The Slums phenomenon is a global and ethical challenge that hinders the well-being of cities. The vast majority of these areas are located in and around cities of the Global South because of the fast urbanisation and globalisation trends that have been met with insufficient employment, infrastructure and housing opportunities. This graduation project will explore new slum development alternatives through the lens of circular economy principles. The main focus is to elaborate holistic proposals and strategies that reject eviction and resettlement processes and aim for social, spatial and economic integration. Taking the case of Casablanca, Morocco, the project takes as a starting point the existing assets of les bidonvilles* which potentially, will lead to better approaches for tackling the challenge of slums at the local and metropolitan scales while developing contextualised circular economy guidelines.

The Greater Bay Area, known as the GBA, ultimately incorporates 11 main cities (consisting of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), the Macao Special Administrative Region (Macao SAR) as well as the municipalities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen, and Zhaoqing) into an urbanised population of over 70 million people. It represents a significant opportunity to shape the future of the Pearl River Delta region.

In the last decades, this region has experienced an unprecedented rise of urbanisation and a rapid economic growth positioning itself as the future centre of global economy. However, the uneven development has been the reason behind several environmental and socio-spatial challenges that threaten the future of this mega region. The research intends to comprehend these issues under the fragmentation perspective, by classifying and analysing the challenges within three main themes (Society, Economy and Environment) in three different scales. Furthermore, the research proposes that the integration of bio-physical infrastructures (Green and blue network) respecting the natural ecosystem and the delta conditions throughout the whole process of development and urbanisation, will help redefine the future of globalisation in the GBA. In order to achieve that, an explorative method using the ‘strips game’ was used as a method to produce a vision and urban scenarios on multiple scales providing functional and spatial distributions. This method was conducted in Hong Kong to give access to the feeling and environment in question.