The project aims at supporting urban transformation processes towards the circular economy by making an inventory of the existing material stocks within urban construction, developing reliable scenarios for future expected material flows, and providing governance arrangements on how to approach the circular economy transition. The project will focus on the largest urban infrastructures and communal assets, namely buildings, municipal roads, water, and wastewater pipes. A truly transdisciplinary consortium will work with a mixed research design that integrates quantitative modelling with qualitative study and design of governance aspects. The project will further improve already existing, validated, and applied tools and arrangements and combine them with new digitalization technologies to inform decision-makers and enable a circular built environment. This will be achieved by engaging with a wide range of stakeholders in a co-creation process with three urban living labs and six fellow cities in five countries, which will result in numerous capacity building moments throughout the entire project. A thorough analysis of best practices of cities steering the circular economy transition together with new governance interventions will result in concrete proposals of tailored governance arrangements for the participating cities including a concrete proposal for an upscaling strategy for Europe.

Project results summary (tentative)

Aim and Purpose

The CREATE project scope addresses specifically the built environment with particular emphasis on the physical, governance, environmental and economic aspects related to governmental decisions about buildings and large infrastructures. By developing a scalable process and testing it in several Urban Living Labs (ULLs) based on real-world cases, the project will enable and support transformative capacity building throughout multiple sectors for a sustainable and resilient urban transformation into the circular economy (CE).

Methods and experiences

A transdisciplinary approach is being used where quantitative modelling is combined with a qualitative and interactive co-creation process. This approach enables the embedding of new scientific knowledge into the practices of urban authorities and supports the overall goal of achieving urban transformations according to the new paradigm of a CE. The relevant stakeholders engaged within the established co-creation process include urban authorities, urban planners and consultancies, material suppliers, property managers, and urban communities. Furthermore, the diversity of the established project consortium, which includes different scientific disciplines including engineering sciences, IT, and public administration, and includes different genders and European nationalities, contributes to formulating and co-producing answers to the transdisciplinary challenge of building urban capacities for transitioning to a CE. Additionally, a quantitative approach was also used, emphasizing Material Flows and Stock Analysis (MFSA) and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), to quantify the existing stock of materials in the ULLs but also the environmental impacts associated with case studies for the construction and demolition of buildings in the ULLs. To this end, a book chapter about the state-of-the-art for MFSA in buildings was published.

Experiences from working interdisciplinary

The interdisciplinary approach taken by CREATE entailed many learnings related to the implementation of a circular economy in the construction sector. The close consideration of governance contexts and stakeholder requirements in relation to modeling approaches from Material Flows and Stocks Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment has shaped the focus of project implementations and the features of the CREATE tool. While aspects of primary materials consumption appeared more critical in environments with limited access to natural resources, contexts with higher access to such resources aimed for a comparably greater focus on energy saving and GHG emissions in the assessment of CE impacts. Further, the integration between stock and flow modeling and LCA in the different contexts indicate a need for stronger alignment between data sources across cities for the models and approaches developed in CREATE to be employed more efficiently and effectively. In this context, an interdisciplinary process involving stakeholders from relevant domains—such as real estate developers, construction companies, and city decision-makers—was revealed to be essential for developing realistic demolition and construction scenarios based on circular economy principles.

Another example of transdisciplinary work within the project is the close collaboration between the Living Lab and members of WP4 and WP2. WP2 was responsible for mapping the existing tools developed and used by the ULLs to analyze material stocks and flows using an LCA approach to support decision-making. WP4, on the other hand, was responsible for analyzing the governance context of each Living Lab by identifying the various policy instruments deployed at the European, national, and local levels to implement CEBE.

Members of both work packages decided early on to collaborate and combine their research efforts. Despite the existence of high-quality tools, these tools require support from policy instruments to be further developed and, more importantly, systematically used to ensure territorial coherence in CEBE implementation—both in terms of measurement, assessment methods, decision-making, and geographical application.

To this end, we jointly conducted semi-structured interviews with key CEBE stakeholders in each Living Lab to understand which tools they were using and their limitations. This collaboration led not only to the writing of respective deliverables for CREATE but also to the publication of a book chapter on circular economy in cities and regions in Europe (Chartier, Augiseau, 2024). The chapter focuses on the use of data and tools at the municipal level, using Rennes Métropole as a case study.

The publication highlights the various tools developed and used at different levels (urban scale, urban projects) and their role in supporting decision-making. In the second part, it examines the limitations of these tools and their application, emphasizing the lack of policy instruments needed to support their development. The chapter also aims to showcase the efforts and innovations of local authorities, as well as the challenges they face in implementing CEBE in their territories.

This chapter, co-written by WP4 members from Wageningen University and WP2 members from CitéSource, is a strong illustration of transdisciplinary collaboration within CREATE.

Overall tentative results

The CREATE project activities have been centered around:
– the development of the visualization tool to support recycling and reuse of existing stocks of buildings in Gothenburg, Rennes Métropole and Vienna.
– an analysis of the implementation of circular criteria into a tender procedure for a construction project of the municipality of Nijmegen, and the identification of the best practices for decision support methods useful for all ULLs.
– A governance analysis context in the 4 ULLs helped define policy recommendations for forward-looking decisions for realizing a circular built environment in the municipalities.
– An assessment of LCA impacts of CE implementation in the ULLs through specific case studies.

To be able to reach the objectives of the CREATE project, an identification of the needs of the users of the tools for each of the ULL has been conducted. Completing and using the information about user needs, the team developed use cases for each ULL, where it is defined what is the aim of each ULL to stimulate the reuse and recycling of materials in the existing building stock. Several meetings with the ULL owners were held to describe their roles, what specific information is needed and what type of results would be important to obtain.

In parallel an inventory of data needs and sources has been made, and a standardization of the concepts to be used in the tool has been harmonized through a set of vocabularies established. Also, there was work to define a conceptual model of the CREATE tool and expectations. This is the result of consultations with stakeholders from the three ULLs. The following steps included consultation with partners in the project as well as need owners outside the CREATE consortium to co-develop the final architecture for software development. After this process was done, the software development was initiated with constant feedback between the developers’ team and the members of the project to ensure compatibility with the 3 ULLs in the process.

The project focused on analyzing how the Nijmegen municipality translated its circularity ambitions in the tender procedure of the ULL case: how did they build and use the decision-support information and how the innovative approach of the municipality helps to apply circularity in the construction projects and secure its implementation beyond the tender procedure by developing an assessment tool and a new type of contract between the municipality and the developer. This experience has been translated into recommendations for the other ULLs related to the use of data and tools in the decision-making process for circularity in the built environment. This work also covered a governance context analysis of each ULL by collecting and analyzing policy documents at the European, national and local level that are deployed to enable CE in the built environment. This has been completed by interviewing public and private stakeholders engaged in the CE in the built environment involved in the ULL of Nijmegen and Rennes Métropole. This research had two main goals:
– Analyzing local stakeholders’ access to knowledge about these policy instruments and their use (article under review).
– Identifying policy incoherence within the CEBE policy regime by collecting stakeholders’ perspectives (article in the writing phase).

This comparative study between the two countries will help draft policy recommendations to improve the coherence of the CEBE policy regime. It will do so by suggesting the development or removal of policy instruments at the European and national levels to enable CEBE while also considering the realities faced by local stakeholders in implementing these policies. A modeling framework was developed to analyze the CE and assess its impact in the use cases of the 3 ULLs using a combined approach of material flow analysis (MFA) and LCA. A co-creation process has been applied with the city stakeholders to further define and develop transformation scenarios for the evaluation of the ULLs’ case studies, particularly emphasizing the main drivers related to recycling and reuse of materials in the existing stock. Since the ULLs are diverse in scope, a study about their different needs for an LCA, and the available stocks/flows data were investigated, and a preliminary approach has been made.

Dissemination activities emerged, with several of the technical partners presenting ongoing work at conferences, and educational material has been developed and used in the Urban Metabolism course at Chalmers.

References and Publications

Chartier A., Augiseau V. (2024), “The use of data and assessment tool to support the decision-making process for a circular building sector at the municipal level: lever, limitations and challenge. The case study of Rennes Métropole”, in Cities, Regions and the Circular Economy: Theory and Practice, Edward Elgar Edition.

Chartier A., Pot W. (2024) “How to decide upon circular cities: The role of evidence in local tender procedures”, Journal of Cleaner Production, volume 472, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2024.143449
Lanau, M., Rosado, L., Tingley, D. D. and Wallbaum, H. (2024). Buildings as material mines. Towards digitalization of resource cadasters for circular economy. Chapter 3 in Circular Economy for the Built Environment. Editor Charef, R. Routledge https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003450023.
Pot W., Chartier A. (2025), Circulaire steden – wat is een circulaire gebouwde omgeving en hoe pakt het uit in aanbesteding?, Tender Nieuwsbrief , Online 2025-2 (to be published)
Conferences
Chartier, A. (2024, March 13–14). How to decide upon circular cities? The use of circular assessment tool in local tender procedures. Procura+ Conference, Lisbon, Portugal. https://procuraplus.org/programme
Chartier, A. (2024, June 5–7). Starting from scratch: Change by design – How planners, architects, and engineers transform the way we build. Urban Future Conference Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands. https://urban-future.org/event/uf24-rotterdam-launch/
Chartier, A., & Augiseau, V. (2024, June 26–27). L’utilisation d’outils et de données pour l’aide à la décision pour des villes circulaires: leviers et barrières. Congrès Interdisciplinaire sur l’économie circulaire 2024, Montpellier, France. https://ciec2024.sciencesconf.org/?lang=fr
Chartier, A., & Pot, W. (2023, November 8). Het CREATE onderzoek project: Embedding advanced urban material stock methods within governance processes to enable circular economy and cities resilience. Hét Circulaire Jaarevent 2023, Nijmegen, Netherlands. https://research.wur.nl/en/activities/het-create-onderzoek-project-embedding-advanced-urban-material-st
Lanau, M. (2023, April 3). Current work in material stocks modeling. 2nd Size of the Society Conference, Debrecen, Hungary. https://konferencia.unideb.hu/en/program-2nd-size-society-workshop
Reynaud C, Horak D, Gebetsroither-Geringer E, Augiseau V, Hainoun A. Advancing Circular Economy strategies in urban construction using a combined MFA and LCA approach. 1st openLCA.conference, Berlin: 2024, p. 50–1. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11103649.
Suciu, G. (2022, October 21). Cyber Security: Hybrid roundtable talk. Romania Info Day – Innoveit Weeks, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. https://beiaro.eu/participation-in-romania-info-day-innoveit-weeks-2022-hybrid-event/
Wallbaum, H. (2024, February 2). Attraktiva livsmiljöer: Cirkulära flöden och hållbar materialanvändning. IVA Seminarium, Stockholm, Sweden. https://www.iva.se/det-iva-gor/evenemang/attraktiva-livsmiljoer–cirkulara-floden-och-hallbar-materialanvandning/
Wallbaum, H. (2024, March 19). Hållbar energi- och resursanvändning i byggande och boende. Future Solutions: Hållbar energi- och resursanvändning i byggande och boende [Virtual conference]. https://www.iqs.se/natverk-och-moten/future-solutions/hallbar-energi-och-resursanvandning-i-byggande-och-boende/
Wallbaum, H. (2024, September 18). Optimera cirkulära flöden och nå en hållbar materialanvändning genom digitala tvillingar. Geoforum 2024, Stockholm, Sweden. https://www.bimalliance.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2024/240919-arbeta-smart-2024/