A circular city remains a destination of the future, but many are traveling there

Cities can be carbon-emitting beasts, but they’re also hotspots for innovation and political action. Efforts to create circular cities laser-focus systemic change at the local level, seeking to reinvent urban centers as living demonstration projects of sustainability at scale.

A circular city, in a short definition, is one that eliminates waste, keeps goods and their ingredients in use and regenerates natural systems.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s longer圆形城市的描述names new possibilities for designing, planning, manufacturing and accessing goods, buildings and vehicles, and keeping materials in use. This can involve more distributed ways of managing resources, including exchanging or renting goods instead of buying them. It involves reverse logistics to bring materials back into consumer flows instead of banishing them as waste. Ideally, businesses and consumers ultimately will discard nothing and share more, at no cost to their convenience and liberty.

The circular economy is beginning to take off primarily because it makes business sense — but also because it engages communities, Ashima Sukhdev, the government and cities program lead for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, said at Circularity 19 in Minneapolis last week.

这是一个好消息，考虑到近几十年来自然系统的指数负面趋势 - 生物多样性损失，碳排放，人口增长等。城市是许多这些力量的主要罪魁祸首，因为他们集中了很多人和材料。在全球范围内，城市只占土地的3％，但产生高达80％的温室气体排放，消耗75％的资源，到2050年，可以容纳世界70％的人口。

The circular economy is beginning to take off primarily because it makes business sense — but also because it engages communities.

迄今为止，没有圆形城市在地图上，伦敦，纽约市和里约热内卢在十几名就职成员之一的地图上有一个可见点Ellen MacArthur Fund Circular Cities networklaunched in 2016.There’s no such thing as flipping a circular switch. For now, circularity is not yet a destination but a process, and the earliest circular city efforts focus on proof-of-concept pilots, community hubs and education centers — sometimes all rolled into one.

However, the solutions to so many exponential problems can grow at breakneck speed, according to Eva Gladek, CEO and founder of Metabolic, which helps cities around the world with circular transformations. Speaking at Circularity 19, the molecular biologist by training said the exponential growth of E. coli bacteria in a lab inspired her to invest in a new hope: that circularity, too, will take off.

她说，弯曲这些指数增长曲线，您可以创造新的繁荣形式。

2017年报告由谷歌和埃伦·麦克阿瑟Foundation制定了技术速度：资产标记;地理空间数据;大数据;和产品和产品之间的连接。

在城市的一些显着循环努力中：

• 在拉斯维加斯，亚马拉斯·斯迪迪基，MGM度假村的可持续发展副总裁，在循环中必威体育2018描述了公司Flash如何从餐厅厨房冻结未使用的食物，以便在城市食品银行和其他地区使用;空的牡蛎贝壳返回切萨皮克海湾以支持牡蛎栖息地。

• In Amsterdam, theDeCeuvel former shipyard被恢复为“可持续技术的游乐场”，每年绘制成千上万的游客。工作和活动网站的圆形展示包括太阳能和植物化的使用，通过该植物啜饮和从土壤中转化污染。

• 在芝加哥的前肉类袋（尽管住在一家城市最热门的餐馆），这是一个前猪肉加工厂被称为the Plant拥有20个粮食的业务，使用彼此的浪费。从啤酒厂的花费谷物有助于种植蘑菇，后来在农民的市场上销售。学校团体可以了解沙拉的生命周期或闭路实验室的水平。

• In North Carolina, a core feature of the Circular Charlotte plan is the Innovation Barn, a community center set to open this year with a zero-waste restaurant that displays food being processed. It also will host a materials innovation lab for businesses.

• 谷歌，艾伦麦克阿瑟基金会和阿up在纽约市和旧金山湾区的一个圆形实验室中，专注于建筑物。

These circular experiments and aspirations, however, come at a time when more municipalities are giving up on the simple recycling of cans and bottles. If cities can’t even get something as straightforward as aluminum and glass recycling right, how will they transition to a circular model of how people engage with everything from buildings to clothing to food?

那么，在哪个城市是循环的，整体愿景正在从街道到政策制定者和背部呢？比利时布鲁塞尔是靠近这方面的几个城市之一。欧洲联盟的首都在其四年的去年Be Circular effort，这涉及220多家公司致力于重新思考建筑，购物，物流，食品和垃圾。彼得伯勒，英格兰，旨在达到2050年的循环城市。

然而，Rubik的立方体类比适用：扭曲单个方形的位置，它扰乱了立方体的其他侧面。同样，一个城市的一个方面无法转变，而不考虑所有其他部位。需要全面接近系统。

“你是在你可以的最高级别的地区工作吗？”Gladek要求，强调设计的重要性。“你确实确保您所采取的行动在其他地方不会产生后果吗？”

通函夏洛特从事宽阔的利益相关者，包括商业领袖和无家可归者。

Something as mundane as waste collection can’t be redesigned without taking into account the social impacts.The圆形夏洛特（PDF）例如，努力从事宽阔的利益相关者，包括商业领袖和无家可归者。当它寻求项目消除有机废物时，它探析了专注于居民的上升行动的方法，为弱势群体创造机会。

Lauren Yarmuth is circular economy director at IDEO, the design firm working with urban planning company Gehl on circular city efforts. She explained at Circularity 19 that just as circularity is about the potential of some thing, such as a cup, bottle or nutrient "to stay at play as long as possible," it’s also about the potential of a city, ecosystem or person to realize its full self.

然而，如果没有完整的文化面料，我们将努力地转向圆形，因为她说没有什么可以将它固定到位。个人主义，如此深入地在我们的社会中加入，干扰了重新设计，恢复和重塑连接的系统和社区。