Circular Economy

Circular Cities

Cities 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.