How to plan for a circular city: a decision-support framework for integrating circularity within urban policies and plans

Resource scarcity and climate change are two of the biggest challenges of our times. Circular economy principles applied at city scale represent an opportunity both in environmental and socio-cultural terms, in order to pursue sustainable urban development. While the circular economy approach has gained a huge attention becoming the basis framework to boost innovation in many research fields, its application to the urban scale is still fragmented, and cities approach circularity in different ways and for different reasons. Therefore, there is the need to finalise a more holistic and spatial-related approach, not only considering the application of the circular economy principle to encourage the establishment of circular businesses in the city. Starting from the analysis of the regulatory evolution of the international, European and national framework on the subject, the dissertation explores the role of cities in the transition to a circular economy and reflects on the role of urban planning in this sense. By collecting definitions, current research trends, methodologies to support urban planners, and the more holistic frameworks used for planning circular cities, the thesis proposes a reflection on the strength of this paradigm of sustainability, contributing to the systematization of the topic that is recent and still in evolution. Starting from this framework, the dissertation proposes an original methodology to support local planners in identifying strategies for urban regeneration and the development of cities that are permeated and guided by the concept of circularity. The resulting image of the circular city is integrated in the different phases of the Strategic Environmental Assessment process, considering it as a methodology for drafting the plans and not an ex-post evaluation of its effects. This contributes to integrate circularity in the different phases of plan-making, going towards circular-inclusive spatial plans.