First virtual meeting of COST Action Circular City

On Monday 29th June, COST Action Circular City held its first virtual workshop with 60 people from 29 countries participating. The day-long meeting was dedicated to starting the joint development of a Catalogue of Technologies for providing/recovering resources through nature-based solutions (NBS). Aim of the catalogue is to support efforts by municipalities and initiatives to achieve circularity in cities by employing nature-based solutions. Circularity, according to our definition, means less resources used and less waste.

In preparation, colleagues from the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) and the research institute ICRA (Spain) had prepared a selection of potentially suitable NBS by screening 250 NBS from four Horizon2020 projects – UrbanGreenUp, UnaLab, Nature4Cities and ThinkNature – as to their contribution to ressource circularity.

In breakout sessions, organised by one of the Action’s co-leads, BOKU Vienna, the participants had a first go at evaluating the selected 32 NBS as well as about 40 further NBS that had been identified before through a survey amongst all COST Action partners (more than 200). Evaluated examples ranged from water-focused NBS, such as raingarden and constructed wetlands, to energy-focused NBS, such as bio-solar green roof, to waste-focused NBS, such as anaerobic treatment plants, to food-focused NBS, such as food forests, market gardens and hydroponics.

Katrin Bohn is the UK representative at this COST Action – fully titled: COST Action 17133 Implementing nature-based solutions for creating a resourceful city – which started in October 2018 and will run for a further two years.

For further information see the project’s website.

COST Action Circular City is on facebook and twitter.

For more information on Bohn&Viljoen’s role in the project see here.

Image: Four aspects of the urban metabolism will be linked in COST Action Circular City: water, food, resource recovery and the built environment. (source: COST Action Circular City 2019)