Circular economy concepts for accelerating sustainable urban transformation : the case of New York City

Cities are crucial players in the pursuit of sustainable development. Therefore, urgent action is needed to reduce the over-extraction of natural resources (e.g., excessive material throughput) and the degradation of land caused by urbanization (e.g., the difficulty of implementing sustainable spatial planning in densely built urban areas). One way to facilitate such actions is to implement circular economy (CE) concepts in local policy. Based on document analysis, web-scanning research and semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 17 New York City (NYC) stakeholders, we explore the success of circularity progress in supporting such actions. Special attention is paid to policies and practices supporting minimizing the waste of resources and circular spatial planning. Interviewees included representatives of the NYC Mayor's Office responsible for sustainable development and circular economy actions. In addition, we collected opinions and insights of other local stakeholders involved in circularity initiatives in NYC. We find that while NYC shows clear ambitions to lead in CE, a system-wide approach to implementing circularity in policy still faces crucial obstacles. We conclude with recommendations for NYC to overcome these obstacles and to achieve accelerated, system-wide transformation towards a CE in NYC.