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Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, understanding its impacts on cities has received much attention in science and policy circles. This paper systematically reviews the literature on the interface of the pandemic and urban sustainability. The objective is to portray the impacts brought by the COVID-19 outbreak in urban environments within the sustainability framework and to detect trends and challenges for future research. The paper follows a methodology that integrates both bibliometric and systematic review approaches. The first approach relies on bibliometric analysis to provide an overview of the landscape of main trends on this nexus. The second approach presents a content analysis that deepens the work by outlining the impacts of the pandemic and the challenges that emerged on five different key topics for urban sustainability. The role of resilient urban planning is discussed as an integrative concept to face diverse challenges in the construction of sustainable cities in a post-pandemic scenario. Likewise, the study deliberates on future research topics related to resilient urban planning, social equity, healthy urban environments, sustainable mobility, and circular economy. This review serves as a guide for researchers and urban planners to understand emerging challenges and future research trends in urban sustainability. [Display omitted] • A literature review integrating bibliometric and contents analysis synthesizes the effects of the COVID-19 on the urban sustainability. • The impacts are sorted into thematic areas: resilient urban planning, healthy urban environments, social equity, sustainable mobility, and circular economy. • Challenges for urban sustainability and resilience are proposed as topics for future research work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collecting urban solid waste (USW) is a critical and essential phase for proper waste management and valorization. To date, many data are available for large cities, but few studies have focused on low-density areas, such as mountainous regions. Considering this lack in the literature, this study aimed to compare two separate waste collection systems in two mountainous valleys in terms of effectiveness and GHG emissions. In the first scenario, a mixed collection system (door-to-door + centers) was used, while in the other, waste was separately collected by a full door-to-door system. The results suggested that the full door-to-door system achieved better performance than the mixed collection system (door-to-door + centers), with a fraction of separate waste collection compared to the unit equals (0.84 ± 0.01 vs. 0.79 ± 0.02). Moreover, the full door-to-door system represented the best option for collecting separate waste in mountainous areas in terms of GHG emissions, with 11.21 kgCO2, eq twaste−1 emitted vs. 15.62 kgCO2, eq twaste−1 in the case of the mixed system. Despite utilities emitting a higher amount of GHGs in the door-to-door scenario (4.66 kgCO2, eq inh−1 y−1), they were fully compensated for by the low GHG emissions from citizens in the mixed scenario (1.77 kgCO2, eq inh−1 y−1 vs. 6.65 kgCO2, eq inh−1 y−1). Given the low amount of data on this topic, this work could be considered as a pioneer study of waste management in mountainous areas by comparing the results of two systems regarding effectiveness and GHG emissions. The outcomes of this study could be helpful for waste utilities, institutional agencies, and local communities and also serve as a tool for decision-making in the case of comparing the different options for USW collection systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presented research examines the repurposing of decommissioned phonebooth units to COVID-19 sampling stations as a meaningful attempt to promote environmentally sustainable and socially resilient cities by contributing to a circular economy transition. The repurposing approach is compared to an adequate new build design using a life cycle assessment to evaluate the environmental implications and a time-cost comparison for their implementation. The results indicate that the remodelling of the phone booth improves environmental performance. The expanded need for refurbishment is offset by the need to use virgin material for the new stations. The benefit of finding reuse for the phone booths and extending their lifetime further supports this understanding, demonstrating the adaptive approach as a viable strategy for utilising an otherwise disused urban infrastructure with uncertain end-of-life. Cost-time results show that repurposing is less expensive due to the donated phone booths and low production numbers. On the other hand, new sampling stations take less time to produce. Future studies investigate user experiences and social benefits of the realised sampling station based on phone booth repurposing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of diminishing resources on our plant is now getting due attention from the governments as well as scientists around the world. The transition from a linear economy to a circular economy (CE) is now among the top priorities. This article discusses the implementation of the circular economy paradigm in Poland through the analysis of the existing and planned mechanisms, and actions taken by the Polish government which can be replicated by other young European countries. Further, the article discusses the direction of change and projected measures planned by the Polish government to improve the quality of municipal solid waste management. In this context, profitability analysis is carried out for two methods of waste processing (incineration and torrefaction) intended for small municipalities and settlements in which district heating and trading of generated electricity are not feasible. The results of the analysis shows that torrefaction is clearly a more desirable waste processing option as a step towards the implementation of CE for civic society in the urban context, as well as profitability, in comparison to incineration. The analysis accounts for several scenarios before the lockdown caused due to the COVID-19 pandemic and after it was lifted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]