The Role of Urban Manufacturing for a Circular Economy in Cities

Publication by Tanya Tsui, David Peck, Bob Geldermans, and Arjan van Timmeren from Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft in the special issue Distributed and Sustainable Manufacturing in Sustainability Journal

In recent years, implementing a circular economy in cities (or “circular cities”) has been proposed by policy makers as a potential solution for achieving sustainability. One strategy for circular cities is to reintroduce manufacturing into urban areas (or “urban manufacturing”), allowing resource flows to be localized at the city scale. However, the extent to which urban manufacturing contributes to circular cities is unclear in existing literature. The purpose of this paper is therefore twofold: to understand whether urban manufacturing could contribute to the circular economy, and to understand the drivers and barriers to circular urban manufacturing. By reviewing existing literature and interviewing experts, we identified the caveats for the contribution of urban manufacturing to circular cities, as well as the spatial, social, and material-related drivers and barriers for circular urban manufacturing.

Abstract (Tsui, Peck, Geldermans, van Timmeren, 2021)

Tsui, T., Peck, D., Geldermans, B., & van Timmeren, A. (2021). The Role of Urban Manufacturing for a Circular Economy in Cities. Sustainability13(1), 23.

Find the publication here: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/1/23