Scale-Up and Scale-Out Sharing Capacity for Sustainable Urban Transformation”

Cities face numerous challenges amplified by the scarcity of space, natural resources and the materials that are derived from them. In an urban context, the transition to a circular economy includes creating material loops through recycling and reuse, repair and reduction of material consumption. In all of these respects, the circularity and sharing of resources are particularly relevant and many such initiatives are growing all over the world. The TransScale project will develop capacities and study the roles of different stakeholders (municipalities, communities, NGOs and other urban stakeholders) in scaling up and scaling out urban circular and sharing economy initiatives while both slowing down, narrowing or closing material loops in urban areas and providing socio-economic services. TransScale will challenge ways of existing thinking, via Future Literacy Labs; sharing learning on new organisational forms and policy measures, via Policy Labs; establishing a bespoke learning platform that will out-last the project lifetime; and conducting selective material flow analyses of circularity and sharing models, for evaluation purposes. Through these means, TransScale aims to help develop and assess solutions that work across scales, locales, asset types and circularity and sharing economy models relevant to the reduction of resource consumption.