Welcome to the ECOCITY 2022 Interactive Programme

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Despite all efforts, the Netherlands still has a long way to go to realize a circular economy and the Dutch construction sector likewise. Many organizational barriers and institutional characteristics inhibit the sector’s transition to circular practices. The past ten years, Academic studies analysed these barriers and what policy makers and organizations could do to speed up the transition. Nevertheless, within this early phase of the transition, several building and construction projects were realized based on circular principles. Such projects are crucial because they pave the way to institutional change and form the arena where the mutual adaptation of niche and regime takes place. Therefore we argue that while transition governance on the sectoral level is crucial, stimulating circular results on the project level is at least as crucial to help the transition move forward. Our aim is to gain deeper insight into the activities that actors involved in the construction chain actually do in circular building projects. Drawing on the ecological systems metaphor, we view the construction chain as a system of multiple actors that each perform one or multiple functions. The sum of these functions produce a system service (i.e. the circular building). We developed and applied a functional diversity perspective to analyse the activities that the involved actors perform in this system. The perspective of functional diversity is particularly relevant in the context of circular building construction, because it is not based on pre-assumed relations between activities and actors and may thereby be helpful in developing new configurations of actors and activities in the construction chain needed for circular projects. By using this perspective to analyse four circular cases, we uncovered five functions that are crucial to realize circular buildings: 1 connecting though vision; 2 matching supply and demand; 3 providing used materials; 4 constructing circular building elements and 5 controlling safety and quality. The functional diversity perspective indeed reveals that functions are interchangeable between and independent from actor characteristics. Further functional diversity applications could reveal its relevance to support the transition to a circular construction practice in the Netherlands.

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In the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, overarching advances in technology aligned with the fast-paced integration of distributed renewable generation sources, electric vehicles, and energy storage systems in the energy grid are changing the way customers are procuring, perceiving, and consuming energy-related products and services, and the way companies are exploring new competitive advantages to create better experiences to meet customers’ expectations. In view of that, there is at present an ongoing disruption of well-established, traditional energy market structures, and innovative local energy markets designs backed up by progressive legal frameworks have recently started emerging as a consequence across the globe. On that note, this paper conceptualised an innovative business model focused on demand-side management (using the flex-offers approach) and peer-to-peer energy trading for the conceptualisation and design of low-voltage renewable energy communities in Portugal. Special focus is given to the role of independent aggregators, who intermediate the monetisation of the flexible assets in energy markets and the commercialisation of surplus renewable generation within the renewable energy communities. This innovative business model is being developed and validated under the umbrella of a national R&D project named Flexigy, which aims to propose actionable policy recommendations for the makeover of outdated legal frameworks in Portugal that do not embrace the aggregation of small-scale, decentralised flex-offers and the collaborative consumption of surplus renewable generation in an optimal way in the context of low-voltage renewable energy communities.

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The trifecta of accelerating climate change, a level of ecosystem loss scientists are already calling the sixth great extinction event, and pervasive pollution by the residues of the 2^nd and 3^rd industrial revolutions and the lifestyles they enable, is creating an unfamiliar and largely unknowable world in which the cities of our future will have to function. Some scholars suggest that we are entering a period of social, economic and ecological collapse, or even catastrophe, which calls for Deep Adaptation (as phrased by Jem Bendell). It is becoming clear that the Sustainable Development Goals will not be able to manage, let alone prevent this collapse, and the much vaunted Fourth Industrial Revolution, and its emerging successor the Fifth Industrial Revolution, does not even consider the possibility of collapse.

Each Industrial Revolution has changed the form, functions and flows of cities, as illustrated in the paper. However, we argue that the world needs to make a radical step-change towards a Sixth Industrial Revolution (6IR) in which the judicious and wise use of old and new technologies helps us not just to change and adapt, but to reconnect that which was forced apart, marrying human ingenuity and the wisdom of Mother Nature to regenerate the planet and our societies. The components of such a 6IR are already available and only need to be stitched together into a safety net to first catch civilization in its collapse, and then transform into a scaffold for a radically different, live-affirming future in which all our descendants can thrive, not just survive. The purpose of this paper is to weave these threads into a description of the 6IR that we can use to explore how the 6IR could change how we think about transforming and regenerating current cities for a future beyond collapse.

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Green building rating and assessment tools implicitly define what an ‘ideal green or sustainable building’ should be, through the criteria and targets they include in their frameworks. While these frameworks are often used to assess existing buildings and proposed designs there is limited research to show the type of buildings that would be created if criteria were used to generate designs. This type of modelling could provide valuable insight into the type of built environment aspirations that are embedded in tools. An analysis of these aspirational built environments can then be used to ascertain the value of the tool in guiding the development of more sustainable built environments. This study, therefore, draws on criteria from the Sustainable Building Assessment Tool (SBAT) to assess an existing building and propose an alternative ‘ideal’ model sustainable building environment. The resulting design is analysed to critically evaluate the SBAT and ascertain it’s effectiveness as a tool for supporting improved sustainability. The study concludes that the SBAT is effective at guiding the development of more sustainable built environments and makes some recommendations for improvement.

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Within the framework of the 2030 Agenda for a Sustainable Development and especially focusing on SGDs 3 and 11, ISGlobal and the Public Facilities and Public Space and the Public Health Services Departments of the Barcelona Provincial Council have developed a tool to integrate health perspective into municipal public space planning. The tool supports reflection, evaluation and decision making for urban planners when designing or remodeling public space interventions to promote health and well-being, as well as social and environmental benefits.

A narrative literature review of articles related to interventions in public green spaces and plazas associated with health benefits was conducted. Eligible articles were categorized into topics which were discussed with different actors and classified as health determinants associated with public space, including: environmental expositions, community, comfort and attractive, access and connectivity, security, maintenance and healthiness and uses. Determinants are defined by elements, referring to public space items or interventions associated with potential health benefits.

The tool is based on the Scotland National Health Service Place Standard Tool. It uses a questionnaire that includes different questions for each element which defines the determinants. There are three different types of questions: space classification, scoring and reflection. Scores for each element and determinant can be visualized in a spiderweb diagram. Complete results are provided in a report that offers a picture of the extent to which the evaluated space incorporates features and interventions that may benefit health and well-being. The tool also offers the possibility for a transversal evaluation through different elements that are included in more than one determinant, like green features, as well as to compare the situation of the same space at different time points.

The tool provides a framework to detect which aspects of the evaluated spaces may require further reflection or modification in order to maximise their potential benefits. This tool highlights the role of urban planning as public health interventions, and provides an example of how multi sectoral collaborations can improve public space planning and integrate health as a transversal element into other sectors.

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Academics and city administrations generally agree that environmental management decisions should be science based, which suggests the value of collaboration between city officials and researchers. Such collaboration, termed “ecology with cities”, is an example of translational ecology that should integrate ecological and social sciences to inform decision-makers. However, there has been insufficient reflection on whether ecology with cities achieves the expected development of practical social-ecological knowledge for the common good. We addressed this gap by asking city officials and researchers, in Switzerland and with whom we have collaborated in the past, about their motivations for, and experiences with, transdisciplinary collaboration. The respondents reported largely overlapping goals and an awareness of the mutual benefits of accessing the skills and resources of the other group. However, the reflections also unearthed latent tensions related to insufficient mutual awareness of institutional boundaries and limitations. We conclude that researchers should try to include collaboration partners who have experience in translational ecology practice and should establish learning processes early in a collaboration. Building good working relationships with city administrations and establishing such processes would facilitate the creation of realistic mutual expectations in which institutional limitations are considered so that common goals of maintaining or improving the ecological quality of cities can be amicably reached.

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In the context of large and growing urban populations, there is a pressing need to understand how urban spaces can be sustainably planned, developed and maintained for greatest benefit to people and nature, and how environmental policy in particular can support this. The use of ‘green infrastructure’, as a framing approach for integrating urban green space in to urban decision-making has had significant international impact. This paper seeks to describe the environmental policy narratives across five different urban areas (London and Birmingham in the UK, and Johannesburg, Durban (Ethekwini) and Cape Town in South Africa), reflecting on the way in which these have potentially influenced city-level policies and approaches for urban green infrastructure planning, development and management.

This talk explores the idea that the broader environmental policy context of a city, and its relationship with other policy areas, inevitably shapes their approach to green infrastructure. The study was based on a multi-method approach including analysis of academic papers, technical reports and policy documents, semi-structured interviews and site visits with academics, practitioners (planners, engineers, environmental consultants), policy-makers and local community actors. The two main areas of inquiry and reflection were: 1) Identifying prevailing narratives and priorities in environmental policy at city-level and 2) Outlining current approaches to policy, planning and management for urban green infrastructure. This work has highlighted significant differences in the approach to urban green infrastructure, shaped by the mix of biophysical, social and economic factors that dominate the policy priorities of each of the cities. Insights from this work aim to support decision-makers by understanding the opportunity space for using framings such as ‘green infrastructure’ in urban green space policy.

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Blockchain technology, its characteristics and structural pillars, operationalization, types, potentialities, risks arising from its use matter to society and to the law. Departing from Williamson and Irti doctrine, the blockchain technology is related to governance structures and markets concept to subsequently place it face to the New Institutional Economics and to the Law. Issues related to transaction costs and to its distinct technology characteristics are analysed to place it and consider its impacts. Within the scope of the New Institutional Economics, the behavioral components and the complex dimensions of the transactions explored by Williamson are combined with the unique characteristics of the technology in question to consider it as a new governance structure that enables the execution of transactions in a decentralized manner depending on transaction costs. With regard to Law, in line with Irti, the relevance of this legal science to the economics is observed, considering legal concepts and their de-bordering in the face of innovations. The essay points to potential transformations arising from technology and to the role of Law in society regarding technological evolution and opening of territorial borders, while also seeking to analyze the challenges to regulation and antitrust legislation resulting from its disruptive and innovative attribute.