 Hello and welcome to the Circular Metabolism Podcast. This podcast is hosted by the Chair of Circular Economy and Urban Metabolism held by Aristide de Tannassiades and Stefan Kanpermann at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In this podcast, we talk with researchers, policymakers and different practitioners to unravel the complex aspects of what makes urban metabolism and economies more circular. On this new episode, we learn from Julie Marin, the role of urban landscape design in circular economy transitions. Julie is a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven, funded by a Flanders Research Foundation Fellowship. One of the main assets that landscape design can bring to circular economy is to spatialize and contextualize flows, actors and infrastructures in order to anchor the often two theoretical claims from circular economy. Julie also mentions that as urban and landscape design often embed a definition or a word view, it's also possible to interpret from current case studies claiming to be circular what are the main agendas or interpretations of circularity. Julie has grouped these agendas into four main categories and according to her their identification helped to build a framework that helped policymakers and practitioners to better navigate through the potential implementations of circular economy on a territory. Enjoy this episode and don't forget to visit our website www.circularmetabolism.com for the rest of our productions. Please help us improve our podcast by subscribing to your favorite app including YouTube, iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher and leave us a comment with your thoughts. Hello Julie, it's great to have you here, it's been almost a year since your dissertation that you successfully defended that is named circular economy transition in Flanders and I think I really like the subtitle and I'm gonna have some time to unpack what the subtitle is which is urban landscape design contribution and so you did your research about how I guess urban landscape design contributes to circularity and vice versa how circularity is you know taken into account when we do urban landscape design is that it first of all perhaps what's landscape why urban landscape design and not urban design yeah what's the okay well let's say that the landscape comes in because it's really crucial when you talk about circularity because when you look at it from the big picture perspective resources they originate in landscape and they end up in landscape so you have extraction pits and landfills in the end and so this is to my opinion one maybe sometimes overlooked aspect in what's happening mostly around circular economy we're looking a lot at the part of the the cycle where we are already making products with the extracted resources or reusing these things but the link to landscape is to me really crucial in this circular economy transition if we want to approach it really in a systemic way so landscape something like hinterlands would be your understanding of it like or because so it's I like the urban landscape because it kind of also takes away the the limits of the urban yeah but then it kind of blends it into a where is the city where does the city stop where does it start in the case of Flanders it's a bit difficult to to talk about this distinction because we're talking about the the the nebulous condition in which urbanization is almost everywhere and nature and urbanization are really intertwined in urbanism we call it the the horizontal metropolis so this word hinterland yeah isn't a whole debate in itself yeah but it's true it's really about this relation between urban is urbanization and resources and in there for me landscape is really yeah like a base component if we start thinking about that relationship and so what have you learned about what urban landscape design can contribute yes to circularity and we'll talk about later if it's specific to Flanders or this type of urbanization patterns as you mentioned or not so I would say that the main thing would be that urban landscape design really has this capacity to specialize and to contextualize circular economy transition or circularity so with specialized I mean if you look at for example mappings you can really map these places where products are being extracted used to to make products where they circulate etc and I often see in circular economy very little of that of that's really that anchoring in in the landscape so that's one thing the spatialization and this one what I kind of know why but what does it really help I mean could we just have because the other type of circularity I guess is just business models yes yeah and so business models you don't it's the same as you say I mean you're going to say contextualize afterwards I guess but it could be the same in Amsterdam and in Brussels and anywhere but so what if we know that over there is a wastewater treatment plan what does it help us in the interventions of circularity perhaps yes so so by drawing it by mapping it by understanding the relations the spatial relations of this water treatment plan to its surroundings to also the actors that are involved in its daily operations etc this question becomes really a site specific question and if you really want to implement and realize circularity on the ground then that's the type of information you will need so I think that's where urban design can really play a role in in in this whole network of expertise that is starting to build around circular economy it's really on one hand in the spatializing and in the contextualizing and so the contextualizing is this as you say like is that on one hand it's the spatial contextualization as well so basically in one sentence how these flows these material flows are really anchored in a territory and so this can be like you say in an infrastructure but also in a place where it's being sourced or where people use it that's one thing but then also of course these actors that's so crucial to understand who is turning the buttons of all these flows and there as well in urban design by anchoring or connecting these actor networks to the spaces where these flows are happening you make it a very more tangible and concrete question which in the end if you want to realize it on the ground is quite crucial and so I'm interested you mentioned the word spatialization I'm kind of curious already if you have an if you prefer this word from territorialization and if it's different because when we talk about urban metabolism I kind of have an this idea of spatialization is where you map things and territorialization is when it it's anchored on the ground but I don't know if there is really a difference between those two words and do you use them alternatively or yes so maybe spatialization could be more neutral I would say it could be also be territorialized or not but I guess you refer there to Sabine Barle and this idea of territorial ecology that is more taking into account social economic context and doesn't approach the question of urban metabolism as an isolated question but in relation to all these territorial interdependencies so I think if I use the word territoriality I would refer to that frame of reference yeah and speciality would more be of an analytical yeah okay and so you mentioned that at a certain moment based on different agendas of circularity we can also have different specializations of circularity yeah what type of agendas do you have in mind I mean what are the is that different definitions of circularity or is that different visions I guess they go hand in hand yeah so where this really comes from is as a designer you are asked to design circular economy or circularity in a concrete place or space and then what you design always embeds a definition or a notion of what is for you sustainability so I really had to dig into that because depending whether you see sustainability or circularity really as a calculation exercise in which you make you close the circle and there's zero waste or that's that's for example the agenda I call to optimize so circularity as optimizing flows making them resource efficient the example there would be a city like Mazdar city okay yeah where if you read about it they've done all the calculations they have the certificates it's the first the world's first zero waste zero energy city but then the question that comes to my mind is but we built this city in the middle of a former desert and in the former deserts and it's not very well connected to the existing city Abu Dhabi so there's initiatives such as bike sharing systems that were implemented but then abandoned because there was not really a bicycle network connected to the actual city or culture yeah yeah voila or a culture so in that sense it's circularity for its response to a number of criteria in terms of resource efficiency but how how circular is it really if you think of circularity as reducing pressure on natural resources because you are developing a piece of land that was an ecosystem before so that would be one one end of the spectrum and the other end of the spectrum would be where you see circular economy as a way to really change the world to democratize how material flows are now distributed and redistributed in terms of today there's quite some monopolies about resource extraction and so the money the surplus value of these natural resources that are in the end everybody's in a common world they are well or nobody or nobody's yeah voila that's even better than nobody so there are also movements as such as urban for example that really take this very explicit political position to see these initiatives in on a community level where you start taking ownership of the water that falls on your roof and of the nutrients in your local soil as a common and as a way to redistribute this common in in society but those two sustainability prepositions as designers you have to be aware of when you're designing which agenda are you implicitly or explicitly bringing to life so the four agendas on one end of the spectrum which is then more the objectivist end of the spectrum where like the the spatial practitioner is is really acting from the outside looking at the sites from the outside you have to optimize flows such as the drive which is the main driving agenda of Mazdar city for example then you have to innovate with flows which is really more as what you referred to earlier this idea of new business models that are circular new types of networks logistic chains etc that of course have a very spatial footprint and can transform cities but then on the other end of the spectrum which is what Philippe Fanonville calls the constructivist part this is where the the spatial practitioner really considers himself as an observer in an existing world and works with this from within this existing world you have on one hand the contextualizing agenda which is really looking at existing natural structures resource stocks etc actor networks to work from that as the base resource for circularity and then the last one is to democratize flows which is this agenda for example in projects such as urban very community driven and explicitly political about circular economy as a paradigm for redistributing this common resource resources at the world the nature is offering and for this I'm of course quite curious what are the how do we choose from them as well I mean imagine you are a policymaker a politician or whatnot and you have those four quadrants yeah and you're like what is best for me well so this is a conversation that we then need to have right because I do not determine this is the best agenda but what I do with these four agendas is offer a framework in which a conversation about this can take place and of course as from my disciplinary background as an urban landscape designer the contextualizing agenda is the one that that is more my my expertise but the goal of this framework is really to give a basis to policymakers to practitioners for example when they write briefs on that they want an urban design or a project that needs to be circular to have a starting point of starting to define for themselves what are these values that they attach to that what are these agendas that they really want to see in there so on one hand for the policymakers and on the other hand for designers as well to be more explicit about what type of circularity or which agendas that they are prioritizing in their designs there's a huge difference spatially between a mazhar city and a common bottom-up initiative such as robin in the paris periphery so but i'm curious because of course there are some things that you can do at the very local level yeah at the very community level there are some things that you can probably not do recycling or you know a bit scaling up economy and i guess the you know to to have a to really kind of reuse the materials we have in the stock and to prevent from import and export you probably need a bit of both in a way so you're always i guess in this nebulous there's a whole thing with this with this spectrum as well it is not one or the other it is finding the right balance depending on the situation the context the actors the the whole complexity of the real world to find the balance that fits the case and there of course they're they're ideally you have many many discussions about these four quadrants and you have really thought through what are the values that you want to embed with this change in your city or in your yeah so this would be let's say the because would that be then the urban landscape design contribution to circularity to kind of spatially true on circularity and kind of say hey your circularity what does it mean and where do we put it and what is it and how you're gonna plan your city actually so i guess this is already very much for as you said territorializing or spatializing or anchoring circular economy because it's not an abstract circular economy anymore but then is in a way to to provide to policymakers urban designers any to how do we take this abstract concept how do we put it on the ground and what are the you know parameters to work with because i guess the from policy to operation operation there are some parameters that you don't think of and perhaps this urban landscape design could help with that yes it could help along the way to to test certain possible outcomes right like urban landscape design is really about engaging with an existing site an existing context mapping all these things making it very visual and accessible and you can on one hand a very important strength is the ability to to graphically represent the existing situation and everything that is embedded in the territory that actually is relevant to circular economy transition so that's one thing but then also to project forward what could be a spatial outcome of circularity but then this second question is very important to be very conscious about the sustainability framing that you attach to that and of course every designer has its own worldview in that but my by making these four agendas explicit at least we can have a conversation around that and we are not for me what i what i still experience a lot when we talk about circular economy Ali it's a term that we need to further discuss okay we use circular economy but what does it mean to you what does it mean to me and so with these four agendas the aim is to start offering like a clear vocabulary to then dig out that question when it comes to spatial questions that's basically the thing and if let's say this is the contribution of urban landscape design to circular economy what would be the circularity contribution to the profession of urban designer or urban landscape or landscape architect or yeah what does circularity has brought to to these fields well maybe to come back to your previous question the urban the urban landscape design contribution or contributions one other thing is also this question that in the end circularity at the scale of a city or a region will need to be supported with new infrastructures and it is exactly that that's urban landscape design can can project what what these new infrastructures could could be could be and this is not just physical infrastructure where that facilitate resource exchanges and that are taking into account natural structures in the whole holistic picture of resource management so not just circular economy as an economy in the business realm but as a way of understanding or regulating how resources flow through the territory so one hand is the physical infrastructure but there's also the organizational infrastructure and so these scenarios in concrete cases where you project forward to what could circularity mean in this case or in that case they also bring to the table new types of organizational infrastructures that are currently missing so kind of a governance but in this case it's it's very very concrete like for example in how tall we looked at the mining subsidence areas where there is water continuously being pumped away so it's considered as a waste it costs money to keep these areas dry but there's also water scarcity in certain areas so if you just start making the the logical connections you could actually have a more healthy metabolism there water metabolism but then you would have to have completely new collaborations between the agencies who are currently managing these different flows and systems and so that's what I mean with organizational infrastructure so breaking through silos yeah I can imagine yeah but what urban landscape design in the in the case-based way then does is not saying okay conclusion we need to break through silos but if we want to realize this then this this agency needs to sit around the table with that agency so it makes it actually very very concrete yeah so yeah if we go back to I think for urban I mean I did the architecture engineering and then urbanism and I think circularity while urban metabolism taught me a lot as what my profession could and should do what do you think or what did it bring to you as well as a as an addition to you as a practitioner let's say even if you don't necessarily work in practice what do you think it adds to the profession circular economy yeah yeah yeah I thought about that question for me it's actually a way to to get all all these relevant expertise to deal with with the issues of resource scarcity etc to get that more integrated in design because design can be very mind-opening and inspiring etc but but then well of course to really go to to realization etc you need to get into into all these other expertise that are more quantitative etc and I think there there can be really a good a good match but yeah yeah kind of difficult question yeah yeah no I I also find it's a bit of the same thing is understanding the physicality of course of our of our cities of our economies and this is a way I mean it seems obvious but it's it really changes everything around us if you see this building as as materials and not as it not only its function yeah you kind of have for me it added like different how you call it dimensions in you know your rather plots that you have to to to be able to to offer an answer or a solution so it's there 10 to 20 parameters more that are brought to the table and are equally as important as well-being as I don't know what and it kind of complexifies a lot the the story and beforehand well architects are still very able to to deal with complex issues but engineers not not necessarily I mean they they provide an answer to us to a question but now the questions are so many that you're like yeah what are we doing yeah well maybe the reflection on that question for me was more from my the training I did as urban designer after engineering architecture and there I really I think a strong influence there is the notion of systemic design that is in landscape architect or regenerative design from earlier is quite common so the idea that every every intervention on a local scale is connected to bigger systems the hydrological system materials that are extracted somewhere to realize what you're doing so this notion I think is very much embedded it's it's one of the core things of urban design or urban or landscape architecture more even yeah and so in that sense Ali the the the circular economy Ali the addition of the circular economy discourse which was new to me when I started this this research is is really I do the the the exchange is really that that this approach or the urban landscapes aren't an urban landscape design approach helps to anchor this circular economy notion in landscape and territory yeah so that's well I guess also at businesses and adds you know the actress and all well actress perhaps you was already there but the kind of business approach and the policy approach I kind of find that a lot of information a lot of things to it's everywhere yeah and and Ali urban landscape design I see it really as a possible facilitator of to integrate all these different things that's also for the the research that I that I will further develop I want to increasingly work across disciplines adopting the design approach urban landscape design approach as a facilitator a mediator to understand really the methods and of all these approaches and to start integrating them because I think that's our next challenge and so perhaps to finish off you you meant you already have a couple of case studies under your belt so that you were there and you kind of saw what happened and you kind of saw the complexities what would be for you the ideal case study of an existing city that you would say that's where I would like I see so many challenges that's where all of my knowledge and you know what I've developed over these years would be very helpful to kind of twist something or change something or you know a case study that really appeals you and that you would like to work on is there any city that you well for me I think the criteria for that ideal case study would be that there is a political will to take the question of circular economy transition in the city seriously so to really wanting to go through this discovery process of the four agendas and which values you want to embed in this transition that that would be my so I am not thinking of a concrete case that I have in mind I'm more drafting like my ideal case and to then yeah have an openness in those who are on the terrain trying to do it to go through a learning a common learning process that can be supported by forward-looking urban landscape design but in in this this notion of well that that it's an uncertain future that that is a process of discovering this so-called wicked problem that would be the ideal case yeah let's let's hope it's gonna be flanders or brussels very soon yeah thanks Julie okay thank you thank you for listening or watching our podcast episode till the end if you like this episode if you have unanswered questions if you agree or disagree with what was said during this episode please leave us a comment to spark a debate thanks again and see you in the next episode