Envision 2051

Circular Cities in the 21st Century

Daily life in a circular city is organized differently than our current day-to-day routines require. 

For the modern citizen in a circular economy, the world around us  will become more responsive—more resourceful for our civic needs. 

There is  more time for family, more time for friends, more time for exploration, and mostly, there is more time for leisure. 

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Education is at the core of the Circular City experience. As students of the universe, we are seekers of truth, driven towards a greater understanding of all life on Earth, and the great beyond. 

As scientists, artists, builders, and engineers we understand the  challenges now current in the 21st century, calculating in evolutionary time, this is our survival of the fittest moment

—adaptation is key.

Social Enterprise is the financial HUB for the Circular City experience, diversifing opportunity for its citizens to follow their intuition, to chase their dreams, adding a more dynamic dimension to main street—redefining the meaning of work, as play.

A Circular City is a high-tech enterprise designed for economic and urban regeneration.

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From home, a Circular City is a network of Urban Villages that are creatively accessible and environmentally sound. 

Forecasting through the lens of a just transition, access to meaningful work, affordable housing, and social mobility are non-negotiable rights.

Daily life in a Circular City is inclusive and co-creative by design. 

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Energy grids of a Circular City are interconnected micro grids—Renewable Energy installations that are economically decentralized, community centered, and are developed as  opportunities for creative place making and civic art. 

Energy cooperatives provide a mechanism for wealth building, embedding equity and urban resiliency into the very foundation of our shared energy infrastructure.

At scale, our global goal in the race to zero is to ignite and inspire a renewable  energy revolution that is both robust and open to adaptive change.

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Urban Mobility in a Circular City are integrated systems governed by decentralized smart grids. Some modes are conductor guided, others autonomous, and when  combined they provide an inclusive network of public options including  buses, trains, bikes, scooters, and a variety of other on-demand pick-up and delivery services. 

In a Circular City many of us have abandoned our privately owned vehicles as a resource.   

In exchange, mobility as-a-service allows for a decrease demand for the paved infrastructure needed for car-centric culture, allowing urban planners and engineers the space to rethink the underlying grid, providing the opportunity to de-pave our urban environment for the upgrade of vital infrastructure services such as city-wide hydrologic systems, wastewater treatment,  storm water management, and for the remediation of toxic soil. 

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Urban Manufacturing in a Circular City is reliant on regional supply-chains and industrial symbiosis.

Located in the heart of the Urban  Village Fab Labs offer the modern consumer just about anything and everything imaginable.

Smart Factories offers goods-as-a-service  when needed, without the burden of private ownership, and provides end-of-life services for all-things.

Smart Factories are Maker HUB's, designed for utility and convenience. 

Through the art of digital transformation, on-demand manufacturing offers the creative consumer a more meet-your-maker kind of experience. 

For instance—with on-demand apparel manufacturing anyone can design an outfit for themselves and/or access an open-source  database where fashion designers from all around the world have  uploaded their designs. 

With Additive Manufacturing, we now have the ability to 3D print parts to fix just about anything that is broken, and/or make the prototype for just about anything imaginable. And, at the end of every things life, all parts can be recycled, its fiber re-purposed into new feed-stock to begin this process over again.

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Most importantly, when on-demand manufacturing is partnered with maker movements, artisans, craftsmen and tradesmen, our local economies will no longer be dependent on our ports for the transport and warehousing of the goods and services our current economy is dependent on. 

Notably, as we begin to alleviate our dependency on our seaports, we will begin to lessen our impact on our ocean ecosystems—allowing for their recovery and regeneration.

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The Circular City integrates agriculture into the  very fabric of the Urban Village, ushering in the next great  agricultural revolution. Inner city food security combines local  solutions like the high-tech efficiency of vertical farming,  aquaculture, and agrivoltaics while the rewilding of our built  environment has  opened up more space for regenerative urban farming  practices and animal husbandry—each coexisting in a communal  setting. 

Resiliency in a Circular City is driven by the need for more equity, creative diversity, and environmental justice. 

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Through investment in natural infrastructure like sponge cities, green cities, thriving cities, Circular Cities are revitalized and resilient cities,  better prepared for the worst-case climate scenarios such as extreme droughts, wildfires, sea-level rise, floods, epidemics and global pandemics.

A Circular  City is first and foremost the applied logistics of a global circular  economy—an industrial system based on three principles: design out waste  and pollution, keep material flows circulating indefinitely, while regenerating and rewilding Earth ecosystems. 

A circular economy is a return to the  natural order of things, where waste becomes resource, and life on Earth can once again prosper.