Urban potential in Bio-based Circular Economy

Rapport, 2020

Circular Economy (CE) will accelerate the emerging shift in resource consumption from finite to renewable and plants are key in enabling the switch as industries would opt more and more for resources with a bio-based origin.  Cities have an important role in the process not only as the main consumers of the resources but also because vegetation provides numerous intangible ecosystem services essential for the wellbeing of urban dwellers. But the urban lands are heavily burdened with present activities and ongoing urbanization. Retrofitting the now obsolete and potentially contaminated brownfields provides an opportunity to engage bio-based land uses within the city periphery. At the same time, vegetation can be incorporated with Gentle Remediation Option (GRO), an alternative and more sustainable option over common ‘dig and dump’ remediation to eradicate the contamination concern and restore soil health. ‘Opportunities of bio-based production in urban brownfields’, a Ph.D. research project, concerns with such topics aiming to investigate the possibilities and preconditions for preparing urban brownfields urban bio-based production to foster a bio-based circular economy in the cities. This literature review is performed as part of the research effort to support and capture the wider scope of the project. The review work is focused on outlining the topics, ‘CE’, and ‘urban brownfields’; and establishing a common ground merging these topics from where the rest of the research work can be based on. The novel concept (i.e. CE) are explored in this literature review together with the well-established topic (i.e. brownfields) to set the backdrop and their common subsets (i.e. cities in CE, urban land potential in bio-based CE) are further investigated to guide the review in delivering information necessary for the future project work. Urban Greenspaces (UGSs) and the ecosystem services (ESs) that can be derived from them are discussed as consecutively the potential bio-based land uses and the bio-based products in an urban setting. 14 UGSs are additionally explored to better understand the scope of ESS in the cities.