IN-PERSON: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

Improvements in the circulation and flow of people and services within and between neighborhoods are critically important for the health, wellbeing and the economy of cities and their citizens. Prior to, and during, Covid-19, urban planners, designers and policymakers have turned their attention to the circular economy as a means of making more efficient local use of existing resources, minimizing waste, and reducing carbon emissions within their cities. By promoting the recirculation of provisions and resources, and improving neighborhood social infrastructure and services, such as refill, repair, re-use and recycling, the circular economy promises to make cities more efficient, environmentally sustainable, and resilient. However, there is little understanding of how some of the universal social, digital and communal infrastructural elements of the circular economy can be rediscovered and repurposed from the ‘bottom up’ to address spatial and environmental inequalities relating to poor health, chronic mobility, food poverty, and socio-economic deprivation across urban neighborhoods. What role can urban citizens and city place-makers play in co-designing accessible circular and interconnected neighborhoods? Can the circular economy be better interconnected around a city through its constituent neighborhoods not only to reduce a city’s carbon footprint but also to serve the health, social and economic needs of its citizens and businesses? This paper considers how the regenerative, sustainable, restorative, and replenishable attributes of the circular economy can be rediscovered and put into motion through collaborative citizen-inclusive urban service design, planning and wayfinding at the neighborhood place-making scale across cities.