Circular economy concepts for accelerating sustainable urban transformation: The case of New York City

IF 6.6 1区经济学 Q1 URBAN STUDIES

Cities Pub Date : 2025-07-04 DOI:10.1016/j.cities.2025.106223

Anna Avdiushchenko , Christoph Johannes Meinrenken

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Abstract

Cities are crucial players in the pursuit of sustainable development. Therefore, urgent action is needed to reduce the over-extraction of natural resources (e.g., excessive material throughput) and the degradation of land caused by urbanization (e.g., the difficulty of implementing sustainable spatial planning in densely built urban areas). One way to facilitate such actions is to implement circular economy (CE) concepts in local policy. Based on document analysis, web-scanning research and semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 17 New York City (NYC) stakeholders, we explore the success of circularity progress in supporting such actions. Special attention is paid to policies and practices supporting minimizing the waste of resources and circular spatial planning. Interviewees included representatives of the NYC Mayor's Office responsible for sustainable development and circular economy actions. In addition, we collected opinions and insights of other local stakeholders involved in circularity initiatives in NYC. We find that while NYC shows clear ambitions to lead in CE, a system-wide approach to implementing circularity in policy still faces crucial obstacles. We conclude with recommendations for NYC to overcome these obstacles and to achieve accelerated, system-wide transformation towards a CE in NYC.

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加速可持续城市转型的循环经济理念：以纽约市为例

城市是追求可持续发展的关键角色。因此，需要采取紧急行动，减少自然资源的过度开采（例如，过度的材料吞吐量）和城市化造成的土地退化（例如，在建筑密集的城市地区实施可持续空间规划的困难）。促进此类行动的一种方法是在地方政策中实施循环经济（CE）概念。基于文献分析、网络扫描研究和对17位纽约市利益相关者的半结构化深度访谈，我们探讨了循环进展在支持此类行动方面的成功。特别关注支持尽量减少资源浪费和循环空间规划的政策和做法。受访者包括纽约市市长办公室负责可持续发展和循环经济行动的代表。此外，我们还收集了参与纽约市循环倡议的其他当地利益相关者的意见和见解。我们发现，尽管纽约市表现出领导环保的明确雄心，但在政策中实施循环的全系统方法仍然面临着重大障碍。最后，我们提出了纽约市克服这些障碍的建议，并在纽约市实现加速的、全系统的向建筑节能的转变。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Cities URBAN STUDIES-

CiteScore

11.20

自引率

9.00%

发文量

517

期刊介绍： Cities offers a comprehensive range of articles on all aspects of urban policy. It provides an international and interdisciplinary platform for the exchange of ideas and information between urban planners and policy makers from national and local government, non-government organizations, academia and consultancy. The primary aims of the journal are to analyse and assess past and present urban development and management as a reflection of effective, ineffective and non-existent planning policies; and the promotion of the implementation of appropriate urban policies in both the developed and the developing world.