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This position paper critically analyses the process to implement the UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (2011), exploring evaluation tools, innovative business / management models and financing tools for the conservation and regeneration of Historic Urban Landscape (HUL), to make it operational in the perspective of a circular economy model of sustainable development for city / territory system regeneration. Through evaluation tools, it is possible to pass from general principles to operational practices; to produce empirical evidence of the economic, social and environmental benefits of HUL integrated conservation and regeneration. The challenge of generating a symbiosis between conservation and transformation issues requires adequate evaluation methods, business, management and financing tools, engaging civil society and local stakeholders, capturing both HUL tangible and intangible values to turn the historic urban landscape into a driver of sustainable growth. The analysis carried out in this paper shows that through the suggested tools it is possible to make operational the UNESCO Recommendations, transforming conflicts into opportunities, producing economic attractiveness and strengthen social awareness and cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, the term bioeconomy has emerged in both policy and academic discourse. Implying a technology-driven approach to wealth generation from organic materials, the term has taken hold with so far limited critical engagement. It is a contestable rather than contested term. Noting the rise of numerous other 'economies' (blue, green, circular) on a similar timeframe, this paper undertakes a critical discourse analysis of academic literature and UK/EU policy documents using the term 'bioeconomy' to produce a contextualised understanding of how it is used in both theoretical and practical contexts. Our analysis shows that bioeconomy, as with the other 'sustainability' economies, which we term the 'S-economies', prioritises the economy and the markets as the solution brokers for the environmental and economic problems they seek to address. The apparent fragmentation of the theory and policy concerning the environmental sustainability of economic activity is expressed through the variability of terms that aspire to establish multiple economies functioning at the same time. Limited empirical analysis of the existing 'bioeconomy' is symptomatic of the dissociation between theory and practice, emphasizing technological approaches favouring capital intensive approaches over local solutions. The S-economies, including the bioeconomy, are an attempt to bypass economic structural realities that otherwise would need to be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to provide a review of recent economic literature related to the Bioeconomy, in particular aimed at identifying relevant pathways for future research in this field. The paper is organised in four main parts. First, we illustrate the economic role of the Bioeconomy and its key statistics in the EU. Second we review economic topics related to the Bioeconomy production in a mainly private (company, consumer, market) perspective. Then we extend our attention to the review of wider social and environmental aspects with a focus on ecosystem services. Finally, we discuss the interplay of the above topics and cross cutting issues in the attempt to identify the most promising pathways for further research. While the economic literature is growing fast in all the fields of the Bioeconomy, we highlight in particular the need of more economic research focusing on transitions and innovation. However, we also highlight the need to take a system perspective and accounting explicitly for the trade-offs among the many objectives that the Bioeconomy is expected to target and to better account of the costs and benefits affecting different stakeholder groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circular Economy (CE) might be the paradigm to re-conceptualize future agri-food industries and recreate a balanced co-existence of ecological and economic systems. Research is then called to find solutions for transitioning into CE. The current paper will apply the theory of sociotechnical transitions as a framework to build a step by step procedure to analyze and manage agri-food circular economy transitions and support stakeholders involved. The agro-ecological (cultivation and harvesting), agro-industrial (food processing) and consumption (food purchase) subsystems of agri-food supply chains are analysed to address the main challenges for the transition into CE. The current paper final goal is to generate an analytical framework, for practitioners and policy makers, to identify suitable technological, market, coordination and regulative solutions to orient future CE trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decarbonizing the economy is one of the main ambitions for the European Union. The construction sector contributes to global warming, during all buildings life cycle phases. Greenhouse gas emissions are present in the whole process of construction, use/operation and dismissing/ demolishing. The Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an evaluation approach to assess CO2 and other greenhouse gases emissions during the whole life cycle of a building or product. The aim of this paper is to test the LCA methodology for the evaluation of environmental impacts of historic buildings, towards a circular economy approach in the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage. The case study is an abandoned monastery in Salerno, Italy. Results show that LCA can effectively inform the design phase of cultural heritage adaptive reuse, comparing different conservation and design alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of our contribution is to provide insight into an innovative, shared and transferable model to assist the evolution and sustainable planning of an urban-industrial metropolitan area through a bottom-up involvement of the industrial community and local stakeholders. The presence of industrial urban districts has become a typical feature in Italy as a result of urban spreading. The presence of SMEs in urban ecosystems is a new fundamental opportunity for the design and planning of spaces as well as for the planning of smart energy systems and life quality in the cities. We tested this approach in Roveri, a historical industrial district in transition located within the urban boundary of Bologna. This paper describes the first results obtained with a number of tools and actions aimed at making the community and stakeholders conscious of the district's potential and to enable them to lead its development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agri-food is the second manufacturing sector in Italy, due to its strategic nature. However, it is affected by several problematics, and one of the most severe is the generation of wastes and by-products. The circular economy could be a winning approach to improve the sustainability of the food supply chain. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the current policy situation in Europe, with a focus on Italy. The history of circular economy policies in Europe started recently, and is continuing nowadays with the New Circular Economy Action Plan. Italy is in the top position for circularity, even if it has not yet implemented a proper circular economy policy. Future actions should concentrate on developing innovative circular models for the agri-food sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paradigm shift towards a more humanistic and ecological paradigm evoked by United Nations and the Green Deal is increasingly required in this period of growing unsustainability, especially during ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The challenge today is to reduce poverty and inequalities, while preserving the vitality of natural ecosystems and ensuring inclusive economic growth and wellbeing, both now and in the future, thus including future generations. To this end, new models for city development and new tools for operationalizing them are necessary. This paper is focused on the circular economy model and, in particular, on the functional reuse of cultural heritage as the entry point for triggering circular processes in the cities. The attention is focused on the evaluation tools and a methodological proposal is presented starting from the Level(s) tool (developed by European Commission) for assessing the multidimensional impacts of cultural heritage functional reuse projects in the circular economy perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issues of energy efficiency and climate change belong to a complex scenario to which contemporaneity is called upon to answer. Architecture can contribute by promoting practices that look at the environment with a view to building the future. As an architectural activity, restoration of heritage buildings can actively participate in this fundamental challenge within the perspective of a circular economy proposing a globally sustainable model. Starting from a state-of-the-art investigation, this paper aims to enucleate the BECK project’s contribution in this field, as well as to underline how careful strategies of conservation and contemporary use can have positive effects on sustainable future scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a consequence of our difficulty to manage the currently conflicts and contradictions. It is configured as a process that makes human life on Earth increasingly uninhabitable, making the relationship between the Earth's ecosystem and humanity increasingly difficult. A fundamental cause of the climate change is the way in which economic wealth is produced and distributed. The current economy produces also ecological and social poverty. The adaptive reuse of cultural assets is proposed in the general framework of the Green New Deal of European Union, assuming the circular economy model for re-integrating economy into ecology. The aim of the paper is to identify how to transform a died heritage site into a living system, to be managed as a complex adaptive system, discussing the ways in which adaptive reuse can be implemented as the entry point for implementing the circular city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing demand of phosphorus (P) worldwide is posing important challenges on the market stability of fertilizers. Extracting more P would not guarantee high P quality and low prices. Globally, only the European Commission, in a recent document about the Circular Economy strategy, has begun to address the challenge of the dependence on phosphate rock. Based on a simple circular economy theoretical framework, this paper proposes an impact analysis of the use of recycled P as a substitute of chemical P fertilizers. Two new technologies applied to retrofit existing wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) are considered: Moving-Bed Bio-Reactors and Struvite Crystallization Modules. The analyses indicate that the introduction of these technologies prove to be economically sustainable for specific levels of inhabitant equivalent (IE) and that the profitability of struvite, as a substitute of chemical P, increases with increasing levels of P fertilizer prices and for increasing sizes of WWTPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each city is a living organism with its own dynamics. Cities, as complex dynamic and adaptive systems, are able of self-organization/self-management. There are many causes of the decline of cities today (poverty, unemployment, etc.) that interdepend on the others in continuous retroactive processes. The general proposal of this paper refers to a key word: "regeneration" as revitalization of the activities in the perspective of the circular economy/city. The aim is to explore how an urban circular economy can be implemented through a cultural landscape-based approach, analysing the case study of Matera (Italy) and assuming the interdependence between a specific landscape and the circular economy/city models. The aim is to understand how to transform a millennial experience of underdevelopment into a dynamic development perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the effects of research and innovation in agriculture have been largely characterised by efforts to make a connection between expenditure and productivity. A number of issues have challenged the ability of productivity to measure the effects of research, namely, in recent years, increasing efforts towards improving the environmental performance of the farming sector. Besides environmental concerns, however, a number of recent concepts have emerged that are shaping the current research and policy agenda and which could result in a revision of the productivity concepts used to evaluate research impacts. The objective of this paper is to discuss these issues and their implications for studies on the impact of research and innovation. We address, in particular, the following issues: a) the development of the of bioeconomy and related concepts such as the circular economy, resource efficiency and bio-refinery; b) the connection with entrepreneurship and eco-innovation; c) changing tools in research assessment, in particular the widespread use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA); and d) the evolving concepts of sustainability and ecosystem services. We argue that while the traditional notion of productivity, intended as output/input ratio, maintains (and may be strengthens) its role on the aggregate, a more analytical interpretation of the pathways towards research impacts is needed, as well as a broadened view of productivity and its determinants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the impact generated by the un-efficient management of waste flows, on both natural environment, and urbanization process, and on the opportunity to invert it by regenerating Wasted Landscapes, i.e. underused, polluted and abandoned sites, especially located in peri-urban areas. This is one of the aims of the REPAiR project, funded in 2016 by the European Commission within the Horizon 2020 framework, developed by University of Naples with TU Delft as Lead Partner. The implementation of multi-scaling/multi-disciplinary approach, for testing out collaborative decision-making, has seen so far the research of a scientific based definition of peri-urban area in the context of the Metropolitan Area of Naples. The selection of the peri-urban areas has also been tested through Living Labs, aimed at designing eco-innovative solutions towards circularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to provide a review of recent economic literature related to the Bioeconomy, in particular aimed at identifying relevant pathways for future research in this field. The paper is organised in four main parts. First, we illustrate the economic role of the Bioeconomy and its key statistics in the EU. Second we review economic topics related to the Bioeconomy production in a mainly private (company, consumer, market) perspective. Then we extend our attention to the review of wider social and environmental aspects with a focus on ecosystem services. Finally, we discuss the interplay of the above topics and cross cutting issues in the attempt to identify the most promising pathways for further research. While the economic literature is growing fast in all the fields of the Bioeconomy, we highlight in particular the need of more economic research focusing on transitions and innovation. However, we also highlight the need to take a system perspective and accounting explicitly for the trade-offs among the many objectives that the Bioeconomy is expected to target and to better account of the costs and benefits affecting different stakeholder groups.

Unlike other industrial sectors that already apply re-manufacturing, the construction sector is slow to experiment with these sustainable practices. Hence, this paper introduces key results of the Re-NetTA project, conducted at Politecnico di Milano and funded by Fondazione Cariplo (2018-0991), which intends to outline the conditions necessary to activate circular processes in the field of tertiary construction. In order to extend the life of construction products, the paper proposes three circular models based on re-manufacturing. Developed with stakeholders and experts in an inter-sectoral and multidisciplinary approach, the proposed models represent a contribution towards sustainable design and organisational practices of construction products.

This paper is part of the design strategies of reassembly and reuse of buildings according to the transition to circular economy. Specifically, the paper addresses the issue of architectural envelopes made of drywall and their executive design according to a Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) approach, based on a case study of a temporary wooden housing unit for which there are several scenarios of use and end of life once the first cycle of use of the components of the envelope has come to an end. In particular, the paper, based on the collection of environmental profiles of products through Environmental Product Declarations (EPD), wants to define a balance between the environmental impacts incorporated in the used materials and the benefits related to the adoption of dry construction techniques.

The transition from a linear bio-based economy to a sustainable circular bioeconomy depends not only on the skills that the different actors of the innovation system can find, develop, and exploit internally, but also on the efficiency with which they can access external sources of knowledge and skills related to technologies and markets. In this scenario, understanding the dynamics of learning and knowledge accumulation acquires greater importance due to the bioeconomy's position at the confluence of several technological areas. Therefore, for this study, we apply qualitative system dynamics modelling methods to the analysis of Andalusia's circular bioeconomy, obtaining important insights into its complexity due to the existence of non-linear processes, multiple feedback loops, and time delays. The models thus generated led to the identification of 20 key intervention points where targeted actions by governments and other actors could help overcome the pervasiveness of information asymmetry in the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism is the third largest socio-economic activity in the EU and thus it can be considered an engine for development, producing many positive impacts, from trade sector to employment. At the same time, it can produce many negative impacts because it is configured according to the model of linear economy. A deep analysis of impacts produced by tourism sector and its great potential in contributing to the achievement of SDGs are presented. The aim of this paper is to identify a tourism development/management model able to produce multidimensional benefits and, simultaneously, reduce (environmental, social and economic) costs. In this perspective, the circular economy is proposed as a model able to contribute to make tourism more sustainable. This model necessarily requires appropriate evaluation tools, indicators and knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, the term bioeconomy has emerged in both policy and academic discourse. Implying a technology-driven approach to wealth generation from organic materials, the term has taken hold with so far limited critical engagement. It is a contestable rather than contested term. Noting the rise of numerous other ‘economies’ (blue, green, circular) on a similar timeframe, this paper undertakes a critical discourse analysis of academic literature and UK/EU policy documents using the term ‘bioeconomy’ to produce a contextualised understanding of how it is used in both theoretical and practical contexts. Our analysis shows that bioeconomy, as with the other ‘sustainability’ economies, which we term the ‘S-economies’, prioritises the economy and the markets as the solution brokers for the environmental and economic problems they seek to address. The apparent fragmentation of the theory and policy concerning the environmental sustainability of economic activity is expressed through the variability of terms that aspire to establish multiple economies functioning at the same time. Limited empirical analysis of the existing ‘bioeconomy’ is symptomatic of the dissociation between theory and practice, emphasizing technological approaches favouring capital intensive approaches over local solutions. The S-economies, including the bioeconomy, are an attempt to bypass economic structural realities that otherwise would need to be addressed.

Crisis contexts such as the MENA region allow us to envision effective scenarios of sustainable development based on local production systems supported by digital innovation. The constant exchange of know-how between the MENA area and the European continent represents a fundamental tool in which processes of technology transfer help to accelerate the transformation processes currently underway and make them more effective. This paper investigates the effectiveness of using local resources for producing building components by means of innovative technologies based on circular economy processes. The objective of this analysis is to evaluate the possibilities of transferring enabling technologies from the Italian context to that of MENA as a tool for economic reactivation directed towards circularity.

The Green Deal places at the centre of its policies the need to act in order to achieve climate neutrality goals by 2050. In this context, the role of cities and, in particular, of already existing buildings is relevant. Although they are responsible for 40% of energy consumption, only 1% are involved in major restructuring processes. In the context of smart city strategies and to improve their performances, Europe proposes various approaches such as Positive Energy Districts and Industry 4.0. This paper analyses case studies and innovative European projects with the aim of identifying the most relevant strategic actions. Eventually, it presents a real case in the city of Bologna as a basepoint for the reflection proposed.

Since the 1970s, in Europe the industrial decommissioning phenomenon has led to the generation of an obsolescent and widespread building stock, located in highly strategic areas. This paper, aiming to make abandoned industrial buildings re-enter the market, focused on the development of prefabricated housing modules, according to the nested-building renovation approach. The project started from the constraint’s typological analysis (architectural, functional and structural) of 900 reinforced concrete industrial buildings in view of the intervention replicability. Finally, to validate the design and technological choices, the analysed system was applied to a real case study in Verona: the Greggi Warehouse (1960) in the “ex-Manifattura Tabacchi” factory area.

This article is derived from a feasibility study for a single-story elevation at the Kent School of Architecture and Planning (KSAP) in the United Kingdom. This project embraced two fundamental principles of the circular economy: flexibility of interior spaces and Design for Disassembly (DfD). The goals were to reduce the risk of demolition and preserve the value of the building material to empower its later use. These principles formed the solution for the structural frame. For this paper, the engineering phase was carried out to improve the structural connections designed according to DfD principles and following generative design methods.

Decarbonizing the economy is one of the main ambitions for the European Union. The construction sector contributes to global warming, during all buildings life cycle phases. Greenhouse gas emissions are present in the whole process of construction, use/operation and dismissing/demolishing. The Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an evaluation approach to assess CO2 and other greenhouse gases emissions during the whole life cycle of a building or product. The aim of this paper is to test the LCA methodology for the evaluation of environmental impacts of historic buildings, towards a circular economy approach in the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage. The case study is an abandoned monastery in Salerno, Italy. Results show that LCA can effectively inform the design phase of cultural heritage adaptive reuse, comparing different conservation and design alternatives.

The issues of energy efficiency and climate change belong to a complex scenario to which contemporaneity is called upon to answer. Architecture can contribute by promoting practices that look at the environment with a view to building the future. As an architectural activity, restoration of heritage buildings can actively participate in this fundamental challenge within the perspective of a circular economy proposing a globally sustainable model. Starting from a state-of-the-art investigation, this paper aims to enucleate the BECK project’s contribution in this field, as well as to underline how careful strategies of conservation and contemporary use can have positive effects on sustainable future scenarios.

Climate change is a consequence of our difficulty to manage the currently conflicts and contradictions. It is configured as a process that makes human life on Earth increasingly uninhabitable, making the relationship between the Earth’s ecosystem and humanity increasingly difficult. A fundamental cause of the climate change is the way in which economic wealth is produced and distributed. The current economy produces also ecological and social poverty. The adaptive reuse of cultural assets is proposed in the general framework of the Green New Deal of European Union, assuming the circular economy model for re-integrating economy into ecology. The aim of the paper is to identify how to transform a died heritage site into a living system, to be managed as a complex adaptive system, discussing the ways in which adaptive reuse can be implemented as the entry point for implementing the circular city.

The issue of the Circular Economy is not a new issue to several countries, especially the developed ones. Here in Iraq it is considered newly introduced, despite the few attempts to establish projects that concern recycling most of them were doomed to fail, due to two main reasons: the first one is the financial and administrative corruption widespread in all departments of the country, the second one is the priorities of public spending. It is well known that Iraq was subjected to two major attacks, the ISIS entry attack in 2014 to Iraq. ISIS occupied about a third of Iraqi lands which resulted in a collapse in oil prices, as Iraq depends almost entirely on oil revenues in its budget which is the second attack. This made the Iraqi governments point public spending towards the priority of preserving national security and liberating Iraqi lands. Therefore, the circular economy project proposals were not considered a priority under these circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research aims at evaluating the ability of a peri-urban system to activate territorial self-regenerative processes, according to Circular Economy principles. The adopted methodology identifies opportunity-spaces, through indices of space heterogeneity and of the relational dynamics, established in collective spaces. Through a site-specific set of indicators, it evaluates opportunity-spaces intrinsic value, adopting Analytic Network Process (ANP) as Multi-Criteria Decision Aid method (MCDA). As a result, five categories of opportunity-spaces are defined and spatialised, within hill area of Naples, in the South of Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of our contribution is to provide insight into an innovative, shared and transferable model to assist the evolution and sustainable planning of an urban-industrial metropolitan area through a bottom-up involvement of the industrial community and local stakeholders. The presence of industrial urban districts has become a typical feature in Italy as a result of urban spreading. The presence of SMEs in urban ecosystems is a new fundamental opportunity for the design and planning of spaces as well as for the planning of smart energy systems and life quality in the cities. We tested this approach in Roveri, a historical industrial district in transition located within the urban boundary of Bologna. This paper describes the first results obtained with a number of tools and actions aimed at making the community and stakeholders conscious of the district’s potential and to enable them to lead its development.

The increasing demand of phosphorus (P) worldwide is posing important challenges on the market stability of fertilizers. Extracting more P would not guarantee high P quality and low prices. Globally, only the European Commission, in a recent document about the Circular Economy strategy, has begun to address the challenge of the dependence on phosphate rock. Based on a simple circular economy theoretical framework, this paper proposes an impact analysis of the use of recycled P as a substitute of chemical P fertilizers. Two new technologies applied to retrofit existing wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) are considered: Moving-Bed Bio-Reactors and Struvite Crystallization Modules. The analyses indicate that the introduction of these technologies prove to be economically sustainable for specific levels of inhabitant equivalent (IE) and that the profitability of struvite, as a substitute of chemical P, increases with increasing levels of P fertilizer prices and for increasing sizes of WWTPs.

Studies on the effects of research and innovation in agriculture have been largely characterised by efforts to make a connection between expenditure and productivity. A number of issues have challenged the ability of productivity to measure the effects of research, namely, in recent years, increasing efforts towards improving the environmental performance of the farming sector. Besides environmental concerns, however, a number of recent concepts have emerged that are shaping the current research and policy agenda and which could result in a revision of the productivity concepts used to evaluate research impacts. The objective of this paper is to discuss these issues and their implications for studies on the impact of research and innovation. We address, in particular, the following issues: a) the development of the of bioeconomy and related concepts such as the circular economy, resource efficiency and bio-refinery; b) the connection with entrepreneurship and eco-innovation; c) changing tools in research assessment, in particular the widespread use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA); and d) the evolving concepts of sustainability and ecosystem services. We argue that while the traditional notion of productivity, intended as output/input ratio, maintains (and may be strengthens) its role on the aggregate, a more analytical interpretation of the pathways towards research impacts is needed, as well as a broadened view of productivity and its determinants.