Urban infrastructures, metabolic resource flows and the contradictions of circular economy ‘solutions’ in Nantes and Gothenburg

Jean-Baptiste Bahers and Jonathan Rutherford
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Jean-Baptiste Bahers: CNRS, UMR ESO (Spaces and Societies) 6590, Université de Nantes, France
Jonathan Rutherford: LATTS - Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés, UMR 8134 CNRS, Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, France

Urban Studies, 2025, vol. 62, issue 9, 1897-1918

Abstract: Urban infrastructures, as socio-technical systems that transform metabolic flows, are a key focus for efforts at initiating a more circular economy of resource use and waste recovery. Beyond exemplar discourses and claims, an infrastructure-mediated understanding of and focus on actually existing circularity projects attends to the diverse array of components, sites and exchanges through which transformative socio-technical change is envisaged, enacted and challenged. This article uses in-depth studies of circularity infrastructure initiatives in Nantes (France) and Gothenburg (Sweden) that involve a range of public and private stakeholders. We focus on the contradictions and tensions in these initiatives to draw attention to circularity as a material and political process of relocalising resource use while spatially expanding resource networks. We show how this process involves reworking large-scale infrastructure while nurturing community-level initiatives of the foundational economy, and thereby shaping urban futures through reuse and recycled flows but with a view to sustaining economic growth strategies. We argue that the materialist and productivist logic underpinning the urban infrastructures of the circular economy largely serves to aggravate the underlying fundamental systemic concerns that circularity was supposed to address in the first place.

Keywords: circular economy; foundational economy; metabolic flows; urban infrastructure; urban metabolism; å¾ªçŽ¯ç» æµŽ; åŸºç¡€ç» æµŽ; 代谢æµ; 城市基础设施; 城市代谢 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:62:y:2025:i:9:p:1897-1918

DOI: 10.1177/00420980241286750

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