Collaborative Pathways for Urban Resilient Green Transition

Cities have been considered potential drivers and loci for sustainability and societal progress (Bhatia et al 2024). They have a dual role in solving and contributing to sustainability: the cities generate both problems and solutions to sustainability challenges.

While cities may play a proactive role in promoting sustainable policies and developing sociotechnical systems, urban life remains in many cases unsustainable, creating a substantial material footprint. Worldwide, the weight of cities is largely responsible for the increase in material and energy consumption, particularly as a result of the urbanisation of the world. While cities cover only 2% of the world’s surface, they consume over 75% of its material resources (Venditti 2022).

Critical metals play key roles in technologies elementary for a green transition of societies, e.g. electric vehicles, photovoltaics, etc. However, only few techno-economically viable recycling processes have been implemented as their content in end-use equipment is typically low, techno-economic challenges for their recycling. In this context, cities as concentrations of reusable products and secondary materials can play a significant role in recirculating critical resources, thereby supporting the resilience of societies and diminishing the extraction of virgin sources. While cities can set standards, provide incentives, and enforce regulations that encourage urban symbiosis, companies are instrumental in driving the innovation and business models necessary for a circular economy.

Preview research (e.g. von Rennenberg, T. et al. 2024) emphasise urban mining as a potential solution to reduce criticality. Indeed, many raw material reduction strategies and policies focus on waste recycling, and less studies consider the reduction of the consumption by extending life cycles of critical raw material containing components and products.

This work examines the role of urban symbiosis for ensuring essential factors for the resilient and green transition. Urban symbiosis emphasises the value adding collaborative models, and resource dependencies between businesses, research, city organisation(s) and citizens.

This work explores potential pathways for cities to mitigate raw material criticality following Circular Economy (CE) principles. Both direct and indirect support actions are analysed starting from increasing the internal knowledge base to implementing financial instruments. By combining successive complementary actions, cities can support businesses in circular economy models reducing costs and achieve the critical mass needed for economies of scale. Policy, business, and technology innovation are key to unlocking these opportunities.

The work illustrates alternative transition pathways in three exemplary cases relating to the built environment, E-mobility and health care. These pathways can function as toolsets supporting the construction of collaborative ecosystems with city developers, businesses and citizens.

References
Bhatia et al. 2024. Capabilities for transformative sustainability management in cities. Public Management Review,. DOI 10.1080/14719037.2024.2394955.

Venditti B. 2022. More people living in cities will double global consumption. World Economic Forum 22.4.2022 https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/04/global-urbanization-material-consumption

von Rennenberg, T. et al. 2024 Circularity Reinforcement of Critical Raw Materials in Europe: A Case of Niobium’, Circular Economy and Sustainability, 4(4), pp. 2449–2472. doi:10.1007/s43615-024-00369-3.