Building Back Better: Taking A Circular Approach in City Regions post-COVID

What is the Regions in Recovery Festival?

It is a research-led celebration of thinking about our regions and cities in a time of great crisis and change. The word Festival illustrates that the event takes place over several weeks, accommodating the work of many researchers and policymakers along with an optional social and well-being programme. The collective goal is to bring together an inclusive community to share research thoughts and to network.

The Festival will address themes related to the re-emergence of regions and cities from the pandemic. It includes longer standing challenges to society of climate change, geopolitical manoeuvrings, the rise of populism, the financial implications of these shifts, migration crises, new challenges to the survival of pandemic struck firms and city centres and much more.

The Plenary

This closed-paper session is the plenary session for a series of sessions focussing on the Circular Economy (CE). With cities striving to meet sustainability criteria, the circular economy (CE) approach is gaining momentum at the local scale. Especially in Europe, cities have adopted measures and strategies to implement circular development in fields ranging from infrastructure to urban planning, social consumption, industry and business. National governments such as those in the Netherlands and France, as well as the European Union support these local efforts. In the Covid-19 context, many cities are turning to circular development in an effort to formulate long-term recovery strategies that are in alignment with their sustainability and climate goals.  In this session we will explore how taking a circular approach to development in city regions might help to address the problems highlighted by the pandemic.  Speakers Francesco Fuso Nerini KTH Stockholm, Stockholm – How taking a circular approach can address the SDG’s; Jo Williams UCL, London – Creating Sustainable Circular City regions post-pandemic; Luigi Fusco-Girard, University of Naples, Naples –  How the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage and landscape helps city-regions to recover after a crisis; Joerg Kneiling, Hafencity University, Hamburg – The impact of COVID on retail and how to rebuild city-centres post-COVID; Ellen van Beuren, TU Delft, Delft – The importance of place in responding to COVID in a circular way; Eva Garcia Chueca, Barcelona Centre for International Affairs - Towards a post-pandemic housing policy for cities