Designing Resource-Efficient Urban Systems for Resilience and Regeneration
ISBN 978-1-991367-04-4 · Global Climate Solutions · First EditionCities consume vast material flows, lock resources into long-lived assets, and shift environmental burdens far beyond municipal borders. Circular Cities shows how leaders can turn that complexity into accountable action.
Written for planners, policymakers, infrastructure professionals, researchers, and informed readers, the book connects urban metabolism, value retention, procurement, building stocks, mobility, food systems, digital tools, finance, and governance. Readers learn to define boundaries, build credible baselines, prioritize interventions, and test whether initiatives deliver measurable environmental and social value.
Rather than treating recycling as the endpoint, Robert C. Brears presents circularity as coordinated choices across design, maintenance, reuse, recovery, institutions, and investment. The analysis addresses rebound effects, data quality, cross-boundary resource flows, distributional impacts, and the practical constraints that can separate promising pilots from durable change.
The result is a rigorous framework for moving from isolated projects to governed portfolios with clear responsibilities, evidence-based priorities, and verifiable outcomes.
Policymakers and public leaders
Business and investment leaders
Climate and sustainability practitioners
Biodiversity conservation protects the ecological functions that underpin climate resilience, while accountable restoration finance turns policy commitments into measurable recovery.
Explore how Melbourne Skyfarm demonstrates rooftop and vertical farming as nature-based solutions for food security, urban cooling, and stormwater management.
Urban forest management strengthens climate resilience, improves air quality, and supports stormwater control through strategic canopy planning and stewardship.
