Your Organization: University of Naples Parthenope
Author: Sergio Ulgiati, Principal investigator
http://www.urbancirculareconomy.it/en/
Recently, urban systems have been suffering for several issues: lack of resources and energy, huge difference in terms of life standards between cities and rural areas, increase of urban waste, etc. All of these problems have a negative impact on the quality of our living standards, the quality of natural resources (water, air, soil, food) with the result of losing important economic opportunities. For this reason, it is of paramount importance to implement new innovative projects in order to understand properly not only the relationship between environment, energy, water, and natural resources, but also the complexity of urban consumption. This project, promoted by “Parthenope” University of Naples, Beijing Normal University School of Environment and Ca ’Foscari University of Venice, aims at improving the recovery of resources before and after the production and transportation processes as well as of the management of water and energy resources and waste. The circular planning of both consumption and production in the metropolitan area of Jing-Jin-Ji (Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei) and the Metropolitan City of Naples will present new opportunities to optimise the usage of resources. In order to succeed, this planning will require the prevention of waste, ecological planning, an efficient usage of resources, regenerative and distributive economy (enterprises, families, infrastructures, and services), and the involvement of a variety of stakeholders. The China-Italy Bilateral Project “Analysis on the metabolic process of urban agglomeration and the cooperative strategy of circular economy” will also develop an online calculator of circular economy (UCEC Urban Circular Economy Calculator, software e database) in order to support urban policy making. The project is supported in Italy by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI) under the Executive Program for High Relevance Bilateral Projects and in China by the Sino-Italian Cooperation of China Natural Science Foundation (CNSC, grant No. 7171101135).