has gained interest by both policy makers and companies is to develop ‘circular construction hubs’: locations that collect, store, and redistribute waste as secondary resources. However, there is limited literature taking a spatially explicit view, identifying the spatial parameters that could affect the locations of hubs both for now and in the future. This study therefore aims to categorize different types of circular hubs for the construction industry, collect spatial parameters required for finding suitable locations for each type of circular hub, and translate the spatial parameters into a list of data and spatial analysis methods that could be used to identify potential future locations. The study used the Netherlands as a case study, extracting spatial parameters from two sources: Dutch governmental policy documents on circular economy and spatial development, and interviews with companies operating circular hubs. Four types of circular construction hubs were identified: urban mining hubs, industry hubs, local material banks, and craft centers. The spatial parameters were extracted for each type of hub from four perspectives: resources (such as material type, business model), accessibility (such as mode and scale of transportation), land use (such as plot size, land use), and socio-economic (such as labor availability). The parameters were then translated into a list of spatial data and analysis methods required to identify future locations of circular construction hubs. ... Read more

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. ... Read more

Any process of growth, decline and transformation can be understood from a spatial reading, unraveling the traces left on the ground and observing elements temporarily unable to adapt to the flow of time: wasteland. The concept of wasteland is an artificial ‘construction’ usually linked to the idea of (un)productivity. As society changes, the productive use of land changes through time. This chapter aims to reveal the cumulative alternation of western perception in land use value. The means to read this shift is the historical cartographic analysis on the Southside of Antwerp (Belgium). As constructions of reality, maps are loaded with intentions and interpretations of the culture in which they are produced. In particular, the historical mapping of wastelands generated by industrial and agricultural production focuses on understanding the evolution in interpreting fundamental issues such as time, processes and changes related to land ownership. ... Read more

Fundamental changes in the societal use of biophysical resources are required for a sustainable transformation. Current (urban) metabolism research traces flows of energy and materials and products to capture resource use along value chains from resource extraction to production and consumption and the discharge of wastes and emissions. However, spatial relation, local carrying capacity and qualitative characteristics of the urban landscape are only featured in very few studies, even if they are becoming crucial elements towards future sustainable development. Simultaneously, spatial studies tend to neglect the dimension of processes of flows and the generated stocks that influence the construction and performance of space. Big data and GIS technologies have the potential to leverage the integration between the two fields of knowledge. Therefore, the article explores the development of an innovative method - Activity-based Spatial Material Flow Analysis -that integrates qualitative and quantitative flow specifications in material content and geographical space, starting from the analysis of waste flows relative to the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area (NL). Lastly, the article reflects on the results of the application of the AS-MFA method, namely a series of flow maps. Each flow map is a significant data-based network representation of a part of the urban metabolism within the AMA in a specific period of time. ... Read more

The on-line exhibition presents the results of the Horizon20 Project REPAiR in virtual exhibition rooms. Check-out this next generation experience to learn all about circular economy contexts and solutions: ... Read more

‘The land, so heavily charged with traces and with past readings, seems very similar to a palimpsest’ (Corboz 1985: 190). Any territory is the result of multiple and simultaneous processes; some are taking place spontaneously, others as the direct result of human interventions. (Secchi 1990; Secchi and Viganò 2009) For urbanists, a territory is a constructed physical and mental entity, where several socio-economic and cultural processes generated a juxtaposition of urban elements that at first sight seem to lack any coherence (De Meulder 2008). Nevertheless, a closer look allows an understanding into the ordering logics that determine through time the continuous production and reproduction of space (Harvey 2001). These logics are embodied in the territory itself, making it comparable to a ‘palimpsest’, in which the traces of recent and ancient modifications ‘lie’ (Corboz 1985: 190). As Vittoria Di Palma suggests, each action on the territory, either good or bad, leaves traces and ‘we cannot wish them away’ (Di Palma 2014: 01). Wasteland, in the form of abandoned built and un-built spaces, can also be seen as the remains of ancient transformation (Furlan 2017). An a posteriori mapping observation of these remains, as latent elements being temporarily unable to undergo transformation, allows us to understand what resists the flow of time, as well as what adapts or opposes itself to it (Viganò 2013). The presence of these traces can then be interpreted as signs of change. Consequently, mapping today’s wastelands is instrumental to unfolding historical landscape in transformation throughout a thick description in time and space. Considering the landscape as a dynamic entity whose spatial features are permanently emerging and constantly undergoing modification (De Meulder 2008:29), it is important to assume that the processes of transformation are grounded in a given space in ways that are both geographically and historically specific. Therefore, this chapter proposes to illustrate and test a thick mapping description through the case study of Charleroi’s post-industrial landscape. The region of Charleroi is situated in the centre of Belgium and was historically manipulated to accommodate first coal-mine, glass and steel industries and then the wasteland generated by the shrinking industry (Fig. 1). Investigating Charleroi’s wastelands and related landscape gives a unique opportunity to explore thick mapping as an approach to unfolding cultural context and meaning of historical landscape in transformation. ... Read more

La Val di Sambre è un territorio complesso. La sua complessità non si esplicita solo attraverso le molteplici chiavi interpretative che possono venire utilizzate nel leggerlo, quanto nelle questioni che solleva in merito alla sua storia, alla sua geografia, al suo ordinamento spaziale. È a partire dalla natura materiale del sito – ovvero dalle tracce che i diversi e simultanei processi di trasformazione hanno lasciato nello spazio – che è possibile ricostruire, a ritroso, la natura e la portata dei diversi modi con i quali le realtà sociali, politiche ed economico-produttive hanno dato forma al territorio e se ne sono simbolicamente appropriate1. Una lettura a posteriori di queste tracce, come spazi latenti che resistono al fluire del tempo, permette di analizzare e distinguere ciò che si adatta da ciò che si oppone al mutamento. È quindi nell’idea di osservare la mutazione del territorio nel presente in cui convergono passato e futuro, che si fonda l’ipotesi di questo articolo. ... Read more

The concept of circular economy (CE) is high on the agenda of many planning agencies in European countries. It has also become a prominent issue in European academic education institutions. It is expected that spatial planning and design can support and add the spatial quality dimension of such a transition towards CE. However, incorporating the concept of CE in an integrative manner in urban design and planning courses is challenging because of its metabolic and complex nature. This article presents the first results of integrating design-teaching activities at a faculty of architecture with an H2020-financed research project. The integration of research and design education provided the students with a situated and indeed transdisciplinary learning environment. Students understood that they needed to address challenges from a systemic perspective rather early in the design process, meaning to understand what the relations between different subsystems and their spatial structures are. Furthermore, the experiment provided evidence that the eco-innovative solutions developed by the students are seen as an effective option to achieve objectives for a transition towards CE by stakeholders. ... Read more

Deliverable 3.3 of Work Package 3 concerns an integrated analysis of the two pilot case studies within the REPAiR project, Amsterdam and Naples, from the vantage point of waste production and processing, and the transition to circular societies. It comprises spatial, social and material flow analyses of the two pilot cases, whilst testing an innovative methodology that was introduced and explained in Deliverable 3.1 [D3.1, AKA the Handbook, Geldermans et al., 2017]. The report addresses additions and clarifications to the methodology presented in Deliverable 3.1. After an update on the basis of technical insights and the work developed in practice within the peri-urban living labs (PULL) workshops carried out so far, an improved classification of Wastescapes is presented. Furthermore, a complete process model to map Wastescapes is provided. A smaller scale of the 'sample' area has been introduced to allow a better interaction with the local stakeholders, deepening the context and cutting into the intermediate scale of the ‘focus-area’. Moreover, the notion of Enabling Contexts is applied to rationalise the links between spatial analysis and eco-innovation solutions (WP5). With regard to the Material Flow Analysis, new insights on data collection and processing are addressed, providing more grip on how to successfully conduct such an MFA. The lion’s share of the report is allocated to presenting the results. For both cases, a rudimentary spatial and socio-economic analysis on a national level precedes a detailed regional analysis: for the Netherlands, this concerns the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area, and for Italy the Campania Region and the Metropolitan region of Naples. Embedded in this spatial-social context, the material flow analysis follows six Activity-based Spatial MFA (as introduced in D3.1) steps to pinpoint and analyse waste related challenges and activities. The report finishes with a reflection on the methodology and results. This reflection focuses on four topics in particular: physico-geographical aspects and waste-sensitivity, Waste(scape) dynamics in space & time, modelling of material flows & data intensity, and the relevance of Enabling Contexts, whilst anticipating the follow up cases as well as a wider field of application. ... Read more

The territory is the result of several and simultaneous process of transformations, that independently from intensity and quality leave behind some traces. An a posteriori observation of these remains as inert and latent spaces in the territory enables the comprehension of what resists to the flow of time, what adapts or opposes itself to it. Therefore, this paper is based on idea of study the transformation of the territory, by observing the present situation, in which past and future converge. Reading the metamorphosis of the Charleroi region, by starting from the observation of the signs left on the territory is not a linear process. In less than a century, indeed, Charleroi region has been strongly manipulated to host the mining, glass and steel industries. Only after the second world war the long decline of this territory begun. Several successive phases of transformation and the decline of the mining, glass and steel industries have radically changed Charleroi’s territory, leaving a legacy of different levels of abandoned spaces. However, sixty years of abandonment slowly and silently changed these spaces, allowing the infiltration of ruderal vegetation, new form of appropriation and consequently supposing the beginning of a new life cycle for the region. In order to address this issue, the paper is divided in two main parts. In the first part the article briefly reconstructs the transformations of the industrial productions of Charleroi starting from the traces left on the territory. Finally, the second part aims to observe these traces from an ecological perspective, highlighting a different value. ... Read more