 Hello, I'm Aristide from Metabolism of Cities and in this video we will discuss what is a circular city? First of all a circular city is not defined by its shape So it's nothing about, you know, medieval cities were with fortresses around us and stuff like that Although that might have been a very good idea in order to know exactly what comes in what goes out But this is another story. Anyhow, what is a circular city? first of all, it's More or less a city that applies circular economy and what is a circular economy? The very simple way of explaining this is it would be a city that would Reuse all of its all of its outputs all of the flows that exit the system as new inputs So in another way reuse all of its waste as resources But when I say Reuse all of its output as new inputs. It's not necessarily just recycling it can be reusing it can be repairing it can be remanufacturing a number of solutions The big problem is that nowadays within cities we mostly Don't have the right infrastructure to do all of these things. We don't have recycling plants within cities. We don't have people that know how to Reuse materials for instance in the construction sector. This is just a tiny margin more and more people that Although this used to be the case, right? We don't have enough people that know how to repair because we have pushed them away from cities Remanufacturing is not always an option because Manufacturing activities are pushed away from the city because it's the rent is so high. So you see that by definition or As cities have evolved it's very difficult to have the necessary infrastructure within our cities to actually make them more circular therefore You have to think that Circularity within a city is something very difficult to achieve a city will never be a hundred percent circular neither an economic activity because they're They're you know thermodynamics within this so Let's say even a big amount of circularity is very difficult to achieve within cities and even if we were a hundred percent circular Imagine if we had one new person that was added to that city Well, our circle would get just a tiny bit bigger, right? So we would reuse but we would just need to Put just the necessary amount in the circle in order for that one additional person To satisfy its needs that means we need some extraction as well or some addition to it Well cities do not have many extract extractive activities anymore as well So it means that we need to import things from elsewhere So once again having a circular city is something very very difficult And it is so difficult because by definition a city is a place where we accumulate things from elsewhere We have specialized labor forces and therefore We have put aside all of the manufacturing activities We have put aside all of the polluting activities and we have kept all of the activities that generate more money and are Less more less clean today. So services the service-based economy So you might say okay great You you just mentioned that we cannot make a circular city or a circular city might be an oxymoron But let's try to think together what could a circular city look like or what can still cities do today Knowing that we're part of a globalized economy and therefore we're a bit locked within global supply chains And also that we don't have the necessary infrastructure to recirculate the flows within the cities Well, first of all is reducing consumption Again remember the size of the the circle I mentioned before the thinner the circle is The easier it would be to make it more circular and it will have less environmental impacts So again first step Recommend reducing consumption. This can be made with a number of policies This can be made by raising awareness. This can be made through a number of things also Offering a number of leisure activities to your citizens Making your city much more livable and therefore spending more time within your city not consuming the second and very important topic as well is to reduce Building new things within your city as we said we don't manufacture a lot So how we consume most of our our materials within cities is food But then it's also buildings buildings So new infrastructure new buildings is something that consumes a great amount of materials, but also in in conjunction to that all of the water energy and all of the other materials that they Consume in order to use these buildings. So try to avoid building new buildings especially residential buildings because they're the ones that extract Place from Creating new production activities and I'll go back to that. So I'm not saying that you should build offices I'm saying try to avoid building buildings that do not generate or are not linked with the material flows The third point that's very relevant to develop more circular cities is to leave enough space for Infrastructure for circular infrastructure and for local manufacturing. So What I'm saying is Imagine you have a building and you want to deconstruct it and construct another building or repair this one And you want to reuse some materials from one building to another in most cases You don't have the time to to go from one building to another building and because of this lack of time oftentimes We we choose to demolish rather than deconstruct Another solution would be to have a place to store materials in between buildings. So having a physical storage physical material bank where It could be a city material bank or it could be a company material bank where you can store your materials between to Between two buildings you can think about the same thing for urban agriculture leave enough space in your city for growing more Local foods within your city. It can be the same thing for composting leave enough space within your city to actually Composts or biodegrade most of your food waste or green waste or garden waste so all of this you see that there are competing for enough space and When you look at the market, what's more? Profitable is to it's to build new residential building. So that's what gets more money or offices So that's why I'm saying try to leave enough space for years in in your city to allow for Circular infrastructures the same thing with manufacturing, of course Today we cannot have in our cities the same type of infrastructure So manufacturing activities that we had in the past. So probably you won't have a coal plant Probably you won't have a steel plant Etc. Etc. So heavy industry, but you can still maintain some parts of industry And manufacturing activities that are relevant for your economy So urban manufacturing also needs space and if we don't give it space then you know Making more local material products making more local products making more local and using therefore local materials and Also having a way to disassemble them locally will never happen However, and that's one of the biggest assets of circular economy You should start thinking about how to cross and interlink these challenges. So Circular economy could provide us a way to make systemic policies So policies that tackle many challenges simultaneously. Thanks to circular economy For instance try to have if you have activities Manufacturing activities locally that might reduce imports and that might reduce a lot of greenhouse gas emitted elsewhere But that can also start employing people from your own city. That means that There is not people that come from elsewhere to fill in these jobs That also means that you create more local based economy. That means also that you might create a New movement a new engagement from your citizens for all of these kind of things That also means thinking about different flows together. So how can I reduce simultaneously water energy materials and greenhouse gas emissions? All of this is possible But if you need more information more scientific studies more engagement with academia as well This is the last point I think in order to become a more circular city You also need to define what the circular city is Then start measuring if you're progressing towards it and therefore try to make a link between Your actions and the flows because today these are, you know Cities more and more cities Brussels Paris Amsterdam are going towards circular economy They're applying a number of actions But they don't have a clear idea whether where they put their money is where they have the biggest impact on circular economy We might need to wait a while to see if there is a direct influence between the two But if you don't have more information Then therefore circular economy might never happen or happen with because of other things that you never thought of That's it for now. Please let us know in the comments what you think about all of this What is a circular city to you and what would be perhaps some solutions that you would suggest? Thanks a lot for watching and see you in the next video. Cheers